Internet's Best and Worst in Customer Satisfaction

Yesterday ForSee Results released their annual E-Business Report based on ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) methodology.

“The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an economic indicator that measures the satisfaction of consumers across the U.S. economy. ” [source]

The following general observations were made in the ForeSee Results’ study:

  • Social Media: Current customer satisfaction is quite poor (70 points on average) as the industry enters the Index for the first time. It has the lowest industry aggregate score of any of the e-business or e-retail industries measured by the ACSI. Wikipedia is one of the leaders per ACSI having scored 77 points, which is 14 points above Facebook which had its 64 points [a surprising low].
  • News & Information Sites: The overall customer satisfaction with news and information sites this year is at 74. ACSI debutant FoxNews.com is at the top with a score of 82, which is five points above nearest competitor USAToday.com which scored 77. CNN.com is even lower — 73 points.
  • Portals & Search Engines: Customer satisfaction with this type of websites dives 7% this year: from 84 points in 2009 to 77 now (for the record, Google dived down 6 points from 86 to 80) Bing, which was measured for the first time, has shown a decent score of 77, second only to Google.

Here is more data from this interesting report by ForeSee Results in graphs:

Social Media ACSI Scores

Customer satisfaction with Social Media

Customer Satisfation Averages in Other Industries

Customer satisfaction with various industries

2002-2010 ASCI Scores for Portals & Search Engines

Customer satisfaction with search engines

Once again, the full 11-page report may be picked up here.

3 thoughts on “Internet's Best and Worst in Customer Satisfaction”

  1. Awesome post Geno! To add a little more context to the ‘hot topic’ of social media, this is the first year, we at ForeSee Results, measured social media and plan to expand on the study in the future. As mentioned, the numbers are surprising low despite all of the incredible attention spread out in the media as it pertains to social media.

    If anyone would like more insight, please feel free to e-mail me at
    [email protected] or Twitter @Davash

  2. Daniel, thank you for chiming in (and for alerting me of this study in the first place too).

    So, what are your thoughts on why the level of customer satisfaction with social media is so low (regardless of the “incredible attention” to social media)?

  3. Geno, to answer your question, there are myriad factors that explain why the level of customer satisfaction with social media is so low.

    Simply put, given that the nature of social media surrounds the notion of a community based ecosystem, heeding its community’s feedback and community’s concerns is essential to satisfy those members. In the case of the measured social media sites, it is evident that their community’s members concerns were not being heeded in this way, thus not as satisfied.

    This can be analogous to offline social situations as well; this emphasizes why social interaction and connectivity is important to consider as an important element when assessing customer satisfaction.

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