Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
A nationwide poll of 10,000 consumers has ranked Amazon.co.uk top for customer satisfaction among all UK companies.
Also featured among the top 10 are ASOS.com, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer (retail food and non-food), Waitrose, Nationwide, first direct, Greggs, giffgaff and Iceland.
The UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI), run by The Institute of Customer Service, asks consumers to rate their experiences of over 300 organisations in 13 sectors that have dealt with in the previous three months, on 30 criteria, from professionalism, quality and efficiency to ease of doing business, timeliness, problem solving and complaint handling, as well as attitudes towards trust and reputation.
UKCSI chief executive Joanna Causon said: “This is the first UKCSI to include survey data collected since the Brexit referendum.
“Customer satisfaction has continued to improve, suggesting that many organisations are performing better on some of the essential elements of customer service, especially in getting things right first time and dealing with problems and complaints.”
“The results clearly show that just being ‘good’ is no longer good enough. Organisations who can get things right first time and deal with problems effectively to deliver an excellent customer experience are those that are thriving both on the high street and online.”
Amazon UK country manager Doug Gurr comented: “We always appreciate the support of our customers so we’re thrilled to start the year with such positive feedback,” said
“We know we can always get better, and we’re confident our investments in the UK will enable us to further improve the shopping experience for all our customers in 2017.”
Over the last year, Amazon introduced several new services. AmazonFresh launched in London, with the grocery service now available in 260 postcodes in London, Surrey and Hampshire. The ultra-fast delivery service Prime Now continued to expand, now reaching over 30% of the UK population, and Amazon Restaurants launched, bringing food from hand-picked local restaurants to Prime members in parts of London.
Amazon also released a series of new devices in 2016 including Echo and Echo Dot (voice-controlled speakers powered by Amazon’s Alexa voice service); Dash and Dash Buttons (enabling customers to quickly order staple items) and Kindle Oasis, billed as the thinnest and lightest Kindle ever.
It also launched a number of exclusive TV shows including ‘The Grand Tour’ on Amazon Prime Video, plus Amazon Music Unlimited, with a catalogue of more than 40 million songs to stream or download.
The UKCSI shows that customer satisfaction has risen to 77.8 and there is a wide variation of satisfaction across different types of customers, sectors and organisations. This is the fourth consecutive growth in customer satisfaction, which is at its highest point since July 2013. All 13 sectors have improved except for Automotive, which remained flat.
Customers who express a preference for either fast, efficient service, or for proactive help and advice (even if it takes longer), tended to have higher satisfaction than those whose preference is for a balance of the two.
There has been a growth in interactions via website, webchat, apps, text but especially by email.
The Institute of Customer Service has been compiling the UKCSI for nine years. To create UKCSI, The Institute of Customer Service runs an online survey of consumers twice a year. Respondents are representative of the UK adult population by region, age and gender.
The January 2017 UKCSI results are based on 42,500 survey responses, provided by over 10,000 individual customers.
The UKCSI is published twice per year, usually in January and July. Each published set of UKCSI results incorporates the data from the previous two surveys to create a rolling measure of the state of satisfaction. For example, the January 2017 results therefore include responses from the UKCSI surveys completed for the July 2016 and January 2017 reports.
