2012 Customer Service Survey Results

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The complete company rankings

Here’s a look at the methodology and full results of the MSN Money-JZ Analytics customer service survey for 2012.

MSN Money asked JZ Analytics to conduct an online national survey in which 1,500 randomly chosen respondents rated customer service at 150 companies from 15 industries. The response choices were “excellent,” “good,” “fair,” “poor,” “I haven’t had an interaction with this company’s customer service” and “not sure.” The poll was conducted from June 15-18 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

We used several criteria in choosing the companies, including those with the largest sales in such customer-facing industries as retail, hotels and restaurants. We also reviewed the lists from the previous five years to ensure that the survey would reflect how companies are doing over time. In addition, we went back over the comments we received from readers on previous surveys to make sure we hadn’t overlooked companies that were notorious for bad service but not quite large enough to make this year’s initial list. Then we revised the list to reflect name changes, ownership turnover and sales trends.

Once JZ Analytics compiled its results, we eliminated the responses “not familiar” and “not sure” from the tallies to focus attention on the responses from customers who were familiar with the companies and expressed opinions about them.

The final cut for our list eliminated companies that had fewer than 500 responses that met the aforementioned criteria. That level of response corresponds to what JZ Analytics considers a sample size with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points. That left 101 ranked companies on the list below.

The 10 companies with the highest percentage of “poor” rankings became our Hall of Shame. Using the same methodology, the 10 with the highest percentage of “excellent” rankings became our Hall of Fame.

One trend that held from past years: Banking, credit card and cable companies continue to fill most slots in the Hall of Shame. Sorted by industry average, these three drew the highest percentages of “poor” ratings for customer service in our poll. Delivery, online and specialty retail drew the highest percentages of “excellent” ratings.

“What strikes me is that the same industries — banks, credit cards, cable — seem to show up in the hall of shame every year. Particularly financials. Is there something about these industries that causes that, perhaps (inconvenience or complexity) that it’s harder to walk away?” said John Zogby, JZ Analytics senior analyst and founder of the Zogby Poll. “Retail does fairly well, likely because if you have a bad experience, you just don’t go back.”

Here’s a look at the best and worst industries for customer service in our survey:

Click here for the complete list.

Which company (ies) have you experienced? Do you agree with these results? As always, your comments and feedback are welcome!