The Slower Rate of Increase of Customer Satisfaction Reported by American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)

Verizon Communications Inc has again proved its superiority over other telecom service providers. This is consecutively fourth year when Verizon ranked top in highly reputed University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for wire-line and wireless telephone services in America. Yesterday University of Michigan released the result of American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) for first quarter of 2007. ACSI is conducted within the companies of utilities and services. According to ACSI the general trend of these two sectors of industry in America is showing an overall increase in customer satisfaction but in slower rate as anticipated. In the first quarter of every year the ASCI conducts customer satisfaction for American companies for their quality of products & services. The types of company are assessed are cable & Satellite TVs, telecommunication services, hospital, hotels, fast food restaurants, airlines, energy utilities, express delivery, US postal service etc. Here is a at a glance look for this year's ASCI.

As per University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) official news "Customer satisfaction with the goods and services that Americans buy continues to improve, but at a slower rate, according to a report released today by the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The ACSI is up 0.4% to an overall score of 75.2 on the ACSI's 100-point scale, the highest quarterly national average in the ACSI's 14-year history."

Verizon and Qwest score as first position for 'Fixed Line Telephone Services'. Verizon Wireless scores the top for wireless telephone services under the category of 'Wireless Service' and the company retains their position form last year. Verizon Wireless proved itself as one of the most loyal company providing a great service to its customers in America. Verizon Telecom achieved the ASCI as 72 out of 100, which is two points above the industry average. Again this score of Verizon Telecom is 4.3 percent higher than last year 2006. Though it is good news for telephone service providers, it is so good for cable companies. The cable companies rating for ASCI dropped significantly from last year. All big cable companies like Cox, Comcast are showing a decrease in customer satisfaction. The ASCI news says "The perennially low-scoring cable and satellite TV industry drops 2% to 62, the lowest level of customer satisfaction among all industries covered by ACSI. None of the providers has improved on customer satisfaction this year. Comcast (down 7% to 56), DirecTV (down 6% to 67) and Time Warner Cable (down 5% to 58) all tumble."

This is again yet another bad year for airlines and travel related companies. The customer satisfaction index for airlines and hotel industries has been decreased by 3% to 63 for this year. The general problems what we face during our travel also came into picture during this ASCI survey. Increasing cost of fuel, which is leading to higher rate of airlines' tickets, played a major role for customer dissatisfaction. Delay in travel, lost and damage luggage etc. added into the list of customer dissatisfaction. United Airlines experienced a huge fall in satisfaction and Southwest Airlines scores a top position in customer satisfaction and profitability.

The fast food industry was able to retain its customer satisfaction index at 77. Pizza Hut experienced a major drop in satisfaction of about 5 percent from last year. Again the full service restaurants are showing a greater customer satisfaction than drive-thru services. Olive Garden is leading the full service restaurants with a score of 80.

If you don't know what is ASCI as per the ASCI website and news "The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. It is updated each quarter with new measures for different sectors of the economy replacing data from the prior year. The overall ACSI score for a given quarter factors in scores from about 200 companies in 40 industries and from government agencies over the previous four quarters.

The index is produced by the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in partnership with the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and CFI Group, and is supported in part by ForeSee Results, corporate sponsor for the e-commerce and business measurements."

Source :
http://www.theacsi.org
http://news.vzw.com/news/2007/05/pr2007-05-15a.html