Customer satisfaction with the e-commerce industry has improved for the second year in a row and is close to an all time high, according to the American customer satisfaction Index, released today by the University of Michigan with e-commerce partner ForeSee Results.
The e-commerce industry received a score of 80.0 on ACSI’s 100-point scale, almost breaking its previous record in 2003 with a score of 80.8.
The e-commerce sector continues to do well in terms of satisfying customers and surpasses the national ACSI aggregate score (74.9) by 7 percent.
“The Internet is a hyper-competitive environment and companies need to evolve and adapt quickly to customer needs and expectations or risk losing them,” said Larry Freed, an online customer satisfaction expert and president and CEO of ForeSee Results.
“The improved scores are evidence that e-commerce companies are working hard to maintain and improve the industry’s extremely high customer satisfaction standards.”
Two online retailers who did particularly well were Amazon.com who scored an 87 in customer satisfaction and BarnesandNoble.com who received an 88 and had the highest score for all online retailers.
Both Barnes & Noble and Amazon have taken different strategies in their online operations.
Barnes & Noble has remained focused on its core business of selling books, CDs and DVDs while Amazon has veered off their process path of selling books to offer a wide variety of items.
In the online auction market eBay was the leader, earning a score of 80. Overall the aggregate customer satisfaction score for online auction was 78.
“eBay is winning the auction category handily, but should be worried that they are still considerably behind Amazon.com, since the two companies increasingly compete,” said Freed.
“Amazon is selling more used goods, and eBay now sells many items brand new and direct from the retailer. The lines between auction sites and retail sites get more blurred every year, and eBay will need to bring more innovation to satisfy customers like more traditional retailers do.”
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