Study: Amazon, Best Buy Lead CE
Category In Customer Experience

A new study conducted by Keynote Competitive Research ranks the top online consumer electronics merchants in terms of their customer experience and customer service. According to the report, Amazon.com and BestBuy.com were tops in customer experience while CircuitCity.com and Staples.com lead the list in service.

Keynote Competitive Research, which measures and rates the online and mobile experience of customers, studied 12 leading online CE retailers including Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, CircuitCity.com, Costco.com, Dell.com, OfficeDepot.com, Sears.com, Staples.com, Target.com, and WalMart.com, in order to measure 300 metrics.

According to the study, Amazon.com was the top ranked site in terms of search satisfaction, and was one of the top ranked sites in six of nine key categories such as price satisfaction, product research, and overall site navigation and organization.

Similarly, BestBuy.com was the top ranked site in terms of pure customer satisfaction along with being ranked top in seven of the nine categories in reference to online customer experience, including the ease of the purchasing process and customer support. Additionally, BestBuy.com was selected as the site that showed the most gains in online customer experience throughout the past year.

In addition to the gains made by BestBuy.com, Dell’s website also saw an increase in customer experience and satisfaction throughout the past year. The strong gains were in reference to product interest and visual appeal to the website.

While BestBuy.com and Amazon.com were at the top of customer experience, CircuitCity.com and Staples.com were at the top of service. According to the study, CircuitCity.com had the best reliability whereas Staples.com had the best site responsiveness, the fastest home page downloading in about 45 seconds for dial-up users, and the fastest search results download time at 1.1 seconds for broadband and 12 seconds for dial-up.

Retail Leaders In Customer Service
Cited In Qtrly RealPeople Survery
By Jessica Humphrey

Based on RealPeopleRatings.com’s quarterly customer service survey, Publix, Subway, BP convenience stores, and Walgreens are leading their competition in customer service.

The quarterly survey, (http://www.realpeopleratings.com/) conducted by Corporate Research International, is designed to highlight consumer perception throughout many industries and companies competing in those industries.

This quarter’s survey, which included 3,074 panelists, ranked categories such as fast food restaurants (Subway ranked first), full-service restaurants (Texas Roundhouse ranked first), pizza restaurants (Cicci’s Pizza ranked first), among other categories.

Corporate Research International launched RealPeopleRatings.com in 2005 with the goal of conducting marketing research specializing in mystery shopping and customer satisfaction surveys.

The three highest ranked companies in the supermarket, convenience store, and drug store categories included:

Supermarkets
1) Publix
2) Kroger
3) Safeway

Convenience Stores
1) BP
2) Chevron/Texaco
3) Shell

Drug Stores
1) Walgreens
2) CVS
3) Rite Aid

The quarterly survey also provides rankings for other service industries such as: hotels, airlines, office supply stores, electronics stores, discounts stores as well as other retail verticals.