03/19/2018

Wegmans rated No. 1 retail experience in U.S.

Executive Editor

Wegmans earned the highest rating, followed by five companies that tied for the second spot: Citizens Bank, credit unions, H-E-B, Publix, and Subway.

Wegmans is the No. 1 retailer in the United States, according to Temkin's 2018 Experience Ratings.

The 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings are based on a study of 10,000 U.S consumers and evaluate the customer experience of 318 companies across 20 industries.

The annual report found that Wegmans earned the highest rating, followed by five companies that tied for the second spot: Citizens Bank, credit unions, H-E-B, Publix, and Subway. The top 11 spots include five supermarkets, three banks, two retailers, and one fast food restaurant.

At the other end of the spectrum, CarMax earned the lowest ratings, only slightly behind Spirit Airlines, Optimum, Medicaid, Comcast, Hitachi, and Cox Communications.

"It's great to see that many companies have improved their customer experience, although health plans and TV/Internet Service Providers remain well behind other industries," said Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group.

The Temkin Experience Ratings assesses companies along three dimensions of customer experience: success (can customers do what they want to do?), effort (how easy is it to work with the company?), and emotion (how do consumers feel about their interactions?).

Here are other highlights from the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings:

Although the individual company scores vary, overall, supermarkets and fast food chains earned the highest average scores, earning "good" ratings along with five other industries. TV/Internet service providers and health plans, on the other hand, were the worst industries, with "poor" average ratings.
We compared the scores of individual companies to the average scores of their industries and found that Southwest Airlines and Georgia Power earned Ratings that are 10 percentage-points higher than their industry averages.
CarMax and Spirit Airlines each fell more than 20 points below their industry averages, while 14 other companies fell 10 or more points behind their industry.
In 2018, 44% of companies earned at least "good" ratings, compared with 51% in 2017. The drop was caused by an overall decline in the emotion component.
Between 2017 and 2018, the average Ratings dropped for 11 industries. The auto industry dropped the most, down 2.1 point, while streaming media improved the most, increasing by 1.2 points.
Of the 308 companies we looked at in both the 2017 and 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings, three firms improved their scores by 10 or more points: Airbnb, MetroPCS, and Avis.
Eleven companies dropped by at least 10 points between 2017 and 2018. CarMax and HSBC declined the most.

In its eighth year of publication, the 2018 Temkin Experience Ratings examines customer experience across 20 industries: Computers & Tablets, Insurance, Investments, Credit Cards, Health Plans, TV/Internet Service, Streaming Media, Wireless, Airlines, Hotels & Rooms, Retailers, Fast Food, Rental Cars & Transport, Supermarkets, Parcel Delivery, TV & Appliances, Auto Dealers, Software Firms, and Utilities.

The Temkin Experience Ratings along with other ratings can be accessed at TemkinRatings.com.