100 Best Customer Experiences

Nunwood just completed a survey of 4,853 customers across the U.S. to learn how and why the top performing brands provide such an exceptional customer experience in the U.S. Customer Excellence Top 100.

Customers rated each brand on four questions:

1. Would you recommend them (net promoter score)?
2. How did they meet your needs?
3. How easy or difficult are they to deal with?
4. How did the company meet your expectations?

Top performers had the following in common:

• Offer low prices and high quality
• Provide a consistently branded experience
• Listen to their customers and promptly correct problems
• Consistently exceed customer expectations

Consequently, five themes came out of the research:

1. Excellence relies on managing complex branded customer experiences
2. Excellence is more than just listening to customers
3. Excellence combats recessionary effects
4. Excellence is a social force, both magnified and destroyed by digital (social) media
5. Excellence in the U.S. should be celebrated globally

The top 10 companies providing the best customer experiences on a scale of 0 to 10 are:

1. USAA — 8.34
2. Amazon.com — 8.29
3. Red Lobster — 8.19
4. Charles Schwab — 8.06
5. Olive Garden — 8.02
6. Netflix — 7.97
7. Southwest Airlines — 7.95
8. Krispy Kreme — 7.90
9. Zappos — 7.89
10. Subway and Apple tied — 7.87

A couple of observations about the list:

• Red Lobster and Olive Garden are both Darden Restaurant properties
• Amazon owns Zappos
• Four of the 11, Amazon, Netflix, Southwest and Apple were also in the top 10 of a recent Zogby International study identifying the best and worst providers of customer service (http://wp.me/pYHt6-pI).

According to David Conway, chief strategy officer at Nunwood, what distinguishes these companies is:

• They all have an ingrained customer satisfaction culture in which the customer is always right
• They have the ability to deliver on, or exceed, their customers’ expectations
• They demonstrate that low prices and outstanding service are not mutually exclusive
• They are highly innovative
• They listen to their customers and give them new products
• All of their products and services are outstanding quality
• They work fanatically to charge their customers less

How would your firm stack up in this study?

What can you do to improve your firm’s performance?