Waban, Mass. — Amazon beat Apple in offering the best customer experience among tablet and computers makers in the U.S., a consumer survey by Temkin Group found.
The customer-experience research and consulting company said Amazon took the top spot with a 76 percent rating compared with Apple’s 68 percent.
The latest survey was Temkin’s first to include tablets, having included only computer makers in the past.
Temkin considers a score of 80 percent and up to be excellent, a score of 70 percent to be good, and a score below 60 percent to be poor.
The fifth annual survey of 10,000 consumers evaluated 293 companies across 20 industries. The survey polled consumers on their recent experiences with a company according to three measures: success (Can you do what you want to do?), effort (How easy is it to work with the company?), and emotion (How do you feel about the interactions?). Temkin then averaged the three scores for each company.
With the addition of tablets to the survey, Amazon’s Kindle unseated Apple as the highest-scoring computer and tablet maker. Apple held that position during the previous three years.
Lenovo and Asus tied for the lowest rated computer and tablet maker, each with a rating of 55 percent. Lenovo dropped 6 percentage points from 2014. Asus was included in the survey for the first time.
“The changing computer landscape is forcing traditional players to face Amazon’s level of customer experience,” said Temkin managing partner Bruce Temkin.
Third place in the latest survey went to Hewlett-Packard (64 percent), Barnes & Noble (60 percent), Toshiba (60 percent), Sony (60 percent), Acer (57 percent), Dell (5 percent), Lenovo (55 percent) and Asus (55 percent).
The only companies improving their ratings were Sony, with a 5-point gain, and Apple with a 1-point gain. The companies with the highest drops were Lenovo (-6 points), Acer (-4 points) and Dell (-2 points).
The computer and tablet industry, as a whole, won a 63 percent rating, tying for 11th place among 20 industries in the survey of 10,000 consumers. It was also one of only five industries to improve its rating, up 1.2 percentage points.
The other industries in the survey were airlines, appliance makers, auto dealers, banks, car rental agencies, computer makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, health plans, hotel chains, insurance carriers, Internet service providers, investment firms, parcel delivery services, retailers, software firms, supermarket chains, TV service providers, utilities and wireless carriers.
The 2015 report is available free for download at the Customer Experience Matters blog (ExperienceMatters.wordpress.com) and at the Temkin Group website, TemkinGroup.com.
Temkin Group is a customer experience research and consulting company that advises brands on improving customer experiences.
