A holiday online customer satisfaction survey released today shows Apple slipping to a four-year low in customer satisfaction. The survey of 24,000 customers during the Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping seasons covered the top 500 Internet retailers by revenue.
Apple slipped three points to a satisfaction score of 80/100 this year, putting Apple at its lowest in four years and bumping it out of the top 5. Among the other largest declines is J.C. Penney, run by former Apple retail head Ron Johnson.
JCPenney was down five points to 78, Apple fell three points to 80, and Dell slipped three points to 77. Showing that even the highest-revenue companies on the list can struggle when trying to meet customers expectations.
Forsee focused on four areas of overall satisfaction: The perception of fairness in pricing, the appeal of merchandise, website functionality, and the quality of website content. Apple’s online store was listed as needing to improve the “usefulness, convenience and variety of online features available to site visitors.”
Apple made some major changes in its retail team during the year, retail chief John Browett was ousted following some controversial moves during his short stay as the VP of retail.
Apple also ran into issues with their supplies of the iPhone 5, iPad mini, and iMacs after their introductions this year. That could have affected their customers view of their shopping experience.
Amazon remained the tops in customer satisfaction in the study, with a score of 88/100.
How about you reader? Did you shop online at the Apple Store this holiday shopping season? What was your experience?
