Sam's Club is again the Top Retailer in Positive Customer Experience

Taken from Businessweek.com, written by Bruce Temkin

We recently released the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings that ranks the customer experience of 246 companies across 19 industries based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers. Here are highlights from the retail industry:

• The average industry rating increased from 71% in 2012 to 74% in 2013.
• Sixteen of the 24 retailers that were in both the 2012 and 2013 ratings showed improvement.
• Three of the top 10 companies across all industries are retailers: Amazon.com and Sam’s Club (tied for #5 overall), and Ace Hardware (#7 overall). Sam’s Club was the leader in 2012 Temkin Experience Ratings and Amazon.com led in 2011.
• Radio Shack is the lowest-rated retailer for the third consecutive year and 191^st overall in 2013. The retailer is also the lowest scoring across all three underlying components, functional, accessible, and emotional.
• Amazon.com and Costco are the top rated in the functional component, Ace Hardware is the top rated in the accessible component, and Nordstrom is the top in the emotional component.
• Office Depot (increase of 11 percentage points) and Barnes & Noble (increase of eight percentage points) made the largest improvements in the industry from 2012.
• JCPenney (decrease of six percentage points), Sam’s Club (decrease of four percentage points), and Lowe’s (decrease of four percentage points) had the largest declines from 2012.
• Here’s a link to industry results from the 2012 ratings.

About Bruce Temkin
Bruce is  a customer experience transformist, helping large organizations improve business results by changing how they deal with customers. As part of this focus, he examines strategy, marketing, interaction design, customer service, and leadership practices. His “title” is Managing Partner of the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm that helps organizations become more customer-centric. Their goal is simple: accelerate the path to delighting customers.

Is Wal-Mart Alienating Their Upper Class Shoppers?

From YAHOO! News.

NEW YORK (AP) -- One analyst says that some of Wal-Mart's higher-income customers aren't as happy as they used to be.
                

Cowen's Faye Landes cited the firm's own survey in a client note Thursday. She said it showed that from December to March, higher- and middle-income shoppers became slightly less satisfied with customer services, prices and product selection.

                
Landes believes this may be due in part to there being fewer employees at each U.S. store. The analyst said that the number of workers per U.S. store went from 325 in 2010's fourth quarter to 289 in 2013's fourth quarter.
                
"Reduced store labor, despite the company's best efforts, likely results in some diminishment of customer service, which consumers may notice over time," she said.
                
Landes terms higher-income shoppers as those from households that make more than $100,000 per year. She says that three-quarters of those consumers shop at Wal-Mart at least once per month.
The average household incomes for Wal-Mart customers range from $30,000 to $60,000.
Fewer higher-income shoppers at Wal-Mart could hurt the chain's U.S. sales. The company is already dealing with the hit of higher payroll taxes and rising gas taxes on the poor and middle-class Americans who are its core customers. In late February, it forecast profit for this year that fell below expectations of Wall Street analysts at the time.
                
"We survey 500,000 customers per month who continue to tell us they have had a positive shopping experience. These customer satisfaction numbers have trended upward over the past two years. In this economy, we are continuing to see higher-income customers trade in to Walmart to take advantage of our everyday low prices," said spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan in an emailed statement.
Wal-Mart stock added 34 cents to $76.34 in afternoon trading.