Wegmans tops customer satisfaction, Target sees biggest drop
Wegmans tops customer satisfaction, Target sees biggest drop
Two years removed from its all-time high, customer satisfaction with the retail sector fell for a second consecutive year, according to fourth quarter data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index. After several years of pretty high customer satisfaction, supermarkets registered their lowest score in more than a decade. Wegmans, one of three retailers to improve customer satisfaction, became one of the highest-scoring companies in the index, while Target saw the biggest drop among supermarkets. 
A wide range in customer satisfaction for supermarkets suggests that it is possible to please customers even though overall satisfaction is down for the industry. Wegmans gained 1 percent to 86. Other top-scoring supermarkets include Trader Joe’s (83), H-E-B (82) and Publix (82). Giant Eagle and Wal-Mart at 67 find themselves at the opposite end of the scale. Albertsons, which recently merged with Safeway, rounds out the bottom three at 68.
“When consumers put a premium on service and quality, smaller companies often achieve higher customer satisfaction scores, and it’s the smaller independent chains that continue to set the bar for supermarkets,” ACSI Managing Director David VanAmburg said in a release.
The biggest loser in customer satisfaction among supermarkets is Target, which dropped 12 percent to 71, followed by Whole Foods, which fell 10 percent to 73. Competition for natural and organic foods has been heating up as Whole Foods struggles with a reputation among food shoppers for unjustifiably high prices.
“Customer satisfaction with retail has been higher than its historical norm over the past few years as the economy slowly emerged from the Great Recession,” Claes Fornell, ACSI founder and chairman, said in the press release. “This was because it was a tough environment to compete in. Job security for customer service personnel was hard to come by and everybody was trying harder to please customers. As both job security and employee turnover have increased, the level of customer service seems to have worsened.”
