It's interesting that overall customer satisfaction measures and measures of customer dissatisfaction and rage paint such different pictures of customer service in the US -- I had no idea. So, we must decide how to weigh and interpret these different statistics. Intuitively, as an individual consumer, I would think high customer rage is an important part of the picture -- if almost 3/4 of people say they had a problem and almost 80% are willing to take action and complain about it, that suggests customer service isn't very good for most customers and is worth improving. In fact, I'm not sure how it's possible for overall customer satisfaction to be so high given the customer rage findings. Can the 20-25% of customers who don't have any problems really drive satisfaction measures up that much? Or do many of these people in the customer rage statistics feel satisfied overall, *in spite* of having problems they had to seek fixes for?
I also like your example of airlines, government agencies and telecommunication companies as examples of cases of limited competition leading to poorer service. Doesn't it follow, though, that the government should take care to frequently break up incipient monopolies to ensure more competition?
Also, wouldn't it be valid to break up Amazon--not just because of its size, but because of its domination of selling goods and services across so many industries, driving so many brick and mortar stores out of business while swallowing up many small internet stores and publishers? Could you explain why you don't think Amazon is a monopoly or is doing harm to consumers?
Thank you for your comment, Emily. You raise some excellent points about the seemingly contradictory data on customer satisfaction and customer rage. Let me address a few key aspects of your observations.
You're right that the high levels of customer rage and overall customer satisfaction seem at odds with each other. However, I don't see this as a contradiction. The Customer Rage Study measures whether a customer experienced at least one problem in the past year, while the American Customer Satisfaction Index looks at overall satisfaction. As the quality of products and services has improved over time, our expectations have also risen. With higher expectations, we're more likely to be dissatisfied when something doesn't meet our standards, even if our overall experience is positive.
Regarding your point about government intervention and breaking up monopolies, I agree that maintaining competitive markets is crucial. However, antitrust action should only be taken when a company with significant market power is acting against consumer interests. The goal isn't simply to prevent companies from being big, but to ensure they don't use their size anticompetitively.
As for Amazon, whether it's a monopoly depends on how you define the market. While Amazon accounted for about 40% of e-commerce sales in the US in 2023, its share of total US retail sales (including both online and offline) was only about 4%. Compare this to Walmart, which has 8.5% of US retail sales - double Amazon's share. With readily available offline alternatives like Walmart, Target, and local stores, consumers have many options if they're dissatisfied with Amazon's offerings or practices.
The current antitrust case against Amazon, in my view, is not appropriate. There's no clear evidence of consumer harm, and Amazon's share of overall retail is relatively small. The case seems to target Amazon more for its size than for any specific anticompetitive behavior. In competitive markets, companies are incentivized to provide good service to attract and retain customers..
The role of government should be to ensure markets remain competitive by removing impediments and guarding against regulatory capture. In truly open markets, consumers will vote with their wallets, and the companies that serve them best will win. While poor service experiences make for sensational anecdotes, the big picture data shows American consumers are actually more satisfied than ever. As long as we maintain a dynamic, competitive economy, we can expect that upward trend to continue.
As Emily points out, some of the data does seem to contradict the conclusion that service is getting better. And while you have shown a set of stats Ben that support your conclusions, this is an area that deserves a look behind the data.
The discussion to this point has been with regards to remote support services, from airlines, telecom, utilities and others, as shown in the IPSOS chart. I’ll stick with this population.
Customer service perceptions in these areas are likely affected by two things: learned helplessness and lowered expectations.
Learned helplessness is of course when people assume that they won’t get help, so they don’t try. How often are we annoyed when we call a company and must endure the long voice prompt system? This exists for the benefit of the corporation, not the consumer. And the admonition to pay attention because their prompts have changed is a lie. When calling a healthcare facility, do we really have to hear that we should hang up and call 911 if this is an emergency? And yet, we expect this, and we don’t ding those companies in surveys because of these experiences.
In the lowered expectations category, we used to call our PC supplier, our cellphone supplier, etc. for help with technical issues. Today, we get most of this support from forums where other users post suggestions and help. It can take a while to find a suggestion that applies to the problem at hand, but since it is coming from users and not the named company, perhaps the company is not dinged in these surveys.
Here is an example. I had a cracked screen on a smartphone that included a fingerprint reader in the LCD assembly. Part of the repair involved putting the phone into a service mode so that the FPR could be calibrated. When the phone was in service mode, the manufacturer-provided calibration app required biometric security, which was impossible because the phone was unable to read a fingerprint! The solution was to go into my account to turn off two factor authorization. I learned this not during my 45 minutes with Verizon customer service, but because I later found a comment on a forum.
Your chart on airline customer service satisfaction makes the point that large airlines that dominate hubs and thus have lessened competition have lower customer satisfaction scores. But the chart may reveal a different truth. First, Spirit (I know from personal experience) has a policy of customer-unfriendly policies and lack of service. There are so many complaints about added fees, cancelled flights with no chance to transfer the ticket to an alternative airline, and other issues, all coupled with a company that rarely even tries to remedy concerns, that they deserve to be at the bottom of the JD Power’s survey.
Southwest is at the top of the list. Here is a guess as to why: they don’t charge change fees, every other airline does. This policy difference makes them seem more customer oriented. Unlike when American Airlines required a $200 change fee so that I could take an earlier flight on the same itinerary, all because the earlier (and half empty) flight was 6 hours and a few minutes before my scheduled flight. 6 hours earlier is their cut-off.
I will take exception to the government services that receive poor ratings. I suspect there is a layer of “government is bad” messaging in the US population that darkens these perceptions. The best customer service experiences that I personally recall have been with government services. Three quick examples: performing probate for a relative (extremely helpful and compassionate county personnel), obtaining VA pension benefits for another family member (another extremely helpful and available person who seemed to advocate for the beneficiary’s side more than the government’s procedures), and recently, when my auto registration renewal wasn’t processed I checked the NJ MVC website, saw a number to call for registration renewal payments, called and the call was answered on the first ring. The clerk asked for my registration number, paused for a moment and said that she could see that the check was cashed and they had a glitch, and she sent out the renewal by email and US mail – all within a minute.
All these points above show that surveys are colored by expectations and bias. I feel/fear that in the case of customer service, poor service has become so entrenched that our expectations have been lowered. In the case of government, many people have developed a bias against those institutions that does not match reality.
While I support data as the basis for determining reality, sometimes one must consider the value of the metrics. Measurements are only a proxy for reality. If one wanted to know the temperature of a thing, they used to instead measure the volume increase of liquid mercury which correlated with temperature. Unless the thermometer was shaken, in which case the temperature reading would be incorrect. I suspect the high-level customer satisfaction data has been vigorously shaken.
Bob, thank you for your thoughtful response and for your patience with my delayed reply as we continue our travels.
You've raised an important point about the apparent contradiction between overall satisfaction trends and anecdotal experiences of poor service. These are two very different measures. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) provides a broad view of customer satisfaction across industries, while the National Customer Rage Survey focuses specifically on whether someone had at least one negative experience. This distinction helps explain why we might see improving overall satisfaction alongside reports of frustrating individual encounters.
Regarding learned helplessness and lowered expectations, I appreciate your perspective, but I can’t find data that is happening. To the contrary, a 2024 Gallup poll found that 43% of employees report customers are more demanding and expect higher levels of service post-pandemic. Additionally, 28% noted that customers now have greater expectations for virtual/remote service. This data indicates that rather than lowering expectations, customers are actually raising the bar for service quality. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/612143/post-pandemic-customer-demanding-harder-employees.aspx
I agree that there's a marked difference between specific experiences, like the examples you provided, and measures of overall satisfaction. Individual negative encounters can be deeply frustrating and memorable, even if they don't necessarily reflect the broader trend in customer service quality.
Company culture does matter Companies like Southwest that prioritize customer service often see higher satisfaction scores, while those like Spirit, known for customer-unfriendly policies, tend to fare poorly. However, Southwest and Spirit compete at different price points. Spirit, which I won’t fly under any circumstances, doesn’t seem to have any trouble filling their planes due to lower prices.
This brings us back to my central thesis: competitive markets play a crucial role in driving customer satisfaction. When companies face robust competition, they're incentivized to invest in strong service as a means of long-term success. While government oversight has its place in maintaining healthy competition, it's the dynamic nature of truly open markets that ultimately pushes companies to continually improve their service offerings.
Thank you again for engaging in this thoughtful discussion. Your insights have certainly added depth to our exploration of this complex topic.
There may be another dynamic at work here - and it may also support your thesis.
Product quality has steadily and significantly improved over the years, certainly in our lifetime.
Consumer Reports has published their automotive quality survey results since 1952. Reported defect rates have dropped considerably over the years. In about 2010, CR stated that the worst cars in their survey that year were better than the best cars in the survey 20 years prior. In other words, quality of all brands improved noticeably.
In this recent article ( https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/car-reliability-histories-a1200719842/ ), CR showed data in 2023 of cars built in 2017 to 2020. Quality across all nameplates has gotten better in every category, except EV batteries and charging. This makes sense, those are newer technologies. In the dozens of other categories, the already-low failure rates improved or stayed the same with each model year.
Computers, cellphones, Smart TVs, and many other product categories are far more reliable today than they had been in the past. Perhaps the improving quality means that there is both less need for service and more disappointment with service when there is a problem. To put it closer to your references, perhaps people are more satisfied with their products and therefore service (ACSI) for them, and also more customer rage when a rare problem occurs.
Improved quality is a positive result of competition.
The competitive space for these mass market products has consolidated in some cases, but the nature of the competition has made companies better. Whether there are many competitors, or just one, if they are pushing quality improvements, the competitive pressure remains to meet or exceed.
Thanks for pointing out the CR data on the trends in autos, which is consistent with what I would expect to see. As consumers get ready access to more information about product quality, this increased transparency, in turn, increases competitive pressure on suppliers to deliver higher quality, creating a virtuous cycle. It seems a reasonable hypothesis that this improved quality would, in turn, raise consumers' expectations, so they are more unhappy when something goes wrong, even though things run off the rails less often.
It's interesting that overall customer satisfaction measures and measures of customer dissatisfaction and rage paint such different pictures of customer service in the US -- I had no idea. So, we must decide how to weigh and interpret these different statistics. Intuitively, as an individual consumer, I would think high customer rage is an important part of the picture -- if almost 3/4 of people say they had a problem and almost 80% are willing to take action and complain about it, that suggests customer service isn't very good for most customers and is worth improving. In fact, I'm not sure how it's possible for overall customer satisfaction to be so high given the customer rage findings. Can the 20-25% of customers who don't have any problems really drive satisfaction measures up that much? Or do many of these people in the customer rage statistics feel satisfied overall, *in spite* of having problems they had to seek fixes for?
I also like your example of airlines, government agencies and telecommunication companies as examples of cases of limited competition leading to poorer service. Doesn't it follow, though, that the government should take care to frequently break up incipient monopolies to ensure more competition?
Also, wouldn't it be valid to break up Amazon--not just because of its size, but because of its domination of selling goods and services across so many industries, driving so many brick and mortar stores out of business while swallowing up many small internet stores and publishers? Could you explain why you don't think Amazon is a monopoly or is doing harm to consumers?
Thank you for your comment, Emily. You raise some excellent points about the seemingly contradictory data on customer satisfaction and customer rage. Let me address a few key aspects of your observations.
You're right that the high levels of customer rage and overall customer satisfaction seem at odds with each other. However, I don't see this as a contradiction. The Customer Rage Study measures whether a customer experienced at least one problem in the past year, while the American Customer Satisfaction Index looks at overall satisfaction. As the quality of products and services has improved over time, our expectations have also risen. With higher expectations, we're more likely to be dissatisfied when something doesn't meet our standards, even if our overall experience is positive.
Regarding your point about government intervention and breaking up monopolies, I agree that maintaining competitive markets is crucial. However, antitrust action should only be taken when a company with significant market power is acting against consumer interests. The goal isn't simply to prevent companies from being big, but to ensure they don't use their size anticompetitively.
As for Amazon, whether it's a monopoly depends on how you define the market. While Amazon accounted for about 40% of e-commerce sales in the US in 2023, its share of total US retail sales (including both online and offline) was only about 4%. Compare this to Walmart, which has 8.5% of US retail sales - double Amazon's share. With readily available offline alternatives like Walmart, Target, and local stores, consumers have many options if they're dissatisfied with Amazon's offerings or practices.
The current antitrust case against Amazon, in my view, is not appropriate. There's no clear evidence of consumer harm, and Amazon's share of overall retail is relatively small. The case seems to target Amazon more for its size than for any specific anticompetitive behavior. In competitive markets, companies are incentivized to provide good service to attract and retain customers..
The role of government should be to ensure markets remain competitive by removing impediments and guarding against regulatory capture. In truly open markets, consumers will vote with their wallets, and the companies that serve them best will win. While poor service experiences make for sensational anecdotes, the big picture data shows American consumers are actually more satisfied than ever. As long as we maintain a dynamic, competitive economy, we can expect that upward trend to continue.
As Emily points out, some of the data does seem to contradict the conclusion that service is getting better. And while you have shown a set of stats Ben that support your conclusions, this is an area that deserves a look behind the data.
The discussion to this point has been with regards to remote support services, from airlines, telecom, utilities and others, as shown in the IPSOS chart. I’ll stick with this population.
Customer service perceptions in these areas are likely affected by two things: learned helplessness and lowered expectations.
Learned helplessness is of course when people assume that they won’t get help, so they don’t try. How often are we annoyed when we call a company and must endure the long voice prompt system? This exists for the benefit of the corporation, not the consumer. And the admonition to pay attention because their prompts have changed is a lie. When calling a healthcare facility, do we really have to hear that we should hang up and call 911 if this is an emergency? And yet, we expect this, and we don’t ding those companies in surveys because of these experiences.
In the lowered expectations category, we used to call our PC supplier, our cellphone supplier, etc. for help with technical issues. Today, we get most of this support from forums where other users post suggestions and help. It can take a while to find a suggestion that applies to the problem at hand, but since it is coming from users and not the named company, perhaps the company is not dinged in these surveys.
Here is an example. I had a cracked screen on a smartphone that included a fingerprint reader in the LCD assembly. Part of the repair involved putting the phone into a service mode so that the FPR could be calibrated. When the phone was in service mode, the manufacturer-provided calibration app required biometric security, which was impossible because the phone was unable to read a fingerprint! The solution was to go into my account to turn off two factor authorization. I learned this not during my 45 minutes with Verizon customer service, but because I later found a comment on a forum.
Your chart on airline customer service satisfaction makes the point that large airlines that dominate hubs and thus have lessened competition have lower customer satisfaction scores. But the chart may reveal a different truth. First, Spirit (I know from personal experience) has a policy of customer-unfriendly policies and lack of service. There are so many complaints about added fees, cancelled flights with no chance to transfer the ticket to an alternative airline, and other issues, all coupled with a company that rarely even tries to remedy concerns, that they deserve to be at the bottom of the JD Power’s survey.
Southwest is at the top of the list. Here is a guess as to why: they don’t charge change fees, every other airline does. This policy difference makes them seem more customer oriented. Unlike when American Airlines required a $200 change fee so that I could take an earlier flight on the same itinerary, all because the earlier (and half empty) flight was 6 hours and a few minutes before my scheduled flight. 6 hours earlier is their cut-off.
I will take exception to the government services that receive poor ratings. I suspect there is a layer of “government is bad” messaging in the US population that darkens these perceptions. The best customer service experiences that I personally recall have been with government services. Three quick examples: performing probate for a relative (extremely helpful and compassionate county personnel), obtaining VA pension benefits for another family member (another extremely helpful and available person who seemed to advocate for the beneficiary’s side more than the government’s procedures), and recently, when my auto registration renewal wasn’t processed I checked the NJ MVC website, saw a number to call for registration renewal payments, called and the call was answered on the first ring. The clerk asked for my registration number, paused for a moment and said that she could see that the check was cashed and they had a glitch, and she sent out the renewal by email and US mail – all within a minute.
All these points above show that surveys are colored by expectations and bias. I feel/fear that in the case of customer service, poor service has become so entrenched that our expectations have been lowered. In the case of government, many people have developed a bias against those institutions that does not match reality.
While I support data as the basis for determining reality, sometimes one must consider the value of the metrics. Measurements are only a proxy for reality. If one wanted to know the temperature of a thing, they used to instead measure the volume increase of liquid mercury which correlated with temperature. Unless the thermometer was shaken, in which case the temperature reading would be incorrect. I suspect the high-level customer satisfaction data has been vigorously shaken.
Bob, thank you for your thoughtful response and for your patience with my delayed reply as we continue our travels.
You've raised an important point about the apparent contradiction between overall satisfaction trends and anecdotal experiences of poor service. These are two very different measures. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) provides a broad view of customer satisfaction across industries, while the National Customer Rage Survey focuses specifically on whether someone had at least one negative experience. This distinction helps explain why we might see improving overall satisfaction alongside reports of frustrating individual encounters.
Regarding learned helplessness and lowered expectations, I appreciate your perspective, but I can’t find data that is happening. To the contrary, a 2024 Gallup poll found that 43% of employees report customers are more demanding and expect higher levels of service post-pandemic. Additionally, 28% noted that customers now have greater expectations for virtual/remote service. This data indicates that rather than lowering expectations, customers are actually raising the bar for service quality. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/612143/post-pandemic-customer-demanding-harder-employees.aspx
I agree that there's a marked difference between specific experiences, like the examples you provided, and measures of overall satisfaction. Individual negative encounters can be deeply frustrating and memorable, even if they don't necessarily reflect the broader trend in customer service quality.
Company culture does matter Companies like Southwest that prioritize customer service often see higher satisfaction scores, while those like Spirit, known for customer-unfriendly policies, tend to fare poorly. However, Southwest and Spirit compete at different price points. Spirit, which I won’t fly under any circumstances, doesn’t seem to have any trouble filling their planes due to lower prices.
This brings us back to my central thesis: competitive markets play a crucial role in driving customer satisfaction. When companies face robust competition, they're incentivized to invest in strong service as a means of long-term success. While government oversight has its place in maintaining healthy competition, it's the dynamic nature of truly open markets that ultimately pushes companies to continually improve their service offerings.
Thank you again for engaging in this thoughtful discussion. Your insights have certainly added depth to our exploration of this complex topic.
There may be another dynamic at work here - and it may also support your thesis.
Product quality has steadily and significantly improved over the years, certainly in our lifetime.
Consumer Reports has published their automotive quality survey results since 1952. Reported defect rates have dropped considerably over the years. In about 2010, CR stated that the worst cars in their survey that year were better than the best cars in the survey 20 years prior. In other words, quality of all brands improved noticeably.
In this recent article ( https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/car-reliability-histories-a1200719842/ ), CR showed data in 2023 of cars built in 2017 to 2020. Quality across all nameplates has gotten better in every category, except EV batteries and charging. This makes sense, those are newer technologies. In the dozens of other categories, the already-low failure rates improved or stayed the same with each model year.
Computers, cellphones, Smart TVs, and many other product categories are far more reliable today than they had been in the past. Perhaps the improving quality means that there is both less need for service and more disappointment with service when there is a problem. To put it closer to your references, perhaps people are more satisfied with their products and therefore service (ACSI) for them, and also more customer rage when a rare problem occurs.
Improved quality is a positive result of competition.
The competitive space for these mass market products has consolidated in some cases, but the nature of the competition has made companies better. Whether there are many competitors, or just one, if they are pushing quality improvements, the competitive pressure remains to meet or exceed.
Thanks for pointing out the CR data on the trends in autos, which is consistent with what I would expect to see. As consumers get ready access to more information about product quality, this increased transparency, in turn, increases competitive pressure on suppliers to deliver higher quality, creating a virtuous cycle. It seems a reasonable hypothesis that this improved quality would, in turn, raise consumers' expectations, so they are more unhappy when something goes wrong, even though things run off the rails less often.