The country’s Credit Unions have the best customer experience, according to the latest annual CX report, which was once again carried out by Amárach Research.
This year marks the tenth year of the CX survey, which measures consumer attitudes towards 150 brands here – and it is the tenth year that Credit Unions have been at the top of the pile.
Report author Michael Killeen said the Credit Unions formula for success is very simple – members are always put first.
“To have remained on top over the last ten years is a remarkable CX story. Because they listen carefully to their members, they understand them, and this enables them to customise solutions for their different life stages,” Mr Killeen said.
“That strong customer affinity is key. While digital options are available, if a member wants to ring or drop into them, they’ll find a person there to talk to at over 400 locations,” he added.
Today’s report shows that after two years of rising scores Ireland’s overall Customer Experience (CX) score fell by a disappointing 1.9% this year with 42% of companies and organisations seeing their overall CX scores fall.
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That points perhaps to something that people have probably felt in their own day to day experiences – where the service in shops and on helplines just is not as good as it would have been a few years ago.
But specific events have also affected some brands’ rankings. Ticketmaster is sitting near the bottom of the table on the back of the controversy around dynamic and tiered pricing.
Having jumped in the ranking last year, Aer Lingus was this year’s second biggest faller – going from 82nd to 123rd – with consumers’ mood negatively affected by the industrial action that occurred during the summer.
Facebook, eir and RTÉ were also among the brands at the bottom of the ranking.
Today’s survey shows that pharmacies continue to lead from the front for CX in the retail sector making up three of the top 10 companies with Life Pharmacy coming in second place, McCabes seventh and Hickey’s ninth. Life, Hickeys and Allcare (12th) are all part of the Uniphar Group.
This year’s report also makes very positive reading for An Post with three related companies in the top 30 – the mail and parcels company came third overall, up from 37th last year, while An Post Money came 16th and An Post Insurance was 22nd.
Meanwhile, Shannon Airport landed in the top ten for the first time in 4th position while it was also a very positive year for Dunnes Stores with the supermarket claiming fifth position and Dunnes Retail coming 10th.
Specsavers in sixth and Eason in eight rounded out the Top Ten.
Dunnes claimed pole position in the highly competitive supermarket sector, while Aldi was second place in 17th followed by M&S Simply Food and Supervalu in joint 18th with Lidl and Tesco joint 29th.
KFC, which recorded the biggest jump in this year’s survey, moved up 67 places from 82nd to 15th, and Burger King which was the second biggest jumper, moving up 50 places to 53rd, were the star performers in a resurgent restaurant sector.
Other strong performers here included Supermacs (23rd), Butlers chocolates (26th) and Subway (29th).
But two of the best performers from last year, Power City and Aer Lingus, recorded the biggest falls this year, the former falling from 3rd place to 95th and the latter from 41st to 123rd.
While Aer Lingus’s fall is clearly linked to this summer’s industrial action, Power City’s fall appears to be linked to a big fall in their value and staff scores by consumers.
Last year in the wake of revelations surrounding secret payments to Ryan Tubridy, RTE had tumbled to last place in the survey. While it has moved off the bottom this year it is still in lowly 145th position and remains the lowest performing public sector organisation.
Report author Michael Killeen said the public’s lingering anger over the breach of trust and mismanagement at the station is fully reflected in the comments of consumers.