Samsung Sneaks Past Apple In Customer Satisfaction
Apple may have won Christmas in terms of device sales, but when it comes to customer satisfaction, Samsung is top dog. Or rather, that's the case according to a new poll published this week by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. In a ranking of phone makers, Samsung took the top spot with a score of 81 out of 100, a nice little jump from 76 out of 100 a year ago and 71 two years ago.
Meanwhile, Apple dropped a couple of points down to 79 -- enough to score a second place finish, though not enough to retain its customer satisfaction crown from the past two years. That may seem a little surprising, given all the buzz surrounding Apple's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus launch and how well those devices have been selling, but let's not forget about bendgate, which might have impacted its scores. (Edit: Turns out ACSI's poll was conducted prior to the iPhone 6/6 Plus launch, so we'll have to wait until the next survey to see what impact Apple's latest handsets have on customer satisfaction).
Samsung, on the other hand, should be thrilled with first place ranking, especially since the company finds itself dealing with a bit of turmoil. Galaxy S5 handset sales have been disappointing so far, prompting Samsung to restructure its operations -- several high level executives were handed pink slips as the company alters its smartphone strategy going forward.
"Samsung appears to benefit the most from the rising popularity of smartphones. The manufacturer has been aggressively capturing market share with its Galaxy S and Note series smartphones. While Apple still sells nearly twice the number of phones in the United States as Samsung, the South Korean manufacturer comes out on top in one critical metric—customer satisfaction," ACSI said. "Samsung now does better than Apple in the Index for the first time ever, following a 7 percent gain to an ACSI score of 81. This is the second year of improvement for Samsung, which was near the bottom of the industry at 71 in 2012, but now leads all manufacturers."
Nokia, which is now Microsoft in the mobile phone space, tied Motorola Mobility (Google) for third place with a score of 77, followed by HTC (75), BlackBerry (74), LG Electronics (73) and all other companies (71).
