L.L. Bean Tops Business Week’s Customer Service Survey

L.L. Bean topped Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s fourth annual ranking of “Cust omer Service Champs.” jumping 23 spots from last year. Amazon.com, which claimed last year’s top position, dropped to No. 11, while Apple soared from No. 20 to No. 3.

New to this year’s list are Barnes & Noble (No. 9), Wegmans Food Markets (No. 12), Starbucks (No. 13), WestJet (No. 17), Branch Banking & Trust (No. 20), Panera Bread (No. 21), Dell (No. 23), Southwest Airlines (No. 24), and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts (No. 25).

For L.L. Bean, editors noted that it switched to a new bank that agreed to split the cost of free return shipping to holders of the L.L. Bean credit card. It also opened the site to customer ratings and reviews of its wares, even if theyre negative.

To come up with the winners, Bloomberg BusinessWeek started with existing data from J.D. Power & Associates, which each year surveys consumers about customer satisfaction. Bloomberg BusinessWeek looked at two of the several measures they assess: the perceived quality of a company’s staff and what customers think of its processes, such as return policies or reservation procedures.

As in past years, Bloomberg BusinessWeek supplemented J.D. Power’s database by surveying 5,000 people using the BusinessWeek Market Advisory Board, asking them to nominate three companies they felt were best at customer service and three they felt were the worst. More than 1,000 people responded. The company said this allowed Bloomberg BusinessWeek to expand the rankings beyond J.D. Power’s existing database, which includes only a limited number of retailers, for example. J.D. Power then ranked all of the brands using scores from its database and the additional surveys.

BusinessWeek’s Ranking of “Customer Service Champs”

Rank  Brand
1     L.L. Bean
2     USAA
3     Apple
4     Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts
5     Publix Super Markets
6     Nordstrom
7     Lexus
8     Ritz-Carlton
9     Barnes & Noble
10    Ace Hardware
11    Amazon.com
12    Wegmans Food Markets
13    Starbucks
14    Amica Mutual Insurance
15    Charles Schwab
16    Jaguar
17    WestJet
18    American Express
19    Enterprise Rent-A-Car
20    Branch Banking & Trust
21    Panera Bread
22    True Value
23    Dell
24    Southwest Airlines
25    Fairmont Hotels & Resorts