Customer experience analytics firm Forsee is out today with its study of holiday customer satisfaction for the top 500 Internet retailers by revenue. Forsee has Apple at a four-year low in customer satisfaction in its survey of 24,000 customers during prime Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping seasons. Apple slipped three points to a satisfaction score of 80/100 this year, putting Apple at its lowest in four years and bumping it out of the top 5. Among the other largest declines is J.C. Penney, run by former Apple retail head Ron Johnson:
For the study, Forsee focused on four areas of overall satisfaction including the perception of fairness in pricing, the appeal of merchandise, website functionality, and the quality of website content. Among recommendations made by Forsee to retailers for the focus areas, Apple’s online store is listed as needing to improve the “usefulness, convenience and variety of online features available to site visitors.”
Other than that, Forsee does not go into specifics about the reason behind Apple’s decline in this year’s study. Apple has of course made some major changes in its retail team this year, firing its retail chief John Browett following some controversial decisions during his short-lived stay as senior vice president of retail.
Apple has also run into some big issues with supplies of iPhone 5, iPad mini, and iMacs after the introductions of the products this year, which could have affected customers’ view of the retail experience.
