OVERALL CUSTOMER SATISFACTION REMAINS STRONG WITH EVOLVING E-BUSINESS CATEGORY
The world of e-business is continuing to evolve as the lines further blur between search engines, portals and content providers. Against this ever-changing landscape, customer satisfaction has increased slightly from last year, according to the second quarter 2006 measurement of the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI).
This yearly release shows that aggregate customer satisfaction with the e-business category has risen .8% from a score of 75.9 to 76.5 on the ACSI's100-point scale. This increase continues the positive upward trend since the e-business category was first measured in 2000. However, the rate of increase for 2005-2006 has slowed considerably since the 2004-2005 leap of 4.7%.
Despite this increase in customer satisfaction for the overall e-business category, only four of the 10 measured sites saw their scores increase from last year. AOL had the largest year-over-year satisfaction gain: 4.2%. On the other end of the spectrum, Yahoo's score fell 5% to a score of 76, one of five sites to see a lower score this year than last. Companies should be paying close attention to these significant rises or drops: the link between ACSI scores and future financial performance at the company level has been proven repeatedly, most recently in peer-reviewed research in the Winter 2006 Journal of Marketing.
The ACSI measures e-business and e-commerce categories separately, with e-commerce scores released in February of each year. The chart below shows how ACSI e-business scores (including portals, search engines, and news and information sites) compare to e-commerce (online retail, brokerage, travel and auctions) and the most recent quarterly cross-industry ACSI score. As shown below, the e-business category continues to outpace the ACSI as a whole, although customer satisfaction with e-business lags the e-commerce category.
E-BUSINESS STILL EVOLVING, CONVERGING
When the ACSI began measuring the e-business sector in 2000, portals provided access to a wealth of online information, search engines enabled users to find information and news sites provided an alternative to offline media. Today, everything has converged, especially the portals and search engines. Sites like Google and Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) that began as search engines now offer a wide range of tools, content and services. Portals like Yahoo and MSN offer extensive search services, news and other tools. And, users can now search the entire web from news sites like CNN.com and ABCNews.com. In fact, sites like Google, Yahoo and AOL are commonly considered competitors today, even though each site evolved from something quite distinct.
The ACSI groups e-business companies into three categories based on their primary line of business: news & information sites, portals and search engines. This categorization allows for comparisons to historical ACSI data among comparable sites. However, these sites can also be grouped into two broader categories that reflect how the sites have evolved: content providers (sites that house content and whose primary purpose is content dissemination) and content facilitators (those that provide access to content and tools). In this commentary, we will look at the sites in the ACSI categories for comparative purposes as well as in the content provider and content facilitator categories.
E-commerce has greatly evolved over the past few years, leading to clear differentiation between the leaders and laggards in most industries. Some organizations have evolved and succeeded while sticking to a core focus, while others have adopted new business models. While there's no one formula for success, customer satisfaction is always a focus for any company that is successful over the long term. And, there's nothing like change and fierce competition to keep the industry leaders sharp, engaged and focused on satisfying the customer.
GOOGLE: MAINTAINING ITS POSITION OF DOMINANCE
A few years ago, it was a simple search engine. Today, Google is a verb and a comprehensive suite of online tools and services.
While remaining true to its core focus as a search engine through home page design and technology investment, Google has expanded to compete on many fronts, offering (or soon to be offering) services ranging from mapping functionality to online bill payment to a web-based calendar tool.
