Facebook's reputation for customer
satisfaction continues to tarnish, while Google+ pops up on a customer
satisfaction index for the first time and makes it to the top of the social
network pyramid.
A report from ForeSee shows Google+
at the top of customer satisfaction rankings and Facebook at the bottom.
Facebook's reputation for customer satisfaction
continues to tarnish while Google+ pops up on a customer satisfaction index for
the first time and makes it to the top of the social network pyramid.
The story's an old one by now.
Facebook is the Web's most popular site with hundreds of millions of users, but people
still don't like it.
Now Google+, which has been dubbed
by some as a ghost town, is gaining some traction with a
higher customer satisfaction rating, according to the numbers released from the
American Customer
Satisfaction Index today. According to the new numbers, Facebook's
rating drops 8 percent to 61 on a 100-point scale, while Google+ makes its
index debut with a 78, putting it in line with Wikipedia.
Social media companies were among
the 230 companies measured by the index, and the industry consistently has the
lowest-rated companies (social media's overall rating of 69 can only beat
airlines, subscription television service, and newspapers).
The ranking was released in
partnership with analytics company ForeSee, which determined that Google+ hits
all the notes that Facebook misses.
According to the report, Google+
does well because it doesn't have traditional advertising, has more focus on
privacy, and provides a better mobile experience. Facebook users, on the other
hand, complain about ads and privacy concerns, with the most frequent complaint
being changes to the interface, with the most recent one being the introduction
of the Timeline.
"Facebook and Google+ are
competing on two critical fronts: customer experience and market penetration.
Google+ handily wins the former, and Facebook handily wins the latter, for
now," Larry Freed, ForeSee's president and CEO, said in a statement.
"It's worth asking how much customer satisfaction matters for Facebook,
given its unrivaled 800 million user base. But I expect Google to leverage its
multiple properties and mobile capabilities to attract users at a rapid pace.
If Facebook doesn't feel the pressure to improve customer satisfaction now,
that may soon change."
It's unclear if the report factors
in the fact that there are much fewer people are on Google+, and these
numbers come as Facebook's daily Web traffic seems to be bouncing back after a few months of decline.
Still, it's got to hurt Mark
Zuckerberg's ego a bit to see another low rating, considering that company's
mantra is about making users happy over advertisers. When asked for comment, a
Facebook spokesperson said the social network cares about customer satisfaction
but did not comment on the report's notes on the specific customer complaints.
"We care deeply about the
experience people have on Facebook and that's why we're so focused on building
and improving the products we offer," the spokesperson said in a
statement. "Giving people the means to interact with the people when they
want, where they want and how they want is the most meaningful way for us to
make our relationship with people even stronger."
Other social media sites scored were
LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter, all with scores that were 69 and lower, but
higher than Facebook's 61.
Other stats published included rates
for search engines and and news sites.
While Google remains on the top of
the search engine list with a score of 82, Bing and Ask.com aren't too far
behind with scores of 81 and 80, respectively.
"Google is to search what iPad
is to the tablet
market. Its name is synonymous with the category, and it still dominates 65
percent of searches in the U.S.," Freed said in his statement. "Bing
is doing all the right things to be a player in search, but the problem is that
Google users are generally satisfied and have little reason to go
elsewhere."
For news sites, FoxNews.com has the highest rating
for customer satisfaction at 84, which is a 2 percent increase from last year.
ABCNews.com trails at 76, with the NYTimes.com at 74 and the 
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