Small Business Marketing News
Facebook Customer Satisfaction Experiences Sharp Decline
Written by Tim Morral
Published: 8/8/2012
Social media is down as search engines lead the e-business sector in customer satisfaction ratings.
As small businesses continue to weigh the benefits of Facebook advertising, there is new evidence that consumer dissatisfaction with social media giant may be at an all-time high.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report for July, released in partnership with customer experience analytics firm ForeSee, Facebook dropped 8% to 61 on the Index's 100-point scale -- a historical low point in the E-Business Report's social media category.
Appearing for the first time in the ACSI, Google+ did comparatively well with a score of 78. Consumers' relative satisfaction with Google+ may be attributable to its lack of traditional advertising and other factors that have compromised Facebook's standing with users (e.g. the forced introduction of the Timeline feature).
"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," said Larry Freed, President and CEO of ForeSee. "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."
In other news from the July ACSI:
- The overall social media satisfaction rating is down 1.4% to 69. Facebook (61), LinkedIn (63) and Twitter.com (64) underperformed against the category average; Pinterest (69), Google+ (78) and YouTube (73) performed at or above the average satisfaction score for all social media sites.
- The search engine category still leads the e-business sector with an ACSI rating of 79. Not surprisingly, Google remains at the top of the category with a score of 82.
- In addition to topping the News & Information Category, FoxNews.com now has the highest ACSI score of any e-business company with an ACSI score of 84. NYTimes.com (74) and HuffingtonPost.com (69) are the category's lowest performers, at least when it comes to customer satisfaction.
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