Home | Media Center | AFFTA Member L.L. Bean Tops Business Week's Customer Service Survey

February 25, 2010
Source: SportsOneSource Media

L.L. Bean topped Bloomberg BusinessWeek's fourth annual ranking of "Customer 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.   

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 they're 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.