Facebook users are not happy about the popular social networking site’s frequent changes, privacy issues and advertising, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
Although it is the most popular Web site in America, Facebook scored 64 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale, which puts its satisfaction even lower than IRS e-filers. This puts Facebook in the bottom 5 percent of all measured private sector companies and in the same range as airlines and cable companies, two perennially low-scoring industries with terrible customer satisfaction.
We can understand the dissatisfaction with Facebook. While several people linked to this news on our Facebook account, comments ranged from specific complaints about Facebook to “Yeah, but here we are.”
Even in the face of extremely rapid expansion carrying it to more than 400 million users, at least 141 million in the U.S., which is close to half the country, Facebook has riled users with frequent changes to its design, privacy settings, and the way status updates are shown.
Personally, we find it continually frustrating that after following a link on a status update, you are frequently returned not to where you were but to the beginning of your Facebook page, which means scrolling through the same pages of updates all over again. Rather than fooling with the way status updates are shown, the site would be better off correction functional problems such as that.
The ACSI scale, developed by the University of Michigan’s business school and conducted with ForeSee Results, also ranked search engines and other social networking sites, excluding Twitter because it is often accessed through third party apps such as TweetDeck and Seismic.
“Facebook is a phenomenal success, so we were not expecting to see it score so poorly with consumers,” said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results. “At the same time, our research shows that privacy concerns, frequent changes to the website, and commercialization and advertising adversely affect the consumer experience.
“Compare that to Wikipedia, which is a non-profit that has had the same user interface for years, and it’s clear that while innovation is critical, sometimes consumers prefer evolution to revolution.”
“Social media has become too big to ignore, so we added it to our list of e-business measures,” said Claes Fornell, ACSI founder and professor of business at the University of Michigan. “We are quite surprised to find that satisfaction with the category defies its popularity.”
Google plunged 7 percent but continued to lead the portals and search engines industry with a score of 80. It is just the second time that Google cedes its top spot, as the “all others” category of search engine competitors jumps 5 percent to 82.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine makes a strong first showing with a score of 77, trailed by Yahoo! (76), AOL (74), and Ask.com (73).
“Google may be suffering from trying to be too many things to too many people, but it still has the most loyal following with 80% of its users citing Google as their primary search engine,” said Freed. “That said, Bing’s first measure is impressive and could put some pressure on Google.”
For more analysis and complete scores, see: www.theacsi.org or www.ForeSeeResults.com.
By Allan Maurer
Contact Tech Journal South Editor and writer Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.
© 2010, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.
Tags: ACSI, Bing, facebook, Facebook scores low on user satisfaction, ForeSee Results, Google, twitter
