Report Ranks Barnes & Noble No. 1 in Customer Experience

New York City Barnes & Noble has been ranked the No. 1 company in Forrester Research’s The Customer Experience Index, 2008. The bookseller grabbed the top spot with an “excellent” rating and overall score of 92%.

Forrester asked nearly 5,000 consumers about their interactions with 114 companies across 12 different industries and developed its customer-experience index. The report is based on companies’ combination of ease-of-use, usefulness and enjoyability of experience. According to the report, only 11% of the firms wound up with “excellent” ratings.

“Executives regularly tell us that customer experience is critical to their competitiveness, but this year's Customer Experience Index demonstrates that there's room for improvement across all industries," said Bruce D. Temkin, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research. "While many firms are dealing with rough economic times, they can't let customer experience fall to the back burner. If firms let their customer experience deteriorate, then they'll lose customers and amplify the negative impact of the downturn."