Google+ Leaves Social Butterflies Feeling Satisfied; Facebook, Not So Much
Call Google+ a ghost town if you wish, but in terms of customer satisfaction, it's standing head and shoulders above Facebook, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report released on Tuesday. The report highlights customer happiness on a scale of 1-100, and Facebook, which was already the lowest-scoring e-business company, fell in favor even more in this latest edition, dropping 8 percent to 61/100.
Google+, meanwhile, posted a respectable score of 78/100 on its first appearance in the ACSI scale. The reasons, ACSI says, have to do with an absence of traditional advertising and a superior mobile experience compared to Facebook. In contrast, Facebook users frequently complain about ads and voice privacy concerns. Also working in Google's favor is the fact that Facebook recently overhauled its UI with a mandatory Timeline feature, and such changes, while usually accepted in the long-term, are almost always griped about profusely in the short-term.
"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."
Interestingly, e-business websites are down overall in customer satisfaction, dropping 1.6 percent from one year prior to a score of 74.2/100. The same is true of social media sites, which collectively dropped 1.4 percent to 69/100.
As for us, we're big fans of social networking in general. You can find (and follow) HotHardware on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Google+, meanwhile, posted a respectable score of 78/100 on its first appearance in the ACSI scale. The reasons, ACSI says, have to do with an absence of traditional advertising and a superior mobile experience compared to Facebook. In contrast, Facebook users frequently complain about ads and voice privacy concerns. Also working in Google's favor is the fact that Facebook recently overhauled its UI with a mandatory Timeline feature, and such changes, while usually accepted in the long-term, are almost always griped about profusely in the short-term.
"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."
Interestingly, e-business websites are down overall in customer satisfaction, dropping 1.6 percent from one year prior to a score of 74.2/100. The same is true of social media sites, which collectively dropped 1.4 percent to 69/100.
As for us, we're big fans of social networking in general. You can find (and follow) HotHardware on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
