John lewis, M&S score highly for customer satisfaction, Debenhams drops

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 10, 2020

The latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) has seen John Lewis holding on to the top spot it won in January, but a big change elsewhere with Debenhams exiting the top 10.

John Lewis scored 85.3 out of 100 in the index that comes from the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) and is based on the opinions of 10,000 British consumers. The department store had been in fourth place this time last year.

While the index contains a variety of businesses, such as banks, insurance firms and hotels, retail (across various categories) accounted for five out of the 10 names.

Debenhams’ fall from grace underlined the challenges it has faced in the past year and is made even more dramatic by the fact that exactly a year ago it had been in number one spot on the index. It had fallen to seventh place in January, but now is out of the top 10 altogether.

Meanwhile, there was good news for M&S Clothing & Home, which soared to fourth place from number 11, while M&S’s Foods division was up to fifth place from a lowly number 49 a year ago.

Amazon, meanwhile, held on to its sixth position year-on-year, although its score actually went down by 1.1 points and it was a step down after it had risen to number five in January.

The new research reflected both the pre-pandemic period and the early stages of the lockdown and while it contained good news for some names, ICS said that overall, customer service had edged down slightly.

That could have been a result of lockdown conditions as in the early weeks, shoppers faced slow deliveries and other issues.