ANN ARBOR, Mich., Aug. 14 (UPI) -- America's affection for Toyota, Apple and Google slipped but the University of Michigan's customer satisfaction index remained relatively unchanged.
The quarterly American Customer Satisfaction Index registered a marginal increase as customer satisfaction slowed, the University of Michigan’s National Quality Research Center reported Tuesday. The Index edged up 0.1 percent to 75.3 on ACSI’s 100-point scale, up 1 point since the second quarter of 2006.
“Customer satisfaction is pretty flat and consumer spending is slowing down,” said Claes Fornell, who heads the ACSI at the University of Michigan.
While still lagging behind, U.S. automakers narrowed the gap with Asian manufacturers but they still ranked last. While Toyota's Lexus led the industry at 87; however, year-over-year comparisons show Toyota and Honda fell 3 points and 2 points, respectively, to 84.
Apple computers, despite a drop of 5 points to 79, still was the industry leader. Overall, customer satisfaction with the personal computer industry fell 3 points to 75.
Yahoo!, with design changes and enhancements, improved to 79 to wrest the lead from Google for portals and search engines. Google slipped 4 points from a year ago to a score of 78
