Franchises fly high in customer satisfaction awards

Franchises traditionally excel in customer service, so it was no surprise to see some familiar names among the winners in the 2^nd annual Customer Satisfaction Awards presented by Roy Morgan Research.

Subway was named Quick Service Restaurant of the Year; Take Note was Music/Book Store of the Year and Hilton was Hotel & Resort of the Year. The non-franchised Starbucks, which is operated by Restaurant Brands, took the title of Coffee Shop of the Year from last year’s winners, Muffin Break, while ITM beat Bunnings to become Hardware Store of the Year.

The awards are based on Roy Morgan Research’s annual Single Source survey of over 12,000 New Zealanders. Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan Research, says, ‘Never before has customer satisfaction been so critical. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter have given customers a megaphone to broadcast their praise or disapproval, while smartphones allow instant access to information about prices, availability and ratings.

‘Businesses across all industries need a continuous, accurate, quantified measure of overall customer satisfaction. These Awards identify and commend the businesses that listened to their customers throughout 2012 and provided an industry-leading level of satisfaction.’