According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the average customer satisfaction for all new car brands fell 3.7 percent to 79 on a 100-point scale when compared to 2014. This is the third straight year that customer satisfaction has dropped, and the downward trend is not without ample reason.
“While it is true that all cars are now much better than they were 10 to 20 years ago, it is alarming that so many of them have quality problems,” says Claes Fornell, ACSI Chairman and founder. “The number of recalls is at an all-time high. This should not happen with modern manufacturing technology and has negative consequences for driver safety, costs and customer satisfaction.”
Another reason for diminished customer satisfaction cited by this year’s Automobiles Report has to do with cost. “Higher prices are clearly hurting car buyer satisfaction, but low prices also have artificially inflated satisfaction in the years prior,” says David VanAmburg, ACSI Director. “The government’s Cash for Clunkers program helped push driver satisfaction to its highest level ever in 2009 – and heavy discounting as the economy recovered kept satisfaction up for a while. The customer satisfaction levels the auto industry is seeing now are more consistent with historical ACSI data.”
Of the 27 brands tracked by the ACSI, only two – Acura and BMW – improved in 2015, and 15 brands lost ground compared to 2014. On average, Japanese brands performed the best, while Ford outpaced the rest of its domestic rivals with a score of 79, which is exactly average in customer satisfaction.
Take a look through our slideshow to see where all 27 automobile brands represented in the ACSI's 2015 Automobiles Report fell in customer satisfaction.
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