Methodology

MANY COMPANIES ENTRUST

their lowest paid and least skilled employees with managing their most valuable asset—their reputation with customers. Every company aspires to have each potential customer make a purchase and come back again, bringing along a friend. Often the employees most likely to inʀuence whether a customer does any of these things work as servers, counter staff and help line operators.

Newsweek teamed up with Statista to identify American companies that have found a way to tackle this challenge, whether through investment; training and engagement; or outsourcing, offshoring and automation.

Statista’s survey evaluated retailers and service providers from 141 categories, each subject chosen because of its reputation, turnover and market share. The rankings were divided into two segments: brick-andmortar and online. Each brickand-mortar company surveyed had a presence in at least two U.S. Census regions.

Statista surveyed more than 20,000 Americans who either purchased a product or services from these companies or explored doing so in the past three years. Customers rated their experiences at several companies. Nearly 133,000 evaluations were completed, and each company on the list received feedback from around 100 customers.

The rankings in each category are based on six criteria. The ɿrst ɿve criteria accounted for half the weighting, essentially seeking to determine whether the customers found the company’s representatives friendly, competent and accessible, as well as whether they actually came up with a solution that met the customers’ needs. The sixth criterion was whether customers were willing to recommend the company’s products or services to friends and family. The resulting Net Promoter Score had a 50 percent weighting.