so long at the fair

When it comes to customer service, PC manufacturers aren’t held with quite the same contempt as cable companies, health insurers and Internet service providers –- but they don’t have much to brag about, either.

Forrester Research’s 2008 customer experience index, a survey of some 4,500 consumers, ranked the PC makers slightly above companies in those other industries but below such perennial headaches as the wireless companies, airlines and credit card issuers.
Today, the research firm broke out its specific findings on PC makers, and the news was good for Apple and bad for everyone else.

Apple notched an 80 percent, or “good” rating, in Forrester’s customer experience index, which is an average of responses on topics like whether companies meet customer needs and make products that are easy and enjoyable to use.

Gateway scored a 66; Hewlett-Packard, a 64; and Compaq (a brand owned by H.P.), a 63 — scores that Forrester considers “poor” rankings in the customer experience index.
Dell got a miserly 58 percent, a “very poor” rating.

Bruce Temkin, vice president at Forrester, said the PC industry indeed bombed in the survey, but the low ratings were mostly driven by consumers’ views about Microsoft’s Windows ecosystem.
“This is a wake-up call to Microsoft. They have to do a much better job of working with retailers and orchestrating the experiences that all their partners have. They need to do a better job of merchandising with Wal-Mart and Best Buy and invest heavily in retail touch points,” Mr. Temkin said.

Microsoft, in fact, is exploring the idea of opening its own stores precisely for this reason.
As for Dell’s poor rating, Mr. Temkin says the PC maker is going through an identity crisis. “You know, they pushed the envelope on supply chain efficiencies and they lost track of their customer along the way. I see them trying to attack their service interactions and take care of their quality problems,” he said.