Technology Retail in the US

Sector average score

Knowledge & Expertise

Style of Communication

Speed of Resolving Problems

Valuing the Customer

Apple remains top of the Technology Retail in the US table, but after losing a valuable point wave on wave, it find itself just +1 point ahead of three brands tied at second – Best Buy, Samsung and Amazon.

Its lead looks less than convincing when you look at the component pillars. Apple only comes top outright in one of them – Style of Communication.

In Valuing the Customer it sits behind Amazon and Samsung and ties with Best Buy in Knowledge & Expertise.

Lowest down the table, Dell is out one to watch this wave. The brand ended 2024 in last place, but after two consecutive quarters of building its Overall Effort Score this year, Dell now finds itself in joint sixth, alongside Walmart.

Executive Summary

How to use this Index

Executive summary

Speed of Resolving Problems is the most competitive space within the Technology Retail in the US table. Just two points separate first and fifth place in the rankings.
We say

Speed is everything when buying from a tech retail brand and this is the score that is particularly sensitive in this pillar. Brands should make sure both their agents have all the information they need to hand quickly and employ automation where possible to give consumers the details they need in a timely fashion.

How to use the Customer Effort Index

Customer Effort Scores for the quarter are presented in the rankings, ordered by highest Overall Effort Score first, to show which brand scored highest with its customers for that period. Individual brand ratings against the four pillars take us underneath that Overall Effort Score, with brand-specific explanatory analysis from the CEI Editorial team.

You can use the display above to toggle between score, ranking and individual pillars. Clicking 'Performance Tracker' enables you to analyse the performance over time.

The Customer Effort Index is calculated using a self-referential scale that is recomputed every wave based on what the minimum and maximum values are. This enables us to see how each brand is performing compared to the others within the data set. See About for more on the methodology.