Technology Retail in the US

Sector average score

Knowledge & Expertise

Style of Communication

Speed of Resolving Problems

Valuing the Customer

The Technology Retail in the US table once again has a clear winner – but it’s a brand that has never taken the top spot before.

Apple has seized the Customer Effort top spot for itself after being part of a three-way tie alongside Amazon and Samsung in Q4 2024. The brand was fourth in Q3 2024 and has added +5 points to its Overall Effort Score since then.

It also leads in three of the four pillars, but has been unable to best Amazon in ‘Valuing the Customer’.

Elsewhere, six of the nine brands in the table have increased their Overall Effort Score wave on wave, with Walmart and Samsung remaining flat and Target dropping by -1 point.

At the bottom of the table, Microsoft – traditionally in the penultimate spot – has finally been caught up with by Dell, meaning they now share bottom place together.

Executive Summary

How to use this Index

Executive summary

‘Knowledge & Expertise’ is the most competitive space within the Technology Retail in the US table. Just seven points separate the top and bottom of the rankings, with the top four divided by just two points.
We say

The devil is in the detail 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 call centre agents and chatbots are equipped with the details so they can be as specific as possible when dealing with confused customers.

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.