Yeungjin College tops in customer satisfaction

InterContinental, Marriott hotels plunge in annual survey of 274 entities

By Kim Tae-gyu

Samsung Construction and Trade (C&T) Corporation managed to maintain its score in the country’s flagship consumer satisfaction index for 2011, but failed to keep pole position due to the emergence of colleges.

The state-backed Korea Productivity Center (KPC) disclosed Wednesday the National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI) for 2011 in which Yeungjin College topped the list with 88 out of 100 points.

The Daegu-based school ranked second last year with 85 points but boosted its score to 88 points, dethroning reigning champion Samsung C&T, which dipped to third following runner-up Yeungnam College of Science & Technology.

Daegu Metropolitan Transit Corp. and Chung Cheong University made the top 10 list ranking fifth and seventh, respectively.

With ivory towers assuming a half of the best 10 slots, some hotels saw their status plummet.

InterContinental Hotel, which includes both Grand InterContinental and COEX InterContinental in southern Seoul, took fourth in 2010 with 82 points but slumped to the 16th last year with 77.

JW Marriott Seoul’s score also went down by 5 points from 79 to 74 so that its ranking fell dramatically from ninth to 39th over the same period.

Broken by industry, hotels and airlines tended to take the higher positions while petroleum and telecom companies struggled in the lower echelons of the list of 274 industries.

Benchmark level of 70 points

Over the past year, the KPS surveyed 73,055 citizens in the nation’s five major cities ― Seoul, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon and Gwangju ― in order to come up with the index.

To measure the satisfaction level for specific products or services, a total of three criteria were considered in customer expectations, perceived quality and perceived value with different weightings.

The KPS regards 70 points as the minimum level necessary to secure proper consumer satisfaction.

``The number of entities that score more than 70 amounted to 20 in 1998 and increased to 36 in 2000, 81 in 2003, 125 in 2004 and 169 in 2007,’’ KPS researcher Jeon Jin-hee said.

``In the wake of the financial crisis, the figure faltered to 146 in 2008 and 135 in 2009. But the trend was reversed to 182 in 2010 and 225 this year in line with the economic recovery.’’

In other words, up to 82 percent of industries surveyed surpassed the benchmark last year, up 9 percentage points from the previous year.

According to Jin, the rising scores demonstrate that clients’ satisfaction level is going up thanks to the efforts of corporations and universities here.

However, 49 players still failed to reach 70 points last year and four could not even reach 60. Universities and affiliated hospitals accounted for a majority of the underachievers as 30 were included in the below-70 club.

Winners & losers

Among private entities not related to colleges, Hyundai Oilbank placed rock bottom with 68 points closely followed by the Millennium Seoul Hilton and LG U-plus. S-Oil were fourth worst chased by KT Tech with 69 points each.

This means that excluding universities and their affiliates, two refiners ― Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil ― were included in the worst-five list. The former is the nation’s smallest refiner while the latter is the third-largest player.

Second-largest GS Caltex and business bellwether SK Energy also barely cleared the 70-point bar at 71 points and 70 points each.

Telecom firms also struggled to find their feet.

LG Uplus, the country’s No. 3 telecom carrier, failed to reach 70 in three out of six segments ― the Internet phone, Internet TV and high-speed Internet services.

KT, the second-largest telecom operator, also could not pass the cut in the Internet protocol TV area.

By contrast, all search engines, automakers, banks, beer producers and smartphone makers exceeded the 70-point level.

Among search engines, market leader NHN was next to none with 74 points and Google Korea came in second trailed by Daum Communications, SK Communications and Yahoo Korea.

In the passenger car sector, Hyundai Motor remained ahead of the curve with 73 points chased by its rivals Renault Samsung Motor, Kia Motors and GM Korea. Hyundai also topped the podium in the utility vehicle at 72.

Among six lenders studied, Shinhan Bank and Kookmin Bank stood out with 73 points apiece. Woori Bank and Korea Exchange Bank got 72 while Citibank Korea and Hana Bank gained 71.

Other financial areas ― insurance, credit cards and brokerage firms ― also enjoyed substantially better customer satisfaction compared to previous research.

``Amid the prospects of economic recovery and low interest rates, financial players have exerted various efforts for their end customers,’’ Jeon said.

Colleges and universities showed the biggest deviation as a total of five made it to the top 10 list but at the same time, the worst 16 players are also colleges or universities.

Samsung vs Apple

Samsung Electronics and Apple traded punches in their two-way competition in the tablet PC and smartphone segments, which is underway across the world.

As far as the smartphone is concerned, Apple Korea was top of the list with 75 points while Samsung Electronics garnered 74.

However, Samsung edged Apple in tablet PCs as the former ranked 68th compared to 73rd of the latter.