After two years of steady increases, customer satisfaction with goods and services purchased and consumed in the United States has taken a dramatic downturn, according to the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index. The ACSI for the fourth quarter of 2004 was 73.6, down from 74.3, the largest decline since 1997. The drop is due mostly to waning satisfaction with retail customer service; high gas prices; and a glut of user traffic on e-commerce Web sites, which makes servicing these customers well a more challenging endeavor.

Claes Fornell, director of the ACSI and business professor at the University of Michigan, says that the decline may spell trouble for the economy. “Customer dissatisfaction with the quality of goods and services offered in the marketplace is more than a nuisance,” he says. “The U.S. economy is heavily dependent on increases in consumer spending. Such increases are hard to come by when consumers become less satisfied.

For more information, visit www.theacsi.org.

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