Cable Websites Take a Dive in Consumer Ranking

Among 262 companies whose websites were evaluated by 10,000 consumers, six cable MSOs were among the lowest-scoring organizations on the list.

The "2015 Web Experience Ratings," conducted by the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm, examines consumers' likelihood to forgive companies for a poor experience at their websites. The Waban, Mass.-based firm included nearly 300 companies across 20 industries, including pay TV service and Internet service.

Overwhelmingly, consumers indicated they were unlikely to forgive Time Warner Cable, Comcast and CenturyLink (all three tied at #252 of the 262 firms) and Frontier (dead last at #262) for lackluster website experiences in the Internet service category; and TWC (#256), Comcast (#258), Charter Communications (#260) and Cox Communications (#261) in the pay TV service category.

Additionally, Cox was one of the companies that fell the most in the annual ranking from last year, Temkin Group noted, with only 29% of respondents saying they could forgive the MSO for a poor online experience. The two categories earned "very weak" ratings across the board while banks and credit card issuers generally had "strong" ratings.

"It's ironic that many of the cable companies that provide Internet service earned such poor ratings," Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group, said.

The top spot went to USAA for its banking business (it was also ranked at #3 for its credit card business and #13 for its insurance business), while Amazon took second place for its retail business (as well as fourth place in the computers category). Temkin Group said the two companies had traded the No. 1 and No. 2 spots for the five years it has been conducting the study.