Aldi 'best supermarket for customer satisfaction'

Aldi has overtaken Marks & Spencer and Waitrose as the best-performing supermarket for customer satisfaction in a survey of 10,000 shoppers.

The Institute of Customer Service ranked 245 organisations from various sectors on factors such as staff professionalism and complaint handling.

Amazon topped the list followed by the online bank First Direct, retailer John Lewis and tour firm Jet2holidays.com.

Aldi came seventh overall, up from 34th place last July.

Waitrose and Marks & Spencer ranked 13th and 14th, having been the highest-scoring supermarkets last year at joint third place.

According to the research, which has been published every year since 2008, Aldi scored well because of its competitive pricing and handling of customer complaints.

Researchers noted the German discounter had made the biggest gains among the supermarkets in terms of market share, while the three supermarkets with the lowest customer service scores - Tesco, Asda and Co-op Food - saw small drops in market share.

Elsewhere, the survey found that eight of the 20 most improved organisations were utilities companies.

The biggest improvement came from train operator London Midland, which scored 80.3 out of 100, up 9.1 points since last year.

Overall, customer satisfaction averaged at 78.2 out of 100, an increase of 0.8 points.

Jo Causon, head of the Institute of Customer Service, said: "For customer satisfaction to continue on this upward trajectory, organisations need to focus on the way they deliver a quality customer experience.

"They also need to look at the way they tailor what they do to individual customer preferences and the way they analyse problems to eliminate them at source."