ACSI: 2018-2019 Customer Satisfaction Index Report

For the second year in a row, social media users are less satisfied with the platforms they use, according to a new report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The ACSI measures customer satisfaction across 46 industries, and social media currently ranks sixth from the bottom in the study, scoring 72 on a 100-point scale.

Pinterest once again received the highest customer satisfaction rating among social media platforms this year (80 points), the same as the previous year. Pinterest's user base is relatively small, with Pew reporting that only a quarter of U.S. adults (28%) use the platform. In contrast, YouTube, the second most satisfied social media platform, has a penetration rate of 73% in the United States. YouTube's satisfaction score was 78 points, up 3 points (4%) from 2018.

Facebook had the lowest user satisfaction of all the social platforms tested, with a score of 63, down 4 points (6%) from last year.

Social Media UX Benchmarks

Social media users are most satisfied with mobile channels. Mobile app quality (80 points), mobile app reliability (78 points), and ease of use on different devices such as smartphones and tablets (77 points) are the highest-rated indicators of social media user experience.

Users were highly satisfied with site performance (77) and ease of navigation (76). However, they were less satisfied with factors such as relevance of content (72), privacy (70), and the amount of advertising on the site (68).

Search User Satisfaction Overview

User satisfaction with search engines rose by 3%. User satisfaction fell by 2 points in 2019 to 77. Google's user satisfaction score also fell by 3 points to 79, which the report attributed to two data breaches at its now-defunct Google+ social network.

Much like social media, mobile app quality (84) and mobile app reliability (82) scored highest in terms of user experience with search engines. However, satisfaction declined in other metrics, such as:

Easy to navigate (down from 83 to 81);

Website performance (down from 82 to 80);

Diversity of services and information (down from 82 to 80);

Speed and video reliability (down from 80 to 79).