Who offers the best customer service? While everybody has their own opinion, the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting company, takes a more scientific approach, issuing its Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual survey that ranks companies on the quality of customer of service they provide. This year’s survey ranked 246 companies across 19 industries based on the opinions of 10,000 customers

So who is the best? According to the survey, supermarket chains Publix and Trader Joe’s are the two champions when it comes to servicing customers. Closely following them are Aldi, Chick-fil-A, Amazon.com (News - Alert), Sam’s Club, H.E.B., Dunkin’ Donuts, Save-a-Lot, Sonic Drive-In, Little Caeser’s and Ace Hardware.

In fact, it was largely grocery chains, fast food chains, and retailers who dominated the top of the 2013 Temkin Rating. On the bottom of the list were health plans, many of which earned the dubious distinction of defining poor performance, taking seven of the 15 lowest spots. The five lowest scoring organizations were US Airways, Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable, Days Inn, Empire BCBS, and 21st Century.

The news was good for consumers: customer service is improving. In this year’s ratings, 37 percent of companies earned “good” or “excellent” scores, while 28 percent were rated as “poor” or ”very poor.” Companies with at least a “good” rating grew by nine percentage points since 2012 and by 21 points since 2011. Of the 203 companies included in both the 2012 and 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings, 57 percent of firms saw at least a modest increase. The companies that made the largest improvement over 2012 are Citibank, TriCare, TD Ameritrade, Office Depot, EarthLink, Hardees, and Regions Bank.

“It's wonderful to see that customer experience is improving, although many companies still have a long way to go" said Bruce Temkin, author of the report and managing partner of Temkin Group.

The Temkin Experience Ratings are based on consumer feedback of their recent interactions with companies. The group asked 10,000 consumers to rate three components of their experience, functional, accessible and emotional, on a seven-point scale. For each component, Temkin takes the percentage of consumers that gave a rating of six or seven and subtract the percentage that gave a rating of one, two, or three. This results in a “net goodness” rating for each of the three components. The overall Temkin Experience Rating is an average of the three “net goodness” percentages.