Will Facebook’s Low Satisfaction Rates Make It Vulnerable To Google +?

The American Customer Satisfaction Index report has revealed Facebook scored the lowest among social media sites for customer satisfaction. This has great implications for the future of Facebook, as it leaves them vulnerable to rival Google + luring away their unsatisfied members.

According to the survey, only 66% of respondents said they were satisfied with Facebook, compared to market leader Wikipedia at 78%. Worse still, Facebook ranks in the bottom 6% of the entire American Customer Satisfaction Index against all other categories.

Google + vs Facebook

It’s still too early to predict whether dissatisfied users will abandon Facebook over time, particularly if it involves persuading friends to join them. The survey also took place before Google+ was launched so it’s too early to understand how it measures in user satisfaction.

However, Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Result mentions that, “what we do know is that Google is one of the highest-scoring companies in the ACSI and Facebook is one of the lowest..an existing dominance of market share like Facebook has is no longer a safety net for a company that is not providing a superior customer experience.”

Scott Ellison, analyst firm IDC’s VP of Mobile & Consumer Connected Platforms further explains that, “social is deceivingly fluid and Google+ is proving that. There are still enormous social app opportunities, especially apps that are interest and function specific.”

Google search vs Bing search

Google scored incredibly well in the search engine/portal category. The bad news is so did rival search engine Bing. While Google is once again category leader, there is a mere 1 point difference between the two scores.

Bing has grown incredibly this past year. While Google is still dominating 70% of the market, in just 2 years Bing-powered searches reached 30% of all U.S. searches.

When Bing first launched, did you ever expect it to grow so rapidly? I for one didn’t. And that’s against a competitor with much higher satisfaction among its users than Facebook has. Hmmm.

Should Facebook be worried?

It’s important to note that the report omitted statistics for social networking site Myspace. It was once THE major social media network with millions of members updating their accounts daily. But this year it doesn’t even appear in the survey because there weren’t enough responses to provide accurate statistics. Will this be the grim future of Facebook?

Well Facebook certainly isn’t going down with a fight, that’s for sure. You might have heard of their recent partnership with Skype to offer video calling to their members. This mirrors the ‘Hangouts’ video calling feature offered by rival Google +.

When Google + first launched, I previously blogged about my high hopes for this new social network and now I have even greater expectations for Google +. So what are your thoughts? Are you dissatisfied with Facebook?