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Domestic & General Announces Retailer of the Year 2012 Awards Winners (1/10/2012)

The UK’s top electrical retailers have been awarded with the prestigious title of Retailer of the Year 2012. Reviewed and rated by customers throughout the year, those with the highest average score can justly claim to be the UK’s best retailers. This year’s winners are:

· Independent Retailer of the Year 2012 – Barretts Digital World
· Multi-store Retailer of the Year 2012 – Hughes Electrical
· Internet Retailer of the Year 2012 – Crampton & Moore

ROTY is the UK’s biggest consumer survey of electrical retailers, sponsored and administered by warranty and customer service specialist Domestic & General. Each year over 400,000 surveys are sent out to customers following a major purchase such as a TV or washing machine. High Street independent retailers, multiple store chains and on-line retailers are rated in four key areas depending on channel. Customers are asked to rate retailer on a scale of 0-10 on four key parameters. High Street stores are rated on their presentation, product information, customer service and demonstration while on-line vendors are rated on site presentation, ease of navigation, product information and convenience of delivery.

Over 500 retailers had more than the minimum number of surveys (30) returned to qualify for the title of Retailer of the Year 2012. Their scores across the four key questions are added together and averaged by the number of respondents to get an overall score. The three Retailer of the Year accolades go to the independent, multi-store and on-line retailer with the highest combined scores in their category. The total score is converted to an overall customer satisfaction percentage for clarity.

The Independent Retailer of the Year 2012 award goes to Barretts of Canterbury. Having scooped a ROTY last year for being the UK’s most recommended single store, Barretts this year achieved an excellent overall customer satisfaction score of 96.63%. Last year’s winner Aclands came in as runner up with 96.08%, closely followed by South Point Electrical scoring an impressive 94.25%.

The multi-store Retailer of the Year 2012 has been won buy Hughes Electrical. With Hughes Direct winning the on-line ROTY last year, the Hughes chain of High Street stores have really upped their game in 2012 scoring a class leading 88.73% customer satisfaction. The Scotland based Hydro Electric chain scored highly to achieve runner up status with 87.05% and the Apollo chain, also part of the Hughes group, took third place with 86.46%.

Internet Retailer of the Year 2012 was another close battle across the top 10 rated retailers with Crampton & Moore coming back on top having last topped the Internet ROTY survey in 2010. The Sheffield based company scored and impressive 91.48% overall customer satisfaction with runner up Marks/365 Electrical scoring 89.78% and third place Electricshop.com achieving 88.57%.

Commented Domestic & General Sales Director, Derek Hollingdale: “This year’s Retailer of the Year survey received one of the highest response rates since the survey began and serves to underline the importance of great customer service in difficult trading times. The three winning businesses, along with all those featuring in the top echelons of the survey, can be justly proud of being rated as the UK’s very best retailers by the customers they serve. Domestic & General has built its business on over 60-years of delivering exceptional customer care and we are very proud to sponsor these awards that celebrate the best in customer service.”