American Customer Satisfaction Index

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an economic indicator that measures the satisfaction of consumers across the U.S. economy. It is produced by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI LLC) based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The ACSI interviews about 180,000 customers annually and asks about their satisfaction with the goods and services they have purchased and consumed. Respondents are screened to ensure inclusion of actual customers of a wide range of business-to-consumer products and services, including durable goods, services, non-durable goods, local government services, federal government services, and so forth. Customer satisfaction (ACSI) scores are released monthly throughout each calendar year. ACSI data is used by researchers, corporations, government agencies, market analysts and investors, industry trade associations, and consumers.

ACSI began in 1994, developed by researchers with the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan, in cooperation with the American Society for Quality and CFI Group, Inc. The model was originally designed in 1989 for the Swedish economy (the Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer (SCSB)). Both the Swedish version and the ACSI were developed by Claes Fornell, Donald C. Cook Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at the University of Michigan, and chairman of CFI Group.

A company's ACSI score is derived from three manifest variables (i.e. survey questions) within the ACSI questionnaire, each rated on a 1-10 scale by the respondents interviewed for that company, government agency, or other organization:

The 0-100 ACSI score is estimated using the mean for each variable from the n responses for that company (X1, X2, X3), along with the weights for each question as calculated within the ACSI structural equation model (W1, W2, W3):

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