Best customer service brands 2025: Companies getting it right and leading the way

What makes for a good customer service experience? To start, it’s convenient, fast, and addresses all of a customer’s needs. And until recently, it had a human touch: “service with a smile,” if you will.

But the myriad ways companies can provide customer service in the digital age are not all created equal. The best customer service brands 2025 are perfecting the art of treating customers right.

Customer service: the AI effect

In 2025, more brands are using artificial intelligence as a way to respond to customers faster. For example, Lyft recently announced that they’re using Anthropic’s Claude AI to complete service requests. The company first tested Claude AI out with driver service issues and found it was able to close out customer service requests 87% faster across thousands of daily inquiries.

While speed is great, it can’t come at the cost of quality. Human interaction is typically better than an impersonal chatbot at providing quality service, so it remains to be seen how well AI does as the first line of defense in the long run.

In fact, Gartner found that 64% of customers don’t want companies to use AI for customer service and 53% would think about jumping ship to a competitor if they knew a company they purchased from planned to use AI.

At the same time, brands are under pressure as customers expect more all the time. Service has to be faster and easier. AI is one way to do that, cost effectively.

In 2025, 80% of customer service and support organizations will use generative AI to improve agent productivity and overall customer experience, Gartner predicts.

According to Boston Consulting Group, companies using AI in customer service are getting results, including productivity increases of 10% to 20%.

Brands with the best customer service in 2025

Newsweek and Statista surveyed consumers to understand which companies are excelling in customer service. Here are the 15 best brands according to the 2025 study along with their customer service scores out of 100:

1. Mandarin Oriental, 99.31
2. Waldorf Astoria, 98.72
3. Staybridge Suites, 96.71
4. James Avery, 96.05
5. B&H, 95.68
6. Westin, 95.67
7. Lancôme, 95.54
8. Kilwins, 95.47
9. The Lodge at Woodloch, 95.41
10. Aflac, 94.99
11. Buc-ee’s, 94.98
12. Fashion Nova, 94.74
13. Edward Jones, 94.74
14. Enterprise CarShare, 94.57
15. The Ritz-Carlton, 94.48

This year’s survey polled 28,000 US consumers to rank 700 brands across 163 product categories. The score each company received was 50% based on likelihood that the survey respondent would recommend the brand and the other 50% was based on how they rated the company across five key criteria:

• Quality of communication: how positive the interaction with the brand was, regardless of customer service channel.
• Professional competence: the quality of the information the customer got from the brand and whether their questions were answered properly and with enough detail.
• Range of services: the various solutions at a customer’s disposal to meet their service expectations.
• Customer focus: the extent to which the customer feels acknowledged and important.
• Accessibility: how available customer service options are across in-person and phone channels.

Hospitality brands win at customer service

The most represented category in Newsweek’s top 15 this year was hotels and hospitality, with luxury brand Mandarin Oriental even enjoying the top spot two years in a row.

This hospitality trend might have to do with the “revenge travel” theme that came out of COVID with travelers seeking out unique experiences after being trapped inside with extra income and wanting to make up for lost time. According to a McKinsey study, 66% of travelers are more interested in travel now than they were before the pandemic.

The hospitality companies winning high scores are entirely focused on the customer with new property openings, renovations, and digital offerings to make sure their guests have the best possible experience each time they visit or engage with the brand. In 2023, Mandarin Oriental relaunched its website with improved mobile capabilities and personalization to boost customer engagement and satisfaction.

Companies that want to emulate the success of these hospitality brands should focus on providing personalized services and investing in new experiences for their customers to enjoy.

Measuring customer satisfaction

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) provides a different view of the best customer service brands. Compared to the Newsweek study, ASCI’s report covers fewer companies and industries, and has more retail-focused companies that come out on top.

Here are the 2025 top 15 brands with leading ASCI scores out of 100:

1. Apple, 85
2. Chewy, 85
3. LongHorn Steakhouse (Darden), 85
4. Nike, 85
5. Sam’s Club (Walmart), 85
6. Skechers, 85
7. Texas Roadhouse, 85
8. AB InBev, 84
9. Coca-Cola, 84
10. HP, 84
11. Kraft Heinz, 84
12. Levi Strauss, 84
13. National (Enterprise), 84
14. Pet Supplies Plus, 84
15. Publix, 84

ASCI’s methodology considers 400 companies across 40 different industries and surveys 200,000 consumers to determine its annual list.

Apple’s retail model, inspired by Steve Jobs’s strategy of making “insanely great” products, has won loyal customers for its personalized approach that focuses on listening to customers. Apple is working on an AI rollout, but had to push out its launch timeline.

Sam’s Club, meanwhile, scores high in part for its work to improve the checkout experience for in-store customers. While other grocers have struggled with scan-and-go technology, Sam’s Club’s service is used by about 33% of customers, helping them avoid checkout lines.

“Though there wasn’t much movement in retail customer satisfaction overall, we’re seeing a clear divide emerge between brands that are meeting the needs and expectations of younger consumers versus those that are falling behind,” Forrest Morgeson, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Michigan State University and Director of Research Emeritus at the ACSI, said in announcing ACSI’s retail study.

“Factors like mobile shopping capabilities, website quality, and perceptions of value are becoming increasingly important, especially for the 18-25 age group, who expressed significantly lower satisfaction levels compared to older demographics,” he added.

Customer service trends 2025: Brands balance on digital beam of AI hype versus customer trust

With generative AI and automation, customer service is going through a profound transformation. Here are the top service trends to watch in 2025.

Brands with the best service are customer focused, innovative, consistent

Instead of throwing all of their efforts behind short-lived trends, the brands that top these lists take a measured approach—getting in lockstep with customers so that they understand what they want and consistently provide it to them. They stay up to date on service trends, but they don’t let any particular new technology distract from their overarching goals.

Providing excellent customer experiences directly correlates to profit margins and stock performance. Happy customers that drive retention and loyalty really are the core of successful businesses.

There are tangible benefits to taking customer satisfaction seriously, as increasing satisfaction scores by one point can boost shareholder value 1%.

In such competitive markets, especially when it comes to online businesses, improving customer service is key to boosting revenue, spending less on advertising, and increasing longevity.

Making customers feel special

Customer service is becoming more automated as more companies use AI to reduce the lift required to answer customer questions in a timely way. But customers want more than fast responses. They want to feel known by their favorite brands, and catered to. This requires a data backbone to understand customer behaviors and preferences that customer service agents (real or robotic) can draw from to make customers feel special.

Bottom line, customers don’t want a just a transaction. They feel strongly about their favorite brands, as Newsweek noted in their their survey criteria.

And that’s exactly what the best customer service brands in 2025 are able to accomplish: They offer an experience so exceptional that customers can’t help but want more.