Dive Brief:

• Online retailers in general, and Amazon in particular, topped the charts in customer satisfaction, according to the annual American Customer Satisfaction Index Retail Report 2015. Using its scale of 0 to 100, the index's e-commerce retail score went from 82 in 2014 to 80 in 2015.

• Department and discount stores posted a score of 74, gas stations 75, drugstores 73, specialty retail stores 77, supermarkets 73 and online retail 80. Those were drops in scores from 2014, except for gas station-based stores, which saw their scores go up, probably because of lower fuel prices, according to the report. Nordstrom remained at the top in its category with an 82, while Wal-Mart kept its basement spot with a 66. Sears bested Wal-Mart with 71, while Macy's fell 8% to 73.

• Although e-commerce fared better, online-only retailers saw their scores dip too. That even includes Amazon, which dominated the rankings again this year and received an 83, down from 86 in 2014. eBay's score was 75, down from 79 in 2014, and Overstock.com scored 73, down from 77 in 2014.

Dive Insight:

Retail is stumbling when it comes to customer satisfaction, in part because consumers are feeling a bit pickier now that the economy has improved. Customer service has taken a hit, with good staff more difficult to come by, according to ACSI founder and chairman Claes Fornell.

"Customer satisfaction with retail has been higher than its historical norm over the past few years as the economy slowly emerged from the Great Recession," Fornell said in a statement. "This was because it was a tough environment to compete in. Job security for customer service personnel was hard to come by and everybody was trying harder to please customers. As both job security and employee turnover have increased, the level of customer service seems to have worsened.”

But the numbers do tell a story and are something of a guide, with retailers that make an effort to serve customers well doing better (see Nordstrom in department stores and Wegmans in supermarket pharmacies). Eliminating “pain points” like long checkout lines appears to go far. Survey respondents cited e-retailers’ ease of checkout and payment among the most appealing aspects of shopping online; by contrast, their scores registered frustration with checkout speed at supermarkets, department stores, and discount stores, according to the report.

The ACSI scores are based on email interviews with 9,358 customers, chosen at random and contacted between Nov. 12 and Dec. 9. The survey is run by the University of Michigan.