
Most of the companies just below Facebook on the list are not public. Two consulting firms, McKinsey & Company, and Bain, finished second and fourth. Boston Consulting group was No. 10. MD Andersen Cancer Center was N0. 5. Slipping into the No. 2 spot was Riverbed Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: RVBD), an unknown IT performance firm that has been badly beaten by investors recently.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) filled the No. 6 spot. Several unknown companies rounded out the top 10: Edelman, a PR firm, National Instruments Corp. (NASDAQ: NATI), a measurement and automation products company, and In-N-Out Burger. The chain has most of its locations in the U.S. Southwest. It has an absurdly small 281 outlets, most likely fewer that McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) has in New York City.
Among the other companies in the top 50 are ones well-regarded for customer service, incidentally: Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV), Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM), JetBlue Airways Corp. (NASDAQ: JBLU), Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST), and Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX).
The list also included a large number of tech giants and Web 2.0 firms: Linkedin Corp. (NYSE: LNKD), Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), SAP A.G. (NYSE: SAP) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).
The only criticism some research purists might have of the research is sample size. Only 138 people reviewed Riverbed, and MD Andersen with 123 reviews.
Douglas A. McIntyre