The Fast Food sector was in second place.

The best services industries over time have changed from retail in 2001 and 2002, to telecommunications in 2003 and 2004 and short-term insurance in 2005. Food retail topped the survey in 2006.

Pep was named the overall winner for the second consecutive year, with McDonald's coming tops in the Fast Food sector.

Ask Afrika said retail companies seem to be more in tune with their customers and are more successful in delivering on what matters to customers.

Highlighting service industry in the telecommunications sector, Ask Afrika noted service levels in this industry have declined since last year and the telecoms industry was one of the worst performing sectors overall.

Among telecoms companies, MTN performed above the industry average and was the top performing company in the sector in terms of service delivery and had the highest delight ratings in the sector, Ask Afrika said.

Now in its seventh year, Ask Afrika's Orange Index has grown from purely a call centre measurement in 2001 to a comprehensive industry and channel ranking now also including branches, the Internet and intermediaries.

For the 2007 rankings, a total of 70 companies in 12 industries, including the Government sector, were surveyed.

This year, 70 000 members of the public were contacted in an effort to find the right customers.

"We had to find an equal number of customers for each of the 70 companies. And we needed to find customers who had a recent service experience in the past two months to make it as relevant as possible - that's what a global quality survey should be.

"Working totally independently, we sourced the relevant respondents, generated the numbers and then assessed the companies, by speaking to over 6,000 customers," said Ask Afrika chief executive officer Andrea Rademeyer.