A study from Temkin Group released today puts San Antonio-Texas-based USAA head and shoulders above every other corporation in America in terms of Net Promoter Score.

Net promoter Score is a slightly controversial metric that measures customer loyalty. A company’s NPS is supposed to correlate with revenue growth. A score of -100 means everybody hates you and +100 means everybody loves you. This year’s survey reached 10,000 American consumers.

Here’s how Temkin Group breaks it down this year:

• USAA Insurance (+68)
• Cadillac dealers (+63)
• USAA Bank (+63)
• Apple Computer (+60)
• USAA credit cards (+60)

Everyone else falls somewhere below this. Four companies emerged with negative NPS scores. the lowest was Comcast (naturally), followed by Time-Warner Cable, Cox Communications (another cable company) and McDonalds. Wow, can someone speed up that disruption of the cable industry already?

A further takeaway from USAA’s strong showing, per the Temkin press release:

• USAA’s insurance, banking, and credit card businesses earned NPS levels that are 30 or more points above their industry averages. Five other firms are 20 or more points above their peers: Amazon.com, credit unions, Chick-fil-A, Apple, and Trader Joe’s.

Credit unions were apparently considered as a group. This all sounds great if you’re USAA, but Ron Shevlin, research director at Cornerstone Advisors, splashed some cold water on NPS scores for banking back in 2013, saying that because it measures intention, it’s not worth much:

Management ideas come and go.

Unless we’re talking about the net promoter score, which has come, but hasn’t left. It’s the cockroach of management metrics.

For the life of me, I can’t understand the continued interest in this metric, or as some delusional people call it, a system.

Intention to do anything — let alone to recommend a company one does business with, is useless.

Well, not entirely useless — it could be good marketing material.

Learn more about customer loyalty at Bank Innovation Israel on Nov. 1-3 in Tel Aviv. Register here.