Forrester’s annual Customer Experience Index was released this week, and Apple’s iTunes didn’t fare all that well.

Forrester ranks 133 companies across 14 industries, according to Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek. All firms are rated by 4,600 regular U.S. customers according to three principles: Whether the service met customer’s needs; how easy it was to work with a firm, and how enjoyable a customer’s interactions were with the company.

Topping this year’s list is bookseller Barnes & Noble, with TV and Internet provider Charter Communications coming in dead last for the third year in a row. Forrester VP and Principal Analyst of Customer Experience Bruce D. Temkin notes a surprise in this year’s ranking, with iTunes coming in at number 46.

While not the worst ranking on the Customer Experience Index, number 46 barely gets by with a “good” rating in the survey. BusinessWeek notes that iTunes is “often held up as being the cornerstone of Apple’s innovation,” noting that it was iTunes that enabled the company to “disrupt the music industry so thoroughly.”

However, customers find iTunes overwhelming, confusing and often “less than entirely elegant.” BusinessWeek seems to believe that iTunes “doesn’t live up to the sophistication of the company’s other lauded design and branding elements” -- citing Apple’s overall position at number 35.

Temkin is quick to note that the customers who participate in the survey are “casual users” and not power users or Apple “tech geeks.” But given the popularity of the entire iTunes/iPod ecosystem, we wonder how accurate such a survey could really be...