A recent report from J.D. Power indicates that the television, Internet, and telephone service provider industries are seeing small customer experience improvements, based on their customer satisfaction ratings.
According J.D. Power 2014 Residential Television Service Provider, ISP Satisfaction, and Residential Telephone Service Provider studies, which rank service providers in four regions of the U.S. according to their performance and reliability, cost of service, programming, communications, and customer service, overall customer satisfaction for service providers in the three markets has increased in the past year.
On a scale that goes up to 1,000, the study revealed that, compared to results from 2013, consumers' satisfaction with performance and reliability for television service provision have risen 17 points from 726 to 743. Furthermore, the studies show, people are experiencing fewer service quality problems and have shown, to that point, that only 31 percent of customers have experienced picture freezing in the past three months – down from 38 percent overall in 2013 – and only 28 percent of customer reported experiencing a television outage in 2014 as compared with 30 percent in 2013. This trend continues with Internet service providers experiencing increase ratings from 663 in 2013 to 700 in 2014 and with residential telephone providers experiencing gains from 749 in 2013 to 754 in 2014.
Kirk Parsons (News - Alert), senior director of telecommunications at J.D. Power, said telecoms are becoming smarter about how they provide services in ways that include the management of different service plans and types of equipment.
"The ability to provide a high-quality experience with all wireline services is paramount as performance and reliability is the most critical driver of overall satisfaction," Parsons said. "While customers may be leveraging the same network or connection across multiple services, their experience can be different given the equipment type, connection to the home, service plans used and the different activities performed on each."
Concerning television provider satisfaction rates, study results show that DirecTV and Verizon FiOS tied for first place in customer satisfaction in the East region and that AT&T (News - Alert), Verizon FiOS, and DISH Network ranked highest in the North Central, South, and West regions, respectively. The rankings shifted a bit with ISP satisfaction rates with Verizon (News - Alert) taking home the title in the East and South Regions, WOW! scoring highest in North Central, and AT&T scoring highest in the West. Finally, concerning telephone service provision satisfaction, AT&T ranked highest in the East, WOW! in North Central, Bright House Networks in the South, and Cox (News - Alert) Communications in the West.
Parsons comments about satisfaction underline the ability of successful companies to understand their customers and their products well. When they can deliver their products in a manner that fully meets their customers' wants and needs, they should receive loyalty and higher overall satisfaction rates in return. For those that deliver piecemeal service and do not connect properly with their customers, they may find themselves left off such rankings lists and suffering for customer retention.