Service outages due to severe winter weather have had a notable negative impact on customer satisfaction with telephone service performance and reliability, according to the J.D. Power and Associates “2011 U.S. Residential Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study” released last week.
The study measures customer satisfaction with both local and long-distance telephone service in four regions throughout the United States, based upon five factors: (1) performance and reliability; (2) cost of service; (3) billing; (4) offerings and promotions; and (5) customer service.
In 2011, satisfaction with performance and reliability—the most important factor—declined by 6% to 7.4 out of a 10-point scale.
“The brutal winter weather that plagued much of the country clearly took a toll on service levels,” said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates. “In fact, the proportion of customers who contacted customer service to report an outage jumped to 21% in 2011, from 12% in 2010.” According to the study, a key driver for mitigating losses in satisfaction is effectively managing customer expectations regarding service restoration.
Also of note, the study found that the use of Internet calling services—such as Skype or Vonage—increased from 16% in 2010, to 21% in 2011. Customers who use Internet calling services are “significantly less satisfied” with their telephone provider (622 on average, which is 14 index points below the industry average of 636) and are more likely to switch telephone providers (23% vs. the industry average of 16%).
Here are the provider results by region:
- East Region: Cox Communications ranks highest with a score of 659, Optimum Voice by Cablevision follows in the region with 647, and Verizon ranks third with 640.
- South Region: Bright House Networks ranks highest in the region with a score of 704, followed by Cox Communications with a score of 680.
- North Central Region: WideOpenWest (WOW!) ranks highest with 721, Cincinnati Bell follows in the region with 665, and AT&T ranks third with 631.
- West Region: Cox Communications ranks highest in the region with a score of 669. CenturyLink (639) and Xfinity by Comcast (634) follow in the regional rankings.
The “2011 U.S. Residential Telephone Customer Satisfaction Study” is based on responses from 20,761 customers nationwide who receive their local and long-distance telephone service from one provider. The study was fielded in four waves: November 2010, January 2011, April 2011 and July 2011.
For more, see this release.
