ISPs rank lowest in telecom industry for customer satisfaction
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A new consumer survey confirms that Internet service providers (ISPs) rank the lowest among telecom industry players for customer satisfaction.
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While streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video continue to please customers with the overall quality of their services, the ISPs that deliver the binge-worthy content are more often viewed with ire.
According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), ISPs have declined in 3.1 percent in customer satisfaction. One of the key reasons for the decline is a lack of choice: More than half of Americans have only one choice for high-speed broadband.
Every major ISP deteriorated in satisfaction, save for Comcast's Xfinity Internet, which remained unchanged in its satisfaction score. In general, customers are unsatisfied with overall data transfer speed and the variety of internet plans available.
Like ISPs, pay-TV providers also turned in notably lower satisfaction scores, garnering low marks for ease of understanding the bill and the ability to minimize service disruptions and outages.
"If you look at retail, airlines, and many other industries, companies like to reward customer loyalty, offering perks or discounts for doing business with them," David VanAmburg, managing director at the ACSI. "Telecom is the exact opposite. In many ways, loyalty is punished because subscription TV is focused on customer acquisition and offering the best deal to lure customers away from competitors. In the long run, that doesn't leave customers very satisfied."
Meanwhile, video-streaming services enjoyed relatively high marks for ease of understanding the bill and website satisfaction, and overall performance and reliability. However, some customers are still irked about not having access to current-season TV shows and new movie titles.
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