Customer satisfaction ratings released by Ofcom for customer service show an improvement for TalkTalk since February 2011. Ofcom looked at customer satisfaction levels with consumers over a three month period from July to September 2011, for those providers with more than 4% market share, and asked whether they had contacted their provider in the previous 3 months. The research looked into landline phone, broadband, mobile and pay TV services.
The primary reason for contacting a landline provider was for a customer to change their package or service. Ranked based on satisfaction, Sky came top, followed by BT, TalkTalk then Virgin Media. Sky saw particularly high satisfaction levels, significantly above average, with customers pleased that their issues were taken seriously and goodwill payments offered where appropriate. Dissatisfaction with TalkTalk decreased since February 2011 from 24% being dissatisfied to 18%. Virgin Media saw their customers less satisfied than average, and there was an increase in the number of issues not being satisfactorily resolved, with a decline also in customer loyalty.
The biggest issues in broadband were connection speeds and changing package. No single provider came out above or below the market average. TalkTalk saw continued improvements with complaints handling falling significantly, and now lower than average. The table below compares the satisfaction levels compared with February 2011.
| Satisfaction | Neutral | Dissatisfaction | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 11 | Sep 11 | Feb 11 | Sep 11 | Feb 11 | Sep 11 | |
| Sky | 60% | 64% | 24% | 21% | 16% | 15% |
| Orange | 76% | 58% | 13% | 26% | 11% | 16% |
| BT | 57% | 57% | 23% | 24% | 20% | 18% |
| Virgin Media | 56% | 57% | 24% | 24% | 19% | 19% |
| TalkTalk | 52% | 55% | 25% | 29% | 23% | 17% |
Customer service satisfaction levels
Whilst orange seemed to be the only provider to see a decline in their customer service satisfaction levels, they do see a 70% satisfaction overall, putting them in-line with Sky and Virgin, and the company stated they were very happy with the figures.
"We're really pleased with our ranking in this latest report, as we've been working hard to substantially improve the level of service we provide our customers over the past 18 months, which has included the transition to a new network with minimal customer disruption.
The broadband sector has traditionally been renowned for underperforming on consumer satisfaction against that of other telecoms services, so we're making it our mission to change this. Moving forward, we're continuing to make a number of significant service improvements to our own offering, the result of which we believe will help us to really deliver on providing a best in class service experience."
Orange spokesperson
With a mandatory code of practice for communication providers in force, which details how they must deal with complaints, Ofcom will enact a monitoring and enforcement programme to check compliance with the code in early 2012. Any breach could see fines up to 10% of relevant turnover, which could be a hefty fine, although the regulator is unlikely to fine to this level.
staff member)
6 months ago
Would someone kindly explain what this means [quote]Overall satisfaction with customer service by fixed broadband provider
No single provider was above or below the market average.[/quote]