Telecoms Sees Uptick In Customer Satisfaction Scores

U.S. telecom companies saw an uptick in customer satisfaction scores for the first time in four years, with Philadelphia-based Comcast seeing the biggest jump of all.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index released the results of its annual, wide-ranging survey gauging consumers' feelings about their telecom services Tuesday, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports.

The survey found Comcast’s Xfinity brand was the “most improved” overall, and especially saw a “staggering improvement” in satisfaction with its pay TV service.

The ACSI, a national economic indicator, gathers its data through interviews with 500,000 U.S. consumers and releases industry-specific results throughout the year based on a 100-point scoring system. This telecom survey was based on interviews with 46,504 telecom customers picked at random and contacted through email between April 15, 2019 and March 20, 2020.

This year’s survey, which comes as the Covid-19 crisis has caused many consumers to rely on their at-home broadband and cable services more than ever, found “many telecom companies are stepping up their game, bringing better service to their customers compared to a year ago.”

The survey is broken down between pay TV services, internet service providers, fixed-line telephone services, video on-demand services, and video streaming services.

Overall, satisfaction with pay TV services rose 3.2% — although the industry as a whole continues to have the lowest ranking among all 46 industries the ACSI reports on.

Nine of 11 companies that offer pay TV saw improvements in their satisfaction rankings, topped by Comcast's 11% increase in its satisfaction score. The improvement still leaves Comcast in the middle of the pack compared to competitors with a score of 63. Verizon’s Fios and AT&T’s U-verse TV topped the list with scores of 70, followed by Dish Network (65) and AT&T’s DirecTV (64). Comcast’s Xfinity TV service did rank above Cox Communications (62), Charter Communications (61), Mediacom (60), Frontier Communications (58) and Altice’s Suddenlink (56).

Comcast ranked higher among its competitors for its broadband services, coming in third after Fios and AT&T. It saw the most improvement in scores, with an 8% increase from 61 to 66.

Overall, consumer satisfaction for all ISPs rose 4.8% to an average of 65.

A big part of Comcast’s increase came down to customers' higher ranking of their experience at Xfinity retail stores, which the company has overhauled in recent years to have a more high-tech, boutique-like setting.

The ACSI report also highlighted Comcast’s continued success in its own broadband metrics, having grown high-speed internet revenue by 9.4% year-over-year in 2019 and adding 1.4 million broadband customers.

For the first time this year the ACSI survey included a ranking of customer satisfaction with in-home Wi-Fi service, where Comcast came in second after Verizon.