Long or imprecise service window times can be the bane of a telecom customer’s in-home service experience, and while the problem is well known, many companies still struggle in this area of customer satisfaction, according to a new J.D. Power study released Thursday.
In its first ever U.S. Telecom In-Home Service Technician Study, J.D. Power evaluated residential customers’ overall satisfaction with on-site technician visits for installation of broadband, phone and TV services, based on six single-attribute factors.
The factors include: quality of work; timeliness of completing work; knowledge of technician; courtesy of technician; professionalism of technician; and scheduling an appointment.
Based on a 1,000-point scale, Dish Network came out on top in overall customer satisfaction, netting a score of 885.
The second, third and fourth spots were nabbed by Charter Spectrum (860), AT&T/DirecTV (859), and Verizon (856), respectively.
In fifth place was Comcast’s Xfinity, which with 849 points, scored slightly under the industry average of 853. Cox Communications took the number six spot with 840 points, followed by CenturyLink with 837. Frontier Communications brought up the rear, netting 810 points on the in-home service customer satisfaction index.
Unsurprisingly, a key finding of the study was that shorter service windows were associated with higher customer satisfaction. Customers who experienced service windows of one hour or less ranked scheduling appointment satisfaction 49 points higher than those with a two-hour window, and 104 points higher than those with a four-hour window.
Arriving on time and on the right day also understandably adds to customer satisfaction levels. Customers whose technician showed up on time reported overall satisfaction of 871, but that figure drops to 819 when techs arrived early, and plummeted to 683 when they arrived late.
J.D. Power found that overall 12 percent of technicians arrived outside of their service window, with 5 percent showing up early, and 7 percent arriving late. Of the 7 percent of technicians late for their appointment, 20 percent were at least two days late.
“The more flexible telecom companies can be with offering service windows that work with their customers’ schedules and the more precise they are at hitting those target times, the higher levels of customer satisfaction they can realize,” said Peter Cunningham, Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Practice Lead at J.D. Power, in a statement. “Though this may seem like common sense, there are huge performance gaps among the different providers. Those that are getting it right have developed strong skill sets in both managing customer expectations and delivering on them.”
Satisfaction was also considerably higher when customers had the option to schedule their appointment online, with those who used a website unassisted scoring 834 points, compared to 761 among those who used a phone.
Customers also appreciated a heads-up that the technician was on their way, with scheduling appointment satisfaction 138 points higher than those who were not contacted prior to arrival.
Of course, getting the problem fixed on the first visit is also key to overall satisfaction, with scores 112 points higher for those who didn’t need a repeat visit. About 26 percent of customers indicated all of their issues were not fixed the first time around. Those customers were more than twice as likely to say they “definitely will” or “probably will” switch providers than those who only needed one technician visit.
