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Optimum, Verizon Come Out on Top in Customer Survey

June 19, 2009

According to J.D. Power, Optimum Business ranks highest in satisfying home-based and small to mid-size business customers with telecommunications data services, and Verizon's tops among customers in the large enterprise business segment.


After a sharp decline in satisfaction scores in the small/mid-size and large enterprise business segments between 2007 and 2008, overall satisfaction in both segments have increased in 2009, J.D. Power officials say, "driven by improvements in the billing and customer service factors." The results are in the latest J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Major Provider Business Telecommunications study.

With an index score of 654 on a 1,000-point scale, Optimum Business by Cablevision ranks highest in the home-based business segment.

The study found that Optimum Business performed well in performance and reliability, and picked up kudos for offerings and promotions. Silver and bronze went to Cox Communications (637) and EMBARQ (629).

Optimum Business also took top honors for the small/mid-size business segment with a score of 673, performing particularly well in sales representatives/account executives, billing, cost of service and offerings and promotions. J.D. Power characterized these particular categories as "four of the six factors driving satisfaction." 
 
In the large enterprise business segment, Verizon ranks highest in customer satisfaction with a score of 694, performing particularly well in performance and reliability, sales representatives/account executives, customer service, cost of service and offerings and promotions. Time Warner Cable came in second with 677.

In more good news, the study found a "considerable decline" in the percentage of small/mid-size and large enterprise business customers who said they had "difficulty understanding the customer service representative," which includes a lack of understanding of the problem by the customer service representative and issues with the clarity of a customer service representative's response.
 
Sixteen percent report having experienced this problem, compared with 23 percent in 2008. Among large enterprise business customers this went from 26 percent to 13 percent.

"The sharp decline in communication-related problems between customer service representatives and their clients is just another example of how strong internal training programs pay long-term dividends for business services providers," said Perazzini. "These results are particularly impressive considering that there were no major differences in network outage performance between 2008 and 2009."

David Sims is a contributing editor for ContactCenterSolutions. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for ContactCenterSolutions here.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi



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