Contact Center Solutions Featured Article

November 02, 2009

Customer Satisfaction with High-Speed Internet Up, Power Found

By David Sims

TMCnet Contributing Editor

Here is some more good news: Overall customer satisfaction with residential high-speed Internet service providers has increased from 2008, "primarily due to improvements in performance and reliability," a new J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Internet Service Provider Residential Customer Satisfaction Study reportedly found.

The study measures customer satisfaction with high-speed Internet service based on performance and reliability, cost of service, customer service, billing and offerings and promotions. It found that overall satisfaction with residential high-speed Internet service is 639 on a 1,000-point scale--"an increase of 22 index points compared with 2008," officials said.

The study also finds that customer satisfaction with performance and reliability averages 687 in 2009--a 43-point increase from 644 in 2008.

Why the improvements? Power officials said the decrease in the percentage of customers who report experiencing service outages, as well as improved customer perceptions of connection speed.

"In many instances a household's Internet connection acts as the backbone of its voice, video and information services," said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates, in a statement. "As households become more dependent on services provided via the Internet, eliminating outages and providing consistent connection speeds will become necessities in Internet service providers' business models."

Among customers who bundle services from their Internet service provider, the most popular option is a combination of video and Internet services, chosen by about one-third of customers who bundle their services. The percentage of customers who bundle voice, video and data services has increased from 16 percent in 2008 to 19 percent in 2009.

The proportion of customers who indicate they "probably will" or "definitely will" bundle their Internet service with other voice or video services in the next year also increased to 52 percent in 2009 from 43 percent in 2008.

As far as trends go, the study found that the proportion of high-speed Internet service customers who indicate they are loyal to their provider has increased by two percentage points from 2008, to 32 percent in 2009. Additionally, 66 percent of customers state they "definitely will" or "probably will" recommend their provider to others in 2009--an increase of four percentage points, compared with 2008.

And the strikingly good news: Among customers who contacted their service provider to resolve a problem or question, average hold times have decreased by nearly 30 seconds in 2009, compared with 2008.

Earlier this week, J.D. Power and Associates recognized Aetna for providing "An Outstanding Customer Service Experience" through its concierge customer service call center.

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

Edited by Amy Tierney

Related Contact Center Solutions Articles

Avaya is Now a Member of Open Visual Communications Consortium

Avaya, a provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, joined the Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC), a non-profit organization of worldwide communications technology companies working together to enable video collaboration across any network, vendor platform and device. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

Are You Using Key Performance Indicators of the Past in a Next-Gen Contact Center?

As the economy continues to lag (along with consumer confidence), many companies are finding it more important than ever before to retain the customers they have. In a commoditized world, smart companies understand that the best way to differentiate themselves from competitors is by offering top-notch multichannel customer service. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

Contact Solutions Deploys AnyPresence to Develop Mobile Customer Service Apps

In an effort to create next generation mobile customer service applications (apps), Contact Solutions, a provider of on-demand contact automation solutions and hosted interactive voice response (IVR) in North America, has deployed an enterprise mobile development platform - AnyPresence. [ Read More ]
05/23/2013

SYNETY Announces Integration of CloudCall with GoldMine CRM

Users of GoldMine CRM will now be able to access telephony functions directly from within GoldMine. To provide this capability, Synety has announced integration of its on-demand business telephony application, CloudCall with GoldMine CRM, which will allow GoldMine users to use CloudCall by doing a regular upgrade of the CRM software. [ Read More ]
05/22/2013

[ View all Contact Center Solutions Articles ]

Contact Center Solutions Glossary of Terms

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

Featured Whitepaper

Microsoft® Lync® in the Contact Center: Integrating with Customer Interaction Center™ to Provide a Barrierâ€free Customer Experience To implement contact center functionality, organizations using Microsoft Lync Server 2010 can follow the unified communications blueprint of open standards interoperability and integrate to a contact center solution of their choice. Customer Interaction Center (CIC) from Interactive Intelligence is a proven best of breed contact center solution that merits consideration ...

Featured Success Story

Interactive Intelligence all-in-one IP communications software suite integrated with Microsoft Lync helps Bentley save $200,000 annually.

Featured Product Demo

Contact Center Solutions Interaction Analyzer™

Interaction Analyzer™
Real-time word and phrase spotting. Alerting. Analytics. Scoring. Coaching. Watch how Interaction Analyzer turns every moment, of every past and present call, into data that lets you deliver an exceptional customer experience.