When the “American Customer Satisfaction Index” was released in June, the numbers for the broadband industry were pretty ugly. JD Power’s latest research, released last week, once again puts us squarely in the face of this fact. Using interviews with 23,000 people between November 2021 and August 2022, the study found that U.S. consumers are less satisfied with their ISPs than they were a year ago. In addition, three of JD Power’s four major regions – East, North Central, South and West – have poor customer satisfaction scores for broadband services.
The survey scores the service satisfaction of residential ISPs on a 100-point scale and comprehensively refers to the following five dimensions:
●Billing and Payment
● Communication and promotion
● Service cost
● Customer car
● Performance and reliability
Eastern region
Verizon retained the top spot in the Eastern U.S. market with a score of 758 (the same score as last year), but the average score for the region fell from 714 to 707.
Midco, the cable provider, ranked highest in the North central region, but its score slipped to 734 from 754 last year, while the local average dropped to 700 from 712.
AT&T took the lead in the Western region, with a score of 729, up slightly from 728 last year, but the local average fell from 710 to 701.
In the western region
Compared with last year’s data, the strongest performance was in the southern US, which includes Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
The average score rose to 730 from 727 last year, and AT&T topped the charts with a score of 761, the highest overall score in the annual customer satisfaction survey.
North central region
Combined with the ACSI results released this summer, it is clear that the industry has not kept up with Internet customers’ expectations, but the discontent has also benefited newcomers.
T-Mobile Home Internet, for example, which has not yet been included in the report, ranked No. 2 in the ACSI report in its first year alone, striking a chord with home broadband users with its simple, straightforward pricing.
In the end, as JD Power managing Director Ian Greenblatt put it in a press release — customers are the least satisfied with the cost of service, so providing a consistent experience at a reasonable price is a big gamble for ISPs.
— With files from cnBeta Press
