Enterprises unhappy with traditional telecoms service quality

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Enterprises are largely dissatisfied with traditional telecoms services, which is leading to high rates of churn, according to a new Analysys Mason survey of enterprises worldwide.

The good news: telecoms operators can still take steps to keep customers satisfied to help defend revenue.

Analysys Mason interviewed 1,600 enterprises in eight countries about how satisfied they are with their telecoms services and providers. What they found was that in many high-income countries, enterprise revenue is falling for many telecoms operators. This makes retaining customers and selling them new services more important than ever, but efforts will be blocked if satisfaction levels are low.

The survey highlights four key findings:

1. Many enterprises are unhappy with telecoms services, but small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are especially dissatisfied.

SMEs awarded a positive Net Promoter Score (NPS) to only 4 operators out of 21 for mobile services. The average NPS for operators serving SMEs was –5. Customers of large enterprise aren’t much happier – the average NPS for operators serving large enterprises was just 3. Companies such as Amazon regularly have NPS above 60, and telecoms operators are falling well short of these standards.

2. Low levels of satisfaction are leading to churn.

Operators that can improve the satisfaction of their customers should see a reduction in churn. Our analysis suggests that operators can reduce intended churn by 1.6 percentage points for every 10-point increase in their NPS.

3. AT&T, Optus, Orange and Verizon were the operators with the highest level of customer satisfaction.

These four operators received better NPSs than their competitors. Operators that perform well in customer satisfaction surveys should use this in their marketing.

4. Operators need to improve the quality of their traditional connectivity services if they are to compete in the ICT market.

Enterprises that are dissatisfied with their core telecoms services are not buying additional services, like security or cloud services, from their telecoms operator. For example, only 7% of SMEs that were dissatisfied with their operator were buying security solutions from it, compared to 14% of those that were satisfied.

“Enterprises are less price sensitive than consumers – operators have wide scope to differentiate on aspects of customer services and network quality as opposed to just on price,” said survey report author and research analyst Terry van Staden.

“For telecoms operators, there’s a double whammy with unsatisfied customers – they are more likely to churn and less likely to buy new ICT services,” added Tom Rebbeck, co-author and Research Director of Analysys Mason’s enterprise and IoT research.

A summary of the survey results is available here.

 

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