By
Tim Young
The 2009 JD Power rankings betray an interesting situation. The results of their customer satisfaction surveys for the US market are divided into four regional categories (South, North Central, East, West). Under the category of telephone service providers, the top spots in every region go to cable operators. Cox in the East and the West. Bright House in the South. WOW! (Wide Open West) in the North Central.
So cable owns top marks for the voice market. And for television service? You guessed it. Telcos get top honors. Verizon FiOS in the East, AT&T U-Verse in the other three markets.
What can we make of this? Have these companies had it backwards all along? Have they just recently become aware that they’re actually much better at providing a service different from the one they’ve provided for years before expanding into a multi-play environment?
Hogwash.
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If you want to keep your customers… you have to find ways to continue to impress and excel. |
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and now that they have the option to switch to an altogether different type of service provider, they’re doing it. And they’re crowing about how good the change feels. In part, it’s a novelty effect. However, in an environment in which no one can afford to lose business, it’s a serious concern.
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The performance on the JD Power survey comes down to a couple of elements. Competitive players coming from a different traditional service model are willing to spend more to win a customer, and then give that customer more for less.
“Phone company reluctant to give you unlimited nationwide calling to anyone for 30 bucks a month? Switch to our digital voice! Bundle!”
“Tired of your cable operator giving you the shaft? Come over to our digital video service and we’ll treat you right!”
But it isn’t just the eager companies. It’s the customers, too. It’s the end consumer who has been given limited choice for a long time,
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If you want to keep your customers, it’s not enough to maintain. You have to find ways to continue to impress and excel. As much as we’d like to think that the customer/provider relationship is like a marriage, or even a friendship, it’s not. As Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton said, and as I quoted in this month’s letter from the editor, "There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."
Holding On
“Customer care” means an awful lot of things to an awful lot of people. It‘s a bit of a Rorschach test for software/solutions vendors. Ask a billing vendor, and they’ll say
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