A nation-wide survey by Voice&Data, CyberMedia's communications industry monthly, has revealed that Virgin Mobile topped user satisfaction in 2008, toppling major industry players such as Airtel, BPL, Idea, MTNL and Spice, which fell short of the benchmark set by telecom watchdog TRAI.
Consumer satisfaction levels have shown an improvement in 2008 compared to last year as five operators (out of 11) crossed the TRAI user satisfaction benchmark compared with three service providers in 2007, according to the online survey. A sample of 1,318 mobile users in India were taken on whom various factors were considered to determine overall user satisfaction.
BSNL and Vodafone were close for the second spot with scores of 91.96% and 91.97%, respectively. The two other firms to cross the TRAI benchmark of 90% are Reliance Communications and Tata Indicom. Last year's top scorer Aircel slid from 92.23% last year to 85.44% this year.
"A side-effect of the scorching pace of growth of the mobile phones in India is the rapid drop in quality of service. Five major players – Airtel, BPL, Idea, MTNL, Spice – have yet to touch their previous best score achieved in 2005. This is a cause for major concern," CyberMedia's chief editor Prasanto K. Roy said on the results of the survey.
"We see rapidly declining quality of service stemming from poor network availability and lack of customer care as the top issues for the mobile players. This is unfortunate because millions of low-ARPU users may tolerate poor QoS, it's the high-usage customers who bump up the ARPU that are likely to be a lot less tolerant of poor service. That is dangerous for the operators," he added.
The survey conducted during October-November 2008 recorded user satisfaction on five parameters – presales/sales, network availability, VAS, customer care, and billing.
Expectedly, each of the service providers exceeded the 90% user satisfaction benchmark with on the presales and sales parameter with Virgin Mobile topping the list followed by MTNL, leaving behind Airtel and Vodafone.
Users participating in the survey found BPL and MTNL's network performance most satisfactory with high scores of 98.2% and 97% respectively with Airtel and Idea just making the cut above the 90% mark.
On the Value Added Services (VAS) parameter BSNL topped the charts with only Idea and Aircel performing below the TRAI benchmark.
Interestingly on the customer care parameter, none of the 11 players, including the topper Virgin Mobile, could amass enough support from users to get past the 90%-mark. In terms of billing integrity, the four toppers were Virgin, Vodafone, BSNL and Reliance.
Top scorers for overall satisfaction levels in the SAARC countries are as follows:
Bangladesh Sheba Telecom
Bhutan Bhutan Telecom
Maldives Dhiraagu
Nepal Spice Nepal
Pakistan Warid Telecom
Sri Lanka Lanka Cellular
Mobile users across SAARC region voted SMS as the most popular application. 3G awareness was the highest in Bangladesh. |
