New Study Show Cable Customer Satisfaction Low: Opening For Phone Companies?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 16, 6:08AM EDT

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The new American Customer Satisfaction Index has been released, and one of the takeaways from the survey of 80,000 consumers is that they think service from the cable companies is really poor.

According to MarketWatch, one director of the poll said: To some extent, companies in those industries "can afford to have low satisfaction and still do well. Comcast is a good example: Low and declining satisfaction and pretty good financials because the buyer has limited power to punish the service provider."

Charter Communications (CHTR) had a score of only 55 out of 100 for customer satisfaction. Comcast (CMCSA) was at 56 (a sever percent decline from the prior year) and Time Warner Cable (TWC) had a score of 58. Satellite TV provider Echostar (DISH) did much better at 67.

The phone companies are not known for their service, but their wireless operations got good scores in the survey. Verizon Wireless scored a 71. If they can bring this level of customer relations to their fiber TV, broadband and voice services, they may be able to break cable’s hold on bundled services. With cable using VoIP to steal their customers, they could use the leverage.

Phone customer services operations involve tens of thousands of people, making a change in quality control difficult. But, it may be the key to marketing fiber services to consumers over the next few years.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.