The old saying about absence making the heart grow fonder may not hold true for the telecom industry any longer. COVID-19 stay-at-home orders have many Americans spending more time in front of their TVs, computer screens, and personal mobile devices. And customer satisfaction ratings are going up when one might think they’d be going down.
In its latest report, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) shows a year-over-year increase in customer satisfaction with pay cable/satellite TV service, internet service providers (ISPs), and video-on-demand (VOD) service. Satisfaction with streaming video services is unchanged while fixed-line phone service dipped slightly.
Even with the improved scores, however, telecom services continue to be among the least-liked of all industries surveyed by ACSI. Against a weighted national average ACSI score of 75.4, only streaming video service tops that score with an average of 76. VOD, pay TV, wireline phone service, and ISPs score 68, 64, 70, and 65.
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Cable and satellite pay TV services get the lowest 2020 customer satisfaction score of all industries surveyed by ACSI. And that reflects an improvement of 3.2% over last year’s index score. Top scorers were Verizon Communications Inc.’s (NYSE: VZ | VZ Price Prediction) Fios service and AT&T Inc.’s (NYSE: T) U-verse service tied with index scores of 70. Comcast Corp.’s (NASDAQ: CMCSA) posted an 11% year-over-year gain, from an index score of 57 last year to 63 this year.
Among ISPs, Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast stand out again with scores, respectively, of 73, 68, and 66. All were above the average of 65 for the ISP group. But ISPs are second only to pay-TV providers as the least popular industry in the ACSI surveys. The good news, however, is that ISPs were better on 13 of 14 metrics in this year’s survey and unchanged on the other when compared to last year’s index.
In a first-time survey this year, ACSI asked about satisfaction with home WiFi. The group reported: “Across all aspects of the in-home Wi-Fi experience, customers using third-party equipment (routers and associated hardware such as extenders/boosters) are more satisfied than those using their ISP’s equipment.” Americans gave Netgear and TP-Link equipment the nod overall as both garnered index scores of 75. Verizon’s Fios equipment was rated most highly, with a score of 77.
Verizon and AT&T were the only fixed-line phone service providers to top the industry average score of 70 this year, down a point compared with 2019. Both giants posted index scores of 74.
Four companies beat the 68 average satisfaction score in the VOD industry. AT&T, Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH), Verizon, and DirecTV score 74, 71, 71, and 69, respectively.
The Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE: DIS) Disney+ streaming service got the highest index score of all streamers, 80 compared with an industry average of 76. Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) scored 78, while Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) Apple TV app (not Apple TV+) and Disney’s Hulu scored 77 to top the average. In its report, ACSI noted: “According to viewers, Disney+ is a standout across much of the customer experience and its original content rates best in class.”
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