Sometimes, a satisfaction score just above “neutral” is a good thing.
A new survey of consumer satisfaction with various products and industries by YouGov contains a couple of findings that mirror other studies of consumer satisfaction with cable TV and mobile service: both those industries rank at the very bottom of satisfaction ratings.
That is not as bad as it sounds, though not by any means “good.” YouGov uses a 200-point scale, with +100 the highest and -100 the lowest, with a neutral score being zero. Cable and satellite TV scored 13, while mobile services scored 21. So both industries are slightly above “neutral.”
And that might be an improvement of sorts. Perhaps U.S. consumers do not “love” mobile or video service, but they are at least neutral, in this instance.
You might think consumer satisfaction with social media apps such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn would be dramatically higher than for Internet service providers, cable TV companies or telcos.
After all, those these service provider industries traditionally rank at the bottom of satisfaction ratings produced by the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.
But you would be wrong. At least according to ACSI rankings, consumers are less satisfied with the popular social media apps than they are with fixed telephone service and mobile phone service.
On average, those social media apps get higher satisfaction ratings than video entertainment providers and significantly higher satisfaction ratings than Internet service providers. ISPs scored 63, while video services ranked collectively as a 65 for satisfaction.
Time Warner Cable scored an even-worse 60, while Comcast scored 63. AT&T U-verse and DirecTV both scored a 69.
In 2014, Twitter got a score of 69, Facebook earns a score of 67 and LinkedIn has a ranking of 67 as well.
In other words, according to the ACSI ranking, consumers are only about as satisfied with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as they are with their ISPs and video providers. That puts satisfaction with those social media apps near the bottom of all industry rankings.
Major news portals earned an average score of 74.
Perhaps the most surprising finding is that the leading social media apps do not score much higher than ISPs or video entertainment providers, which have been ranked at the bottom of satisfaction rankings.
The top social apps can be used for no incremental cost, where Internet access service and video entertainment are significant cost items.
And one might draw a couple of conclusions. Consumers are relatively unhappy, but continue to buy because they need the products. Also, consumers are unhappy and feel they have no workable alternatives that are sustainably better than the others.
Also, there are differences between providers in the same categories. Verizon FiOS, for example, garnered much higher scores than most other ISPs in the ACSI study.
No comments:
Post a Comment