Spice Telecom is 'King of the Ring': IDC Survey

GURGAON: This year's India Mobile Service Usage and Satisfaction Survey conducted by IDC India had a surprise for everyone - there are different service providers at the top position in the overall satisfaction ratings across the Metro and category A, B and C telecom circles.

"Though the industry average of satisfaction score for all the telecom players has gone up by two percentage points, Spice Telecom is the only service provider that has been able to cross the TRAI recommended benchmark of 95 per cent on overall satisfaction,” said Shailendra Gupta, manager, User Research, IDC India.

Is it good enough to have satisfied consumers?

No! seems to be the answer as per the recent India Mobile Service Usage and Satisfaction Survey, 2006. One of the key findings of the study was that a high 28 per cent of mobile users, even though satisfied with their current service provider are likely to shift for a better service or offer. Though the percentage of such disloyal customers/opportunists has come down from last year's figure of 30 per cent, it is still a large number to tackle.

This trend can be associated with the lack of loyalty, which is primarily contributed by the fact that no service provider is perceived to be very strong on Quality of Service (QoS). "Since customers are unable to distinguish between service providers on Quality of Service, scheme and offer become the key factors while selecting or shifting to a new service provider", Shailendra added.

Looking closely at specific touch points of user satisfaction, two concern issues continue to bother customers - Customer Care and Billing. However, there are positive signs of improvement on both as compared to last year. The average waiting time while speaking to a customer care executive was a little below three minutes.

“Across studies we have seen none of the brands being strongly associated with customer care in the consumer mind space. This could be one of the vacant positioning slots for mobile service operators", Shailendra further opined.

When probed on billing, nearly one in every six (18 per cent) mobile user was dissatisfied with the billing system of his/her service provider. This is way off the TRAI guideline that billing errors should be less than 0.1 per cent (though not strictly comparable, this is a benchmark that service providers should follow). The scenario has, however, improved slightly with lower numbers of customers reporting being dissatisfied compared to last year (23 per cent).

More than half the users with a billing related problem perceive 'wrong amount being charged by the operator' as the prime reason for dissatisfaction.

The perception on 'complaint resolution by the operator within three days' has improved significantly from 57 per cent last year to 75 per cent this year.

VAS (Value-added Services), the buzzword in the telecom space was one of the key focus areas of the India Mobile Usage and Satisfaction Survey, 2006.

SMS, roaming, and SMS-based VAS (ring tones and picture downloads) were the key VAS uses. The only area seeing growth in VAS usage is in the category B circles where users have taken heavily to downloading games, call forwarding and information services.

The India Mobile Usage and Satisfaction Survey, 2006 was conducted on a sample of 3,743 mobile users spread across Metro and category A, B and C telecom circles. The study covered all the four metros and 10 other major cities from a representative set of category A, B and C circles.

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