Mobile user satisfaction drops

Airtel, Tata Indicom achieve customer satisfaction level of over 90 per cent set as a benchmark by TRAI

There has been a large scale drop in Mobile user satisfaction with respect to most service providers during 2006 compared to the previous year, according to the fourth survey conducted by Voice&Data, a CyberMedia publication, on mobile user satisfaction. It is based on a sample base of 4,524 respondents across 51 Indian cities in 23 states.

According to the survey, the drop in satisfaction levels cuts across different circle and different cities irrespective of operators. Of the ten operators, only Aircel and Tata Teleservices have improved their satisfaction level in 2006.

Sharing details of the fourth mobile user satisfaction survey, Prasanto K Roy, chief editor of Voice&Data, said, "With the Indian telecom industry adding nearly seven lakh connections every month, the operators have not put in matching efforts to increase the satisfaction level."

Nationally, only two service providers, Tata Indicom and Bharti Airtel, clocked an acceptable customer satisfaction level of over 90 per cent set as a benchmark by TRAI. The services levels deteriorated in the metro circles compared to the A, B and C circles. In the A circles four operators exceeded the telecom regulator benchmark while in B and C circles, there has been an improvement with three operators posting a satisfaction level higher than the TRAI benchmark.

Among public sector service providers MTNL recorded the biggest drop in satisfaction levels. The private telecom players who recorded a drop in satisfaction levels included Bharti Airtel, BPL, Hutch, idea, Reliance and Spice.

The detailed results of the mobile user satisfaction survey will be published in the January 2007 issue of Voice&Data magazine.

Bharti Airtel, Nokia top of Mind Brands

The users voted Bharti Airtel as the top of the mind brand among service providers. Nokia emerged as the top of the mind brand in the handset category.

The online survey was conducted in October-November 2006 where varying weightage was assigned to pre sales/sales (17 per cent), network availability (20 per cent), value added services (11 per cent), customer care (14 per cent) and billing (38 per cent). This was followed by an independent telephonic validation of 50 per cent of the respondents to verify their authenticity. Around 98 per cent of the respondents picked up the call and there was less than one per cent error for almost all the questions validated during the process.

Nearly three-fourth of the mobile users were under 30 years of age, one-sixth of the users were in their 30s and only one out of 10 was above the age of 40. Of all the mobile users, 51.4 per cent were the chief wage earners.

One in five mobile user do not own vehicle

19.4 per cent of the mobile users do not own even a bicycle and 10.8 per cent owned a bicycle; scooterists and motor cyclists constituted 46.3 per cent ; and the car owners added up to 23.5 per cent.

About 43 per cent of the typical mobile users change a mobile phone within a year, 27 per cent in the second year and 8 per cent in the third year.

Roy said that one reason for the drop in satisfaction level is the sudden increase in the average waiting time to speak to customer care representatives, varying from 4.31 minutes for BPL to 9.25 minutes for Spice telecom.

SMS popular mobile service feature

The top three most popular mobile service features included SMS (91.8 per cent), Roaming (63.1 per cent), Ring tone downloads ( 58.4 per cent). Among the least popular services were ticket booking (18.9 per cent), contests and promotions (24.6 per cent) and mobile banking (28.6 per cent).

© CyberMedia News