Dodo the lowest of the low as satisfaction with ISPs hits five year low

By Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 02:01

Strategy

The latest Roy Morgan Research survey of customer satisfaction with ISPs shows that it fell to the lowest levels in more than five years during the year to September 2008, with Dodo rating well below any other ISP.

Roy Morgan Research surveyed over 13,000 Internet users and found that 66.3 percent reported that their service provider "mostly met" or "exceeded" their expectations. In 2003 the figure was 70.3 percent.

Until late 2005 Dodo was generally comparable to other ISPs but its satisfaction rating plummeted after late 2006 to a low of 47 percent in early 2008. Since then it has recovered slightly and stood at 53 percent at the end of September.

According to Howard Seccombe Roy Morgan Research telecommunications industry director, "Dodo still [is] a long way from service recovery after the unusually huge number of complaints filed by its customers to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman on complaint handling and billing codes."
Internode, Chariot and Westnet have consistently ranked ahead of other ISPs (although Internode as been included only since January 2007).

Roy Morgan reported that "The 'bigger players' lead the industry in failing to exceed or mostly meet their customers' expectations. BigPond's performance seemed to fluctuate over the last five years with now only 66.9 percent of their customers claiming BigPond has 'mostly met' or 'exceeded' their expectations back in 2003. This proportion of satisfied customers increased in 2006 to 70.2 percent but fell to 64.8 percent in the year to September 2008."

Optus was able to mostly meet or exceed the expectations of 71.6 percent of its customers in 2003 but the number of its satisfied customers fell to 64.3 percent in the year to September 2008.

Seccombe observes that "With BigPond holding the lion's share of the market (40 percent in the year to September 2008) and Optus being its most serious challenger (with 19 percent share in the year to September 2008), their performance brought down the satisfaction ratings for the total industry."

He says the smaller players are the ones stepping up and showing the greatest level of customer expectations met or even exceeded over the last 12 months. "It would be interesting to see if these small players will be able to extend their service to cover under-served areas and premises and still maintain the same level, if not, greater level of customer satisfaction."