Telstra's mobile customer satisfaction plummets

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 April 2010 09:49

Your IT - Mobility

Despite all Telstra's claims to be customer focussed the latest Roy Morgan survey shows it lagging all other mobile operators in customer satisfaction by an ever-increasing margin.

Roy Morgan reports that the overall industry satisfaction has remained relatively stable. 67.9 percent of respondents in the six months to March 2010 were 'very' or 'fairly' satisfied with their mobile service.

This stability, however is the result of Telstra's ranking declining: Virgin lifted its ranking by 10.7 percentage points, Vodafone by 10.4 percent, 3 by 5.3 percent and Optus by 4.0 percent.

Telstra was the only major company to record a drop in satisfaction over the survey period and the only one with a below average ranking (60.3 percent). The average figure is weighted according to the number of subscribers of each of the mobile operators covered by the survey.

Telstra was bottom of the list back in March 2009 but all providers were in a 10 percent band from 62.7 to 69.9 percent. Since then the gap has widened considerably with all providers other than Telstra improving their rankings and Telstra's ranking declining.

Telstra however is determined to change things. A spokesman told ExchangeDaily: "Improving customer service is one of our top priorities and we want to be rated the best in customer satisfaction compared to the rest of industry by the end of FY2012."

Virgin Mobile has maintained its lead but now 80.2 percent of customers surveyed were 'very' or 'fairly' satisfied with its service. Virgin Mobile was followed by Vodafone (75.7 percent), slightly ahead of 3 Mobile (75.2 percent) which, since early 2009 has held the top spot ahead of or on par with Virgin Mobile. The survey results were compiled from over 13,000 responses.