Survey suggests 20% of islanders not satisfied with mobile service

Tuesday 25 September 2018

Channel Islanders might generally be satisfied with their mobile phone service - but around one in five of us are still finding reason to complain, a new survey has found.

According to CICRA's latest Telecoms Customer Satisfaction Survey, 20% of residential mobile customers decided to complain about their provider in the last 12 months.

The research which covered services offered by JT, Sure, Airtel and Jersey Homenet/Ytel found that Airtel customers were more likely than others to have had a reason to complain in the past year.

The most common reasons behind potential complaint were billing, pricing or payment issue, and the service not performing as it should.

Overall 80% of mobile customers were satisfied with their services, but this percentage was lower than in the UK were 91% of customers are satisfied.

Sure scored the highest for overall satisfaction with its mobile, broadband and landline services compared to its competitors. The telecoms provider also came out on top for customer recommendations with its mobile, broadband and landline customers most likely to recommend to a friend.

Pictured: Charlotte Dunsterville, Sure’s Chief Customer Officer.

Charlotte Dunsterville, Sure’s Chief Customer Officer, said: “At Sure our customers are at the heart of everything we do and we monitor the feedback we receive from them to continually improve our products and services. It’s great to have these independent results to support our own customer satisfaction research which we conduct through regular surveys and customer panels.

“The results of this latest CICRA survey are good news for local telecoms customers and we’ll strive to maintain these levels of experience but we recognise there is always room for improvement. Sure is constantly investing in our business to ensure our customers can benefit from the latest technology to enhance their digital experiences and we’re always working to be honest, open, fair and most importantly trusted,” said Ms Dunsterville.

As part of the survey, islanders were also quizzed about their broadband and landline services. The majority of customers were satisfied with those services with overall satisfaction standing at 72% for broadband and 76% for landline services. Again, those results were lower than the UK average.

Pictured: Tamara O’Brien, JT’s Head of Marketing, Brand and Distribution.

Tamara O’Brien, JT’s Head of Marketing, Brand & Distribution, said the team at JT are working hard to deliver "the best possible networks, products and
service for our customers." She added that they will take into account the data collected for the survey to improve services. She said: "It was heartening to see positive comments about the quality of the fixed line and mobile networks, which customers report they are pleased with, and that is really important for the future of the Channel Islands. The speed of Jersey’s full fibre broadband network in particular seems to be a real plus point. 

"We’ve also listened to previous feedback about putting together a really good ‘bundle’ of services option to deliver better value, and that appears to have gone down well too. Clearly there are also useful points about looking for other ways to improve the value for money we offer, so we’ll take a further look at that. Meanwhile, our ongoing work to make our customer service the best it can be also needs to continue.”

Louise Read, Director of the Channel Islands Competition and Regulatory Authorities (CICRA), commented: "Living as we do, in the Channel Islands, the need for robust communications is very important. It's vital that telecoms operators locally deliver high quality, choice and value for money services, and offer proper support when things go wrong. 

"Our use of mobile and broadband services has been evolving rapidly and it's essential that our home phones, mobile and broadband services are reliable and perform well. This survey enables customers to compare how different operators are performing and make properly informed decisions when choosing their service provider. It also gives telecoms operators a clear incentive to improve their service quality, particularly when their performance is benchmarked against UK providers."