JT slammed on mobile service

Friday 23 January 2015

Sure and Airtel have been given customer satisfaction scores around three times higher than JT’s in the latest mobile phone survey.

The survey showed that Sure and Airtel “satisfactory or highly satisfactory” ratings of 78%, compared to 40% with JT.

The Channel Islands Competition Regulatory Authority say that JT – the publicly-owned phone company – needs to “up its game” or it will start losing customers, but the company has hit back.

They say that sales were up a third in December, and that their own independent market research suggests that things are improving – and they say that the regulator has refused to share the methods behind the survey.

CICRA director Louise Read said: “It is encouraging that both Sure and Airtel are responding to customer’s feedback and they have again achieved good ratings from customers.

“Sure and Airtel’s achievements are in marked contrast to that of JT whose performance was the rated as the poorest in the May survey and has continued to decline since.

“I would urge JT to listen and react quickly and decisively to the feedback from its customers who ultimately have a choice of which mobile operator to use.

“Half of the JT mobile customers surveyed indicated that they were likely to change provider in the future compared to only 23% of Airtel customers and 12% of Sure customers.

“If JT is unable to improve the levels of customer satisfaction there is the very real possibility that it could see a significant number of its customers vote with their feet.”

But JT have responded by casting doubt about the findings.

CEO Graeme Millar said: “We are surprised and disappointed by the comments made today by the regulator, and have asked them to urgently share both their survey methodology, and the full data, rather than just a selected summary – something they have regrettably declined to do until all their surveys have been released.

“Until that methodology is published we won’t know how their respondents were collected: were they ‘self-selecting’, or specifically picked to match the make-up of the population? Did they recruit those respondents from groups likely to have a particular view of JT? Was it was possible for the same person to make multiple responses?”

Airtel-Vodafone chief executive Ian Campbell said the outcomes showed that the company had listened to its customers as virtually all of its measures had improved in the latest survey. He said: "These result show that the effort we have invested into putting our customers first is really paying dividends. They also prove that people appreciate being treated well."