Telecom customer satisfaction level dips: TRAI

As the mobile user base balloons, the overall customer satisfaction level is dipping across the country with only seven out of 129 licensees meeting the benchmark of 95 per cent, reflecting an abysmally low of 5.42 per cent operators meeting the criteria.

TRAI today released the report on Customer Satisfaction Survey of the Basic and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service Quality of Service (QOS) for the quarter ending 31st December 2006.

In Metro circles only Bharti-Mumbai, BPL-Mumbai, Reliance- Mumbai and Tata-Mumbai meet the benchmark and in A Circle Hutch-AP, Reliance Communications-AP and Tata- AP meet the benchmark. The poor performance ranges among all the operators in Punjab (69-85 per cent), West Bengal (75-88 per cent), North East (74-79 per cent) & Orissa (75-88 per cent) circles.

The customer perception of the parameter network performance is poor as only 20 out of 129 operators (15.5 per cent) meet the benchmark. In Metro Circle all the operators in Mumbai are meeting the benchmark.

On billing in the case of post paid segment, overall 48.76 per cent of the licensees achieved the satisfaction level of 90 per cent and in pre-paid segment the number of licensees who achieved this level was 81.39 per cent.

In Basic Service Overall Customer satisfaction Benchmark of 95 per cent, only 40 out of 61 or 65.58 per cent service providers do not meet the benchmark.