UK ISPs See Rising Broadband and Phone Satisfaction as BT Suffers Decline

The National Customer Satisfaction Index – United Kingdom (NCSI-UK), which is based on interviews with more than 6,799 customers during Q2-2014, has revealed that satisfaction with the country’s biggest four broadband Internet Service Providers is up 3% to an NCSI score of 69 out of 100. Overall Virgin Media came top and BT was bottom.

The good news is that ,as of this report, UK ISPs are no longer the “worst category” tracked by NCSI, with heavily criticised Energy Providers perhaps rightly taking the bottom spot. In addition, British ISPs also outperformed those in the United States (69 vs 63), which have sunk to a record low at the bottom of the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

Unfortunately the NCSI-UK report only covers the markets largest broadband providers, although it does offer a vague aggregate score for “all other” (smaller) providers and they achieved a chart topping 73 (up 3% from a year ago). Otherwise Virgin Media came out top among the big boys with a score of 71 (up 4%), while BT scored bottom with 65 and recorded the only decline of -2% and TalkTalk hovers just above but improved by 6%.

The story for Fixed Line Telephone providers was similar, with the “all others” category topping the table on a score of 78 and BT coming bottom with 66 and once again also showing the only decline of -1%. Meanwhile Sky (Sky Broadband) took the top spot for the big operators with a respectable score of 74 (up 6%).

The report also reveals that ISPs have improved in most of their service areas, with the exception of call centres that remain “the worst touch-point between customers and provider” and saw no improvement. But overall the picture appears to be a positive one.