Named – UK Mobile Operators that Cause People the Most Stress

A new survey from Broadband Genie, which used a special tool to analyse and estimate the consumer stress levels of 344,243 tweets that were aimed at UK mobile operators, claims to have identified those that had the most stressed customers. Apparently, customers of iD Mobile are the most frustrated.

The data was gathered from the Twitter handles of the UK’s major broadband providers between March 2020 and March 2021. After that it was analysed by the TensiStregth tool, developed by Mike Thelwall, Professor of IT at Wolverhampton University.

The new tool essentially attempts to estimate the stress levels in short texts, based on the classification of words related to stress, frustration, anxiety, anger and negativity. The scale used to measure stress levels is approximately as follows: 1 (not stressed), 2 (low stress), 3 (moderate stress), 4 (high stress) and 5 (very stressed).

However, examining bulk data like this could overlook some of the all-important context in tweets. Likewise, the study cannot accurately confirm whether all the tweets were from actual customers. On top of that the results for some providers, such as ASDA Mobile and Lebara, should be taken with a pinch of salt due to the extremely low amount of data samples involved.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting study, partly because we haven’t seen it done for mobile operators before, but you probably shouldn’t take it too seriously.

Overall, the study found that customers of iD seemed to be the most frustrated, with over a quarter (26%) of tweets categorised as stressed. At the opposite end of the scale is giffgaff, which had the lowest proportion of stressed tweets (9%).

A giffgaff Spokesperson said:

“Whilst we are delighted to see giffgaff rank as the least stressful mobile network provider, we appreciate that this is no time to rest on our laurels. Before giffgaff was even a business, we had our community – so we’ve always been member-led and continue to stick to our value and promise of being run by you.

We have dedicated resource to answering our member queries and we aim to respond to all social media comments within 15 minutes. Meanwhile the fact that our members are so involved and help out could make people feel a greater sense of reassurance that giffgaff is built on a genuine and caring community.”

The scores are an improvement compared to last year’s study into the most stressed broadband customers (here). Broadband ISPs averaged 24% of stressed tweets, while mobile providers are lower at 17%.