Posted: 21st Jun, 2010 By: MarkJ

Two UK ISPs , Sky Broadband (BSkyB) and Virgin Media , have come top in a study of customer loyalty and experience by
Satmetrix, besting their chief rivals AOL , BT , Orange , TalkTalk and Tiscali (Tiscali is now a fully integrated part of the TalkTalk brand).
John Abraham, General Manager of Net Promoter programmes for Satmetrix, said:
"A company’s ability to deliver a superior customer experience relative to its industry peers is a critical indicator of customer retention and new customer acquisition through positive word of mouth.
These benchmarks allow companies to see how consumers rate them relative to their competitors when it comes to customer loyalty. It also allows consumers to get insight to which businesses focus their efforts on creating a better customer experience."
The rankings were based off more than 24,000 survey responses from European consumers, including more than 8,700 from U.K. consumers who had purchased products or services from each company within the previous 12 months.
Consumers also rated companies on various aspects of customer experience including product or service features, customer service and overall value, allowing Satmetrix to analyse drivers of loyalty and performance gaps.
Internet Service Providers: Less than half a Net Promoter point separated Virgin Media and Sky in the ISP sector, both scoring between 9 and 10% beating competition from: AOL, BT, Orange, TalkTalk and Tiscali. Although comparatively lower than other industries, a score of +10% was 21 points higher than the sector average of -11% and an impressive 56 points ahead of the brand delivering the worst customer experience.
Sadly the survey only included those 7 providers. Curiously O2 appears to been excluded, which is critical considering that they usually come top of most studies into the largest ISPs. However O2 did come top for mobile network operators.