The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Telecommunications Study 2020-2021 found that overall satisfaction with ISPs remained consistent between 2020 and 2021, but that there was some shifting within the group. Customer experience benchmarks dropped and third party in-home WiFi providers were more popular than ISPs.
ISP satisfaction remained static at 65 on a 100-point scale between the two years. Within that top line number, there were changes. The top five: AT&T Internet (68 to 71, 4% change year over year), Verizon Fios (73 to 71, -3%), Comcast’s Xfinity (66 to 67, 2%), Cox (61 to 63, 3%) and Charter’s Spectrum (63, unchanged).
Customer experience benchmarks also showed some shifts—but in this case they went in the negative direction. For instance, the quality of remote apps satisfaction went from 79 to 76, the reliability of mobile apps went from 77 to 76, website satisfaction went from 75 to 73, courtesy and helpfulness of store/contact center went from 76 to 72. Only two of 14 categories didn’t show a decline. Video streaming quality and call center satisfaction were unchanged at 71 and 61, respectively.
In the in-home WiFi service category, third parties mostly scored better than ISPs. Third parties were tops in home WiFi range (74 to 71), multiple simultaneous connection capabilities (74 to 70), avoiding service loss (73 to 70) and upload/download speed (72 to 70). The security category, at 74, was even.
The top five in-home WiFi offerings in overall quality were AT&T Internet and Verizon Fios (both at 74), Xfinity (73), Cox (71) and Spectrum (69). The top in-home WiFi gear from third parties were TP-Link (75), Netgear and ASUS (both at 73) and LinkSys (72).
The survey was based on 37,907 randomly chosen customers who were contacted via email between April 1, 2020 and March 29, 2021.
Earlier this week, HighSpeedInternet.com released its 2021 ISP satisfaction study. EarthLink finished first in the four categories measured, which were speed, price, reliability and customer service.
