Service quality has become a bigger reason to switch carriers than plan prices or more minutes in a plan according to a new survey released this week by market research firm Comscore Networks. Twenty-seven percent of survey respondents said that they would switch carriers to get better network coverage, almost twice the number who cited lower prices as the primary reason to switch (14%).
Half of cell phone users have tried text-messaging, according to the survey, and a significant chunk of users are using their phones? Internet capabilities to check e-mail (30%), send instant messages (22%), or send multimedia messages (15%). Customer loyalty is strongly tied to customer satisfaction, found Comscore. A full 76% of customers who described themselves as ?highly dissatisfied? with their carriers said they were likely to switch carriers at the end of their contract. Furthermore, 44% of the ?highly dissatisfied? respondents said that they would switch before their contracts ran out, despite high early termination fees. In addition, the numbers of users who are ditching their landline phones completely and going wireless appears to be increasing slowly, with 14% of respondents saying that they did not subscriber to a landline.
Source: Telecommunications Research and Action Center. http://www.trac.org