/vnd/media/agency_attachments/bGjnvN2ncYDdhj74yP9p.png)
/vnd/media/post_attachments/1383abc4193249f5f30e7a1b01e7599d86946a1989e31c446743b71d65e49b19.gif){kind=small}
The annual VOICE&DATA-IDC Mobile Users’ Satisfaction Survey in its
third edition is quite different from earlier versions. Previously, the focus
was only on mobile users and mobile was synonymous with GSM. But with things
changing fast and the government approving of the unification of services,
VOICE&DATA has moved a step ahead and incorporated CDMA, the other mobile
technology used in India in the Mobile Users’ Satisfaction Survey. All this
has resulted in giving a larger dimension to the VOICE&DATA-IDC Mobile Users’
Survey as both basic and cellular players have been included.
From the subscribers’ point of view, GSM and CDMA are just two similar
means of communication. People are not unduly bothered about what technology
they opt for. With the coming of unified access (basic and cellular) license,
‘limited’ no longer holds much relevance.
Both basic and cellular service providers are today, directly competing with
each other and so the natural corollary was to incorporate both in the survey.
With this survey, VOICE& DATA has taken the initiative to rank both types of
service providers simultaneously using similar benchmarks.
In the overall category, BPL is the numero uno with an overall satisfaction
score of 79.8 percent while HFCL lies at the bottom with a 57 percent score.
There is a close fight between Idea Cellular and Hutch for the second
position, but for now, Idea Cellular is marginally ahead by 0.2 percent. Last
year’s winner RPG Cellular has done badly and is presently ranked 7th. None of
the CDMA service providers figure in the Top Five Club, and this should be
attributed to their relatively newer operations in comparison to the GSM turf.
Tata Teleservices has topped among the CDMA players and is followed by BSNL.
In the overall category, Reliance is at the bottom of the table with scores of
69.3 percent and 67.9 percent in CDMA and GSM respectively. Bharti is the only
integrated service provider which features in the Top Five Club. Regional
players like BPL, Idea, Aircel, Hexacom, RPG and MTNL have taken a lead in
comparison to larger players.
In this survey, VOICE&DATA has also compared the overall customer
satisfaction score with the long-term benchmarks set by TRAI on quality of
service in basic and cellular mobile telephone services in 2000.
It appears that service providers are lacking on all the fronts, and that too
by huge margins in many cases. What this implies is that somebody or the other
has to start enforcing the benchmarks.
Otherwise, customers will keep facing problems related to service provision,
customer care, network performance and value-added services (VAS).
Presently, India is number one in terms of mobile growth. Let us hope that we
will, in the future, have the best service providers in the world in terms of
quality of service (QoS).
------------------------------------
The Methodology
The VOICE&DATA-IDC Mobile Users’ Satisfaction Survey was conducted by
taking a sample of 2,217 mobile users spread across different circles. We have
gone for a city-based approach, covering 14 cities including all the metros
(Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai) as well as A, B and C category circles.
Five cities (Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune and Coimbatore) were covered
from the A category circles and four cities (Chandigarh, Meerut, Jaipur and
Indore) from the B category circles. Among C category cities, we covered Dhanbad.
| STUDY FACT | ||||||||||
|
About 82 percent of the respondents were GSM subscribers and 18 percent were
CDMA subscribers . They were selected on the basis of subscriber figures of the
ABTO and COAI for September 2003. We kept the prepaid vs postpaid ratio at
62:38. Though it might seem to be on the higher side, this ratio was fixed
because of the absence of a prepaid category in CDMA as of now. But this ratio
is likely to change in the future with prepaid subscriptions likely to begin on
the CDMA front soon.
On the basis of association (COAI and ABTO) figures, we have tried a similar
ratio in the A, B and C category circles. We took around 40 percent respondents
from metros, 36 percent from A circles, and 24 percent from B and C
circles. There are no published benchmarks on sex ratio. The survey, however,
indicates that 11 percent of current subscribers are female and an overwhelming
89 percent of the subscribers are male. The fieldwork for the survey was
conducted in October 2003.
In order to analyze the overall satisfaction of the subscribers with their
current service provider, we took up five broad areas that contributes to
overall satisfaction–presales/sales; network availability, performance, and
reliability; customer care; value-added services and billing integrity. By
considering overall satisfaction as a function of the above parameters, we
arrived at different weightages for these parameters for different circles.
These weightages indicate that for different circles, the priorities of the
respondents are different. For example, in the case of a metro circle, more
importance is given to network availability performance and reliability.
Similarly, in A circles, presales/sales marginally leads network availability
whereas in B and C circles, more importance is given to network availability.
Individual scores were compared with those set by TRAI as the benchmark for
minimum acceptable quality. These are as follows:
Above 95 percent for
presales/salesAbove 90 percent for billing and
above 90 percent for customer careAbove 95 percent for network
performance, reliability and availabilityAbove 95 percent for value-added
servicesAbove 95 percent for overall
customer satisfaction