Qworst

Oh, joy! I get to live in a town serviced by the local phone company with the nation’s lowest customer satisfaction ratings.

Qwest’s customer satisfaction score, based on interviews asking about a consumer’s experience with a company, slipped 8 percent between the first quarter of 2001 and first quarter of 2002. That’s the eighth straight year it has fallen, according to the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index.
By contrast, the scores of local telephone companies overall were up slightly, and Atlanta-based BellSouth’s score of 74 on a 1 to 100 scale was 32 percent higher than Qwest’s 56. The U.S. average was 73, up from 72.6 from the fourth quarter 2001.

Qworst was, of course, quick to run around and gibber incoherently.

“No telecommunications company in the nation has done more to improve its service quality over the last two years than Qwest,” Qwest said in a lengthy statement. “Despite what the ACSI survey shows, our service is getting better and we’re confident our customers are recognizing the progress. . . . The ACSI study surveyed 250 of Qwest’s 25 million customers. Experts have many different opinions on why customers rate companies positively or negatively. Customer perceptions about service take time to change.”

Got all that? I think it translates to, “Listen to what we say, nto them. Besides, their sample size was too small. Besides, you can’t trust surveys. Besides, customers don’t recognize what good service they are getting.”

It may be that there are differences between what Qwest says it’s seeing in surveys and what outside surveys would pick up on. The former would focus on individual service tickets. The latter might include other factors, including billing gaffes and general service dissatisfaction.

There has been an increase in complaints from consumers to the Colorado PUC about Qwest , rising from 539 to 694 during March/April of 2001 and 2002.