Digital TV Customers Look For Quality And Value In Providers

The study looks into the key factors in customer loyalty, questioning 2,500 consumers of the USA’s largest cable and satellite providers on a range of areas, including value, service, programming, quality, usability and technology offerings such as on demand and bundling of internet and telephony.

TNS reveal that only 44% of cable subscribers were committed to their provider, compared to 75% of satellite customers claiming to be committed to their operator.

Commenting on the findings, George Shababb, chief operating officer of TNS Media Research said: “Considering the level of at-risk subscribers, cable companies face an estimated $1.2 billion revenue risk if they do not address the areas where they are falling short of customer expectations.”

He continued: “Simply pushing digital services and new technologies at customers isn’t enough to guarantee loyalty. Cable operators need to harness the data from set-top boxes and couple it with customer satisfaction data so they are better positioned to make the changes needed to maximise revenues and minimise churn.”

TNS asserts that all providers need to focus on key tenets for customer service to improve loyalty and retention.

In the UK, the latest figures from Ofcom estimates that there are over 5.5 million free-to-view digital households, consisting of both Freeview viewers and free-to-view digital households, with the total number of homes using free-to-view digital satellite thought to be around 445,000.

The total number of subscribers to cable television is shown to be just under 3.3 million, with digital cable increasing by just over 30,000 and now accounting for just over 2.5 million of the total.

Ofcom’s findings reveal 3% of households continued to subscribe to analogue cable during the first quarter of 2005, bringing the total proportion of households receiving some form of multi-channel television to just over 64.9%.