Tiscali tops customer satisfaction survey

Tiscali is ranked highest in overall customer satisfaction among eight of the leading broadband ISPs in the UK, a survey has found.

The ISP emerged victorious in the third annual Broadband ISP Satisfaction Study by consumer analyst firm JD Power and Associates.

Tiscali jumped into the top spot from third position last year with a score of 668 points out of 1,000. Virgin Media came second with 660, and Sky came third with 657.

This year's results were close run, with only 42 index points separating the highest and lowest scoring providers.

However, satisfaction levels have fallen by nine points to an average of 645 as many providers performed below average in customer service/technical support, and performance and reliability.

"The 2007 study found that call waiting times when customers contact their ISP rose to an average of 17 minutes before initially speaking with a representative," said Caspar Tearle, director of service industries research at JD Power.

"Complaints to customer service departments have risen again in 2007, and now outnumber customer service-related questions for the first time (52 per cent vs. 48 per cent).

"With customers of most suppliers paying from their own pocket for these calls, these high levels of complaints come as no surprise."

This decline may be attributed to increasing financial pressures on providers as broadband customers now spend an average of £21.10 per month, down from £25.91 in 2006.

Furthermore, the average broadband speed has increased nearly 40 per cent to 4.87Mbps, up from 3.5Mbps in 2006, but service disruptions have also increased slightly.

Some commentators have contested the results, pointing out that Tiscali consistently fares poorly on broadband comparison sites such as ISPreview and ThinkBroadband, and highlighting email outages earlier in the year.