By Khali Henderson

Optimum Business ranks highest in satisfying home-based and small and medium business customers with telecommunications data services, while Verizon Communications Inc. ranks highest among customers in the large enterprise business segment, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Major Provider Business Telecommunications Study released this week.

The study measures customer satisfaction with providers of telecommunications data services, such as cable modem, DSL, T1, T3/DS3, Ethernet and frame relay. Providers are ranked in three segments: home-based businesses (companies based in a residential location with one to five employees), SMB (companies with two to 499 employees) and large enterprise businesses (companies with 500 or more employees). Five factors are used to measure satisfaction across all three segments: performance and reliability; billing; cost of service; offerings and promotions; and customer service. A sixth factor — sales representatives/account executives — is included for SMB and large enterprise businesses.

The 2009 study is based on responses from 4,252 business customers with telecommunications data services at home-based, small and medium, and large enterprise businesses in the United States fielded in January and April 2009.

With an index score of 654 on a 1,000-point scale, Optimum Business by Cablevision Corp. ranks highest in the home-based business segment (637), EMBARQ Corp. (629), Verizon (626), Qwest Communications International Inc. (625), AT&T Inc. (617), Time Warner Cable Inc. (589), Comcast Corp. (570) and Charter Communications (535). The average score for the segment was 601.

Optimum Business also ranks highest in the SMB segment with a score of 673, performing particularly well in four of the six factors driving satisfaction: sales representatives/account executives; billing; cost of service; and offerings and promotions.

Other carrier scores for the SMB segment were as follows: Cox (669), AT&T (632), Verizon (629), Comcast (621), Time Warner Cable (598) and Qwest (592). The average score for the segment was 627.

In the large enterprise business segment, Verizon ranks highest in customer satisfaction with a score of 694, performing particularly well in five factors: performance and reliability; sales representatives/account executives; customer service; cost of service; and offerings and promotions.

Time Warner Cable (677), AT&T (666) and Comcast (630) round out the large enterprise rankings. The average score for this segment was 672.

Improved Customer Service

After a sharp decline in satisfaction scores in the SMB and large enterprise business segments between 2007 and 2008, overall satisfaction in both segments increased in 2009, driven by improvements in the billing and customer service factors. Overall scores in the SMB segment increased from 600 in 2008 to 627 in 2009. Overall scores in the large enterprise segment increased slightly from 665 in 2008 to 672 in 2009.

“Providers have taken major steps to improve customer service since the 2008 study, and those investments are beginning to pay off,” said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications at J.D. Power and Associates. “Improved service tools and better-prepared customer service representatives have improved problem resolution during the first contact to 56 percent, compared with less than 40 percent in 2008.”

The study also finds a considerable decline in the percentage of SMB and large enterprise business customers who said they had difficulty understanding the customer service representative, which includes a lack of understanding of the problem by the customer service representative and issues with the clarity of a customer service representative’s response. Among SMB customers, 16 percent report having experienced this problem, compared with 23 percent in 2008. Only 13 percent of large enterprise business customers report having experienced this problem — down from 26 percent in 2008.

“The sharp decline in communication-related problems between customer service representatives and their clients is just another example of how strong internal training programs pay long-term dividends for business services providers,” said Perazzini. “These results are particularly impressive considering that there were no major differences in network outage performance between 2008 and 2009.”