- AT&T retained its top spot in ACSI’s fiber customer satisfaction ranking
- Among non-fiber ISPs, T-Mobile and Verizon’s FWA services led the pack
- Call center satisfaction “lags significantly” for all ISPs
The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) just released its annual Telecommunications Study, which provides a snapshot of how consumers perceive the big-name ISPs.
Among fiber-only providers, AT&T Fiber topped the customer satisfaction ranking for the second year in a row with an ACSI score of 80. Following AT&T was “all others” (77), which ACSI indicated is a smaller group of fiber ISPs, Verizon Fios (77) and Lumen’s CenturyLink Fiber (76).
AT&T’s placement wasn’t too surprising, according to ACSI Research Director Forrest Morgeson, as the company “continue[d] to score well in most individual aspects of fiber ISP satisfaction.” The operator in 2023 grew its fiber base by 1.1 million net adds.
Most of the ISPs listed saw their ACSI score either slightly increase or remain unchanged (except Kinetic Fiber and Optimum Fiber, both newcomers to the ACSI ranking). Lumen interestingly was the only ISP to see its fiber customer satisfaction decrease from 2023.
Morgeson explained to Fierce that Lumen has been transitioning CenturyLink customers to Quantum Fiber.
“There wasn’t a single CenturyLink area that seemed to have a large drop from 2023 but rather they experienced small drops in most areas,” he said.
“This is indicative of the bumps in any transition where there may be some confusion among customers and they are just a little less satisfied with their general experience.”
As for how non-fiber ISPs stacked up, two fixed wireless access (FWA) providers led the pack. T-Mobile’s 5G Home Internet and Verizon’s 5G Home Internet (another ACSI newcomer) landed in first and second place with ACSI scores of 76 and 74, respectively.
T-Mobile and Verizon were the only non-fiber ISPs with ACSI scores greater than 70. The remaining ranked providers mostly fell in the 60s range, with Optimum seeing the largest year-to-year increase in customer satisfaction.
All told, ACSI interviewed more than 25,000 customers at random between April 2023 and March 2024. In addition to rating customer satisfaction for both fiber and non-fiber ISPs, ACSI’s report also included ratings for streaming services and apps.
Room for improvement
ACSI also assigned ratings for different benchmarks of customer satisfaction. For instance, call center satisfaction “lags significantly” for both fiber and non-fiber providers.
“It is not uncommon for call centers to score low in many industries. ISPs are no different,” Morgeson said.
“Overall complaint handling satisfaction went down 10 points and that often has a hand in call center satisfaction,” he added. “Our data indicates a disconnect between customers’ actual experience and what they had expected.”