Who is best at serving customers?

The Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) issued its 2013-2014 Annual Report [full document pdf] this morning and the great news was that complaints declined 17% year over year, despite growth in total customer connections. As CBC reported:

Covering everything from landlines to cellphones, and both wireless and wired internet providers, the CCTS is the independent agency tasked with sorting out who’s wrong and what the compensation should be when paying customers have problems with their telecom services.

The CCTS saw a total of 11,340 complaints in the past year. That’s down by more than 17 per cent from 13,692 the previous year. And that’s the first time the number of complaints has actually decreased in the seven years the agency has existed.

So why would Open Media write: “Big Telecom customer mistreatment is still running rampant, as official report confirms 11,340 complaints in just 12 months”?

“Big Telecom” is the Open Media euphemism for Bell, Rogers and TELUS: “The Big Three – Bell, Rogers, and Telus, along with their subsidiaries – accounted for 77% of all complaints.” Open Media continues: “Independent providers received considerably fewer complaints – the largest, Wind Mobile, accounted for just 4.5% of all complaints.”

As the Globe and Mail reported, it is worthwhile looking beyond the raw data. For example, one might ask what percentage of total customers these companies represent.

Let’s take a look at the numbers. In TELUS’ latest quarterly report, it reported 7.9M wireless subscribers, 1.4M internet subscribers and 3.2M phone lines for a total of 12.5M connections. Rogers has 9.5M wireless, 2M internet and 1.2M wireline for a total of 12.7M connections. Bell (BCE) has 7.95M wireless, 3.2M internet and 7.3M wireline for a total of 18.5M connections. Videotron has 550,000 wireless subscribers, 1.4M internet and 1.2M wireline for a total of 3.2M connections. WIND Mobile recently reported having 750,000 customers.

Videotron had a modest increase 1% – just 3 more – in total complaints year over year. All 4 of the other companies experienced reductions in the number of complaints received by the CCTS. But it is noteworthy that TELUS, with 12.5M customer connections had only 951 complaints to the CCTS – 0.0076% – a decline of about 25% year over year. WIND Mobile also had a significant improvement in its complaints (-20%), but still received 510 complaints – 0.068%. The decrease in total complaints regarding WIND Mobile is more significant since its customer base grew by 25% in the same period.

Bell had a complaint rate of 0.025%; Rogers had 0.026%. Videotron’s 294 complaints represents a rate of just 0.009%.

Shaw’s 3.3M connections generated just 97 complaints – 0.0029%; SaskTel has 1.3M customer connections who generated just 91 complaints – 0.0067%; MTS had 120 complaints from its 1M connections – 0.012%.

One would expect more complaints to be generated from wireless services – there are significantly more wireless subscribers than wireline telephony or internet services. There are significant differences between all of the service providers – integrated and independent, although you wouldn’t know that based on media releases from consumer groups.

We need better reporting of the numbers. It seems to me that complaint rates are a metric worth examining.

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