Customer Loyalty Among DBS Providers Decreased, Study Finds
Customer loyalty among satellite TV subscribers is on the decline, a J.D. Power & Associates survey on TV service satisfaction released Wednesday found. Still, the direct broadcast satellite providers fared better than several top cable companies. The study measured customer satisfaction for TV service providers and found overall satisfaction has declined to the TV industry’s lowest mark in the last five years.
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Dish Network and DirecTV customer loyalty fell to 40 percent this year, down 4 percentage points from last year’s survey. Still, DBS service ranked far above cable, whose customer loyalty declined 2 percentage points to 25 percent, the survey found. Decreased loyalty is partially due to the struggling economy as many consumers are keeping their eyes open for better deals, said Frank Perazzini, J.D. Power’s director of telecommunications. He oversees the study, released each year.
Regionally, DBS providers ranked well above the mean score in terms of satisfaction, though they were not the top provider in any of U.S. regions. In many cases, satellite TV is unable to compete with the telcos who have joined the video market, bundling TV with its telephone and Internet services, Perazzini said.
DirecTV ranked above Dish in each region. A combination of “having a fair price point in a crowded marketplace and a good product supported by strong service,” has helped DirecTV continually rank at the top of providers, said Perazzini.
Satellite subscribers are much more enthusiastic about their TV services than cable subscribers, the survey found. About 78 percent of satellite subscribers surveyed said they “definitely” or “probably” will recommend the service to others. That is 18 percentage points higher than cable subscribers, 60 percent of which said they were likely to refer others to their provider. Both are modest increases over last year’s findings, up from 72 percent for satellite providers and 55 percent for cable customers.
Like the cable industry, Dish and DirecTV are seeing fewer premium content subscriptions, though the decrease is much more pronounced for the cable providers, Perazzini said. The survey found only about a 1 and 2 percent decrease in the number of premium subscribers. The survey used responses from 28,118 U.S. consumers.