P6 moves up from 13th to 4th in ISP Olympics
The ISP Olympics: Customers Judge
Their ISPs
By Max Smetannikov and Rebecca Wetzel, Inter@ctive
Week
September 18, 2000 7:04 AM ET
By Rebecca Wetzel
The Olympic fanfare begins this week in Sydney,
coinciding nicely with our fourth annual Inter@ctive
Week Internet Service Provider Customer Satisfaction
Survey. In the survey, we ask our readers to judge their
business ISP's performance to determine which ISPs are
Olympic class, and which need to train harder, pumping
bits or lifting helpdesk phones. This year's gold medal
winner for overall customer satisfaction is Mindspring,
with the silver going to its newly adopted sibling
EarthLink. Customer votes bestow the bronze medal on
last year's second placefinisher, WorldCom's UUnet
service, with PSINet ranking fourth, followed by The
Microsoft Network in fifth position.
MindSpring and EarthLink owe their winning positions to
high scores in customer service responsiveness,
technical support, and price even while maintaining
separate networks. According to Veronica Murdock, vice
president of customer service at EarthLink - the name of
the recently combined Mind-Spring and EarthLink -
EarthLink has made customer service a priority.
"We took the best practices of both MindSpring and
EarthLink and combined them. We have been integrating
the call centers throughout the past year, and we have
applied new practices together. We also have a new
relationship management program and a new support
portal. This has allowed us to retain customers and
create better customer satisfaction," Murdock says.
Four of the top five ISPs also receive Most Improved
Player awards for bettering their overall satisfaction
rankings. MSN showed the most striking improvement,
moving from 16th position last year to fifth this year.
PSINet improved from 13th to fourth, and EarthLink
jumped from ninth to second.
Unfortunately, an ISP can never rest on its laurels. Last
year's satisfaction score winner BellSouth dropped
precipitously in its overall ranking from first to 14th, and
Concentric Network, which ran in the middle of the pack
last year, dropped from 11th to 19th.
The dubious distinction of the player whose game needs
the most attention goes to Verio. Last year, Cable &
Wireless was in that unenviable predicament. This year,
too few C&W customers responded to the survey to
reach statistical critical mass. The general consensus is
that C&W lost market share during the intervening year,
a consequence of customer dissatisfaction due in large
part to the problem-plagued transfer of customers from
MCI to C&W accompanying WorldCom's MCI
acquisition.
In addition to the 20 ISPs rated individually, hundreds of
regional ISPs were also rated - but by just a few
customers. Fully one-third of respondents use a regional
as their primary business ISP. These providers include
such notable names as The Dayton Ohio Network and
MosquitoNet of Fairbanks, Alaska. Overall, the
customers of these regional ISPs show high satisfaction
on important metrics such as customer service and
price. Despite dire predictions of the demise of regional
ISPs through consolidation, don't write off the little guys.
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