CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN VODAFONE

ABSTRACTThe Indian mobile phone market is highly competitive with more than 150 device manufacturers trying to attract theconsumers with their schemes and offers. Most of these producers focus their efforts on the low-cost feature phonemarket, which constitutes over 91 per cent of overall mobile phone sales, offering a huge scope for growth. Indiaadded 1.49 million GSM subscribers in July 2013, taking the total GSM user base in India to 672.63 million.Moreover, in June 2013 the GSM telecom operators added 2.33 million new subscribers, to take the user base to 271.6million at the end of the month, according to the data released by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).The GSM incumbentsBharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellularhave jointly crossed 70 per cent in revenuemarket share and had a 99.6 per cent share of the incremental revenues during the June 2013 quarter, as per thelatest figures released by TRAI.The mobile value-added services (MVAS) market is expected to reach US$ 9.5 billionin 2015, from US$ 4.9 billion in 2012, as per a joint research report by Wipro Technologies and the Internet andMobile Association of India (IAMAI).A total of 9.4 million smartphones were shipped into the country, registering agrowth of 167.3 per cent on an annual basis. India also witnessed 73.5 million mobile handset shipments for theJanuary-April 2013 period.

SURVEY REPORTTRAI or Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has done a commendable job over here; they have found out the truth about customer satisfaction of Telecom Services all over India!Between April to September 2013, TRAI asked some independent agencies to survey telecom customers from the states of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, MP, Gujarat, Odisha, Kolkata, Assam, Chennai and Kerala and have prepared an exhaustive report detailing the satisfaction results. The survey assessed the following benchmarks:Implementation and Effectiveness of various regulations, directions and orders by TRAI in the interest of customers andCustomer perception of telecom serviceThe survey basically covered the following areas of telecom services:

Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (Wireless)Basic Telephone Service (Wireline)Broadband ServiceTelecom Consumers Protection Regulations, Telecom Consumer Complaint Redressal Regulations and other TRAI mandated regulationsFor Delhi circle, Vodafone has beaten all telecom companies in terms of Provision of Service under Cellular Mobile Services with 96.7% satisfaction, closely followed by Airtel at 95.2% and Aircel at 94.2%.Whereas, for the same metrics, BSNL beats all private players in Punjab as it scores an impressive 98.4%. In Kolkata, Sistema Shyamis leading in Provision of Service with 95.8% results.

CELLULAR MOBILE SERVICEDelhi: Airtel with 95.9% satisfactionPunjab: Reliance with 97.7% satisfactionHaryana: Vodafone with 96.7% satisfactionAssam: Aircel with 99% satisfactionKolkata: Vodafone with 98% satisfactionOdisha: Tata Teleservices with 99.1% satisfactionChennai: Vodafone with 98.9% satisfactionKerala: Vodafone with 99.6% satisfactionGujarat: Vodafone 97% satisfactionMP: Vodafone with 98% satisfactionRajasthan: Airtel with 92.5% satisfaction

VODAFONE HAS EMERGED CLEAR WINNER

UNDER BASIC TELEPHONESDelhi: Airtel with 95.3% satisfactionPunjab: Reliance with 99.5% satisfactionHaryana: BSNL with 94.3% satisfactionAssam: BSNL with 93% satisfaction (BSNL was the only operator surveyed)Kolkata: Airtel with 95% satisfactionOdisha: BSNL with 89.6% satisfaction (BSNL was the only operator surveyed)Chennai: Airtel with 98.1% satisfactionKerala: BSNL with 98.4% satisfactionGujarat: Airtel 93% satisfactionMP: Tata with 97% satisfactionRajasthan: Airtel with 98% satisfaction

BASIC DATA

IS THE VODAFONE NETWORK BETTER THAN BEFORE?

Youve probably heard about the problems Vodafone has faced over the past few years, and chances are you know someone who was personally affected. Back in 2010, Vodafone technicians faced a perfect storm of technical issues combined with an unexpected increased demand on the network and, in short, the whole thing fell over.

These technical hurdles were overcome within weeks, but the damage to the Vodafone name in Australia has been damaged in a way that has taken years to repair. Australians love smartphones, so when a network turned our favourite tools into paperweights, the response was fierce and hard to forget.

But as we approach the four year anniversary of the Vodafail event, we want to know: is the Vodafone experience better than we collectively remember?

THEN AND NOWIt was Christmas 2010 when Vodafone's network became so unusable that it became front page news, though many customers had been experiencing these issues in the months leading up.

These customers described how their phones would report a strong signal, as in multiple bars of signal on the display, only to have calls drop out and data arrive incredibly slowly, if at all. Thousands complained, using official channels or by joining voices on a Vodafail site purpose built in response to the outages.

Similarly, Australian tech forum Whirlpool was flooded with complaints at the time, with a thread titled 'Vodafone Network Performance' attracting so many comments that it had to be recreated seven times over.

Reading back over the comments now you can see how frustrating the situation was for customers, people literally could not use their phones. But over time, you also start to see how and when the Vodafone experience started to improve.

MEDIAN UPLOAD SPEED

KEY VODAFONE NETWORK FIGURE (OCTOBER 2014)

Dropped called rate: 0.51%Success rate for all data sessions: 99.81%According to Vodafones General Manager of Marketing Stephen Smyth, the change in sentiment follows several billion dollars invested in a major network redesign and has taken Vodafone from a time when its network buckled under the weight of the smartphone revolution, to being ready for a future where Australians are demanding more and more mobile data each year.

Weve been investing, broadly about a billion a year, concentrated on the 4G rollout, which has been the dominant theme of the last 2 years," said Smyth.