BT and CWC rate poorly with corporates

Telecoms Industry Forum finds Energis and General Cable at the top of the heap.

BT and Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) left UK corporate phonef the heap. customers unhappy last year, according to figures published by the Telecoms Industry Forum.

The latest Comparable Performance Indicators report, spanning July to December 1998, puts the UK's two largest operators in the dog house for service to businesses, in particular over fault repairs and complaint handling, while rivals such as Energis and NTL fared much better.

Backed by telecoms watchdog, Oftel, the quarterly report compiles customer satisfaction information gathered by the main UK telco operators.

Just 26 per cent of CWC's switched business customers said they were 'very satisfied' or 'fairly satisfied' with the operator's complaint handling, and just 65 per cent were happy with the fault repair service; only an average of 64.9 per cent of repairs were completed on time.

CWC said it has worked intensively over the last six months to improve customer service, including a £100m investment in customer service. It claims it has halved the average time to install a business cable.

"We're very confident we'll see an improvement in the next CPI figures," said a CWC spokeswoman.

BT fared slightly better, with 47 per cent of customers very or fairly satisfied with complaints handling and 83 per cent satisfied with fault repairs - 90.8 per cent of which were completed on time.

Best of the bunch for switched business customers was Energis, with just 1.3 faults per 100 lines over the period, and 94.2 per cent of repairs completed on target. Comtel, Global One and Telewest all repaired less than 80 per cent of faults on time.

For dedicated lines, General Cable had the highest customer satisfaction rate and the lowest number of reported faults.

BT had the highest number of customer fault reports from both leased-line and switched business customers. It said 6.4 faults were reported per 100 switched lines and 14.6 per 100 leased lines for the half-year.

CWC customers reported 1.8 faults per 100 switched lines and 9.3 per 100 leased lines.

The Forum's report is available free of charge on the web at www.telco-cpi.org.uk.