The University of Michigan released its annual consumer satisfaction survey (called the American Customer Satisfaction Index) today. It’s actually a pretty big deal in the business community, since it’s one of the few ways companies can get an impartial take on how they are doing. Assuming they want one, of course.
The new rankings are noteworthy for several reasons, not the least of which is the way they were reported in Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper:
• Airlines scored worse than the IRS, and only the cable TV business scored worse than airlines. This was barely mentioned in The News, which ran a wire service story with a quote from third-worst ranked American blaming the weather.
• The single locally written story did mention that TXU fared quite badly — worst among utilities, but didn’t mention our other service-challenged unregulated monopoly, ATT/SBC. Its satisfaction rating has dropped every year since 1985, when it was first included in the survey. Note to ATT: This is because your service stinks, too many of your call center employees are rude or incompetent or both, and your services — like this DSL I’m trying to use this morning, with limited results — aren’t any better.
• Speaking of cable, Comcast, which used to be in this market, and Time Warner, which took Comcast’s place, dropped 6.7 and 4.9 percent. No mention in either News story.
Why the poor coverage? Who knows. Maybe everyone was on vacation. Maybe so many people have been laid off that there was no one to write it. Maybe no one there thought it was important. For what it’s worth, the Star-Telegram had only the same airline wire story. I’m open to suggestions.
