This time each year we get a peek at how customers view the telecom industry, and for many years running it’s not been a pretty story. The annual American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) was recently published and shows ISPs still ranked at the bottom of all industries in terms of customer satisfaction.

The survey to create the ACSI rankings is huge and involves over 300,000 households and looks at services that households use the most,  considering 400 companies in 46 different industries across 10 economic sectors.

Customers really hate the big cable TV companies and big ISPs. The ACSI index ranks companies on a scale of 1 to 100 and the two lowest ranking industries are Subscription TV Services (62) and Internet Service Providers (62) – both with the same composite ranking as last year. All other industries have rankings in the 70s and 80s, with industries like breweries (85), TV manufacturers (83), soft drinks (82), food companies (82), and automobiles (82) at the top.

The companies ranked just above ISPs have much higher rankings and include the US Postal Service (70), Fixed-Line Telephone Service (71), and Social Media Companies (72).

The big cable companies rank from the low of Altice (55) to a high for AT&T U-Verse (69). The only other companies that rank higher than the industry average of 62 are Verizon FiOS (68), Dish Networks (67) and DirecTV (66). The biggest cable companies fare poorly – Charter (59) and Comcast (57).

Internet Service Providers didn’t fare any better than cable companies with the overall industry ratings at the same 62. The only three ISPs with rankings above the average are Verizon FiOS (70), AT&T Internet (69) and Altice (63). At the bottom of the rankings are Frontier (55), MediaCom (56), and Windstream (57). The big cable companies don’t fare well as ISPs – Charter (59) and Comcast (61).

This continues to be good news for competitive overbuilders that provide good customer service. It’s been obvious over the years that customers hate calling the big cable companies and ISPs because the process of navigating through live customer service is time-consuming and painful.

But these rankings go far deeper than that. At CCG we conduct surveys for our clients who are usually looking at entering a new market. We also interview a lot of telecom customers during the course of a year. The poor opinion of the big providers in our industry runs deep. I see customers that really dislike the process that many of these companies force upon customers who have to negotiate to get lower rates every year or two. People don’t like to find out that they are paying a lot more than their neighbors for the same services. People also dislike service outages which happen far more often than they should. In the last year, we had several headline-grabbing major outages, but more aggravating to customers are the small daily outages that can hit without notice. Households have come to rely on broadband as much as they do for other household necessities like electricity and water, so outages are becoming intolerable.

Competitive ISPs are not automatically better at customer service than the big companies. Some competitive providers also offer too many product options and are willing to negotiate rates with customers. Small ISPs can also fall into the trap of turning every phone call to the company into a sales pitch. Good ISPs are learning to deal with customers in ways tailored to each customer. I know I personally would be thrilled to have my entire ISP relationship be handled by email or text, as long as by doing so I could be assured that I’m getting a good price. Most ISPs still have a long way to go – although I doubt that any ISP is ever going to be liked more than beer!