Business and institutional views on telecommunication services

Tamus, Antalné – Miterliné Kovács, Edit

Keywords: information society, measurement of customer satisfaction, comprehensive service portfolio, buyer value, competitive advantage

Our investigations proved that businesses and institutions favour customer-centred service behaviour, that customers value a comprehensive service and that this serves as a competitive advantage for providers.

- The relationship to society of actors in the organisational market, including telecommunication companies, can no longer be understood simply in terms of the traditional employer, but involves an overarching, higher level of cooperation.

- Telecommunications providers aiming for business success have to employ strategies that place the fulfilment of the target market’s total requirements, centre stage.

- They must overcome the negative attitude and misplaced belief that only providers specialising in specific services can fulfil expectations at the required level.

- According to the research results, those questioned were most satisfied with the activities of MATÁV, PanTel and T-Mobile. This result shows that while MATÁV is maintaining its position as market leader, small, “cheeky” alternative providers and mobile companies are threatening its position.

- Guaranteeing a comprehensive service portfolio is not only important for large businesses and institutions, but also for smaller, less capital-intensive businesses, as this provides the best opportunity to utilise related discounts. This means that, besides serving their existing customers, it would be useful for telecommunications providers targeting this segment to develop new, advantageous, special service packages for small and medium sized enterprises,

- Telecommunication companies should further improve and perfect their complaints handling processes to provide faster troubleshooting and, above all, should implement relationship marketing with existing and new customers.

- A further lesson of the research is that a suitable price-value ratio, professional troubleshooting and correct invoicing are what matter first and foremost to representatives of the target market segment. As the strength of the link between the expectations of the business and institutional segments is positive and the order of the two is strongly correlated, that is, the expectations of the two main segments are almost identical, it would be justified for telecommunications providers to conduct their future activities focusing on these primary aspects.

Our primary research points to most dissatisfied customers being prepared to change providers primarily for the sake of lower rates. They would leave their current provider for an average 18% reduction in rates. Telecommunications providers aiming for business success should be motivated by this fact to offer even higher levels of service, in order to maximise existing and potential customers’ satisfaction with the most important factor, from their viewpoint, the price-value ratio.

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