• by Val Brickates Kennedy , March 27, 2014

Yet another reason for customers to cut the cord with their cable company: TV service providers ranked the lowest among 19 industries in providing a positive customer experience, according to an annual survey by Waban, Mass.-based Temkin Group.

Temkin asked 10,000 American consumers to rate their experiences with 268 companies ranging from airlines to investment firms to fast-food chains.  

In particular, Temkin asked them to rate their experiences based on whether they could do what they wanted to do, how easy it was for them to interact with the company, and how they felt about the interaction. Answers from the three questions were then averaged into an overall score. A score of 70% or higher was considered "good."

The overall score of cable and satellite providers? Fifty-four percent.

Some providers came close to crossing the "good" threshold. Bright House scored 63%, followed by DirecTV with 62% and Dish Network/EchoStar with 60%. They were followed, in descending order, by Cox Communications, Optimum (iO)/
Cablevision, Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications. Comcast ended up in the basement with a score of 47%.

Things didn't look much better on the company rankings list. Sector winner Bright House was 160th out of 268. Meanwhile, Comcast, which finished in the middle last year, sank to 260.







 






according to the following three criteria: functional, or how well they were able get done what they wanted to get done; accessible, or how easy was it in dealing with the comapany; and emotional, or how they felt about the interaction. The answers were then averaged into an overall ratings score.