Small firms 'squeezed out' on telecoms customer care
Published: 02 Jun 2006 11:30 BST
A significant proportion of small businesses are concerned about the service they receive from their mobile and Internet providers, an Ofcom Consumer Panel survey has found.
The survey, published on Thursday, shows a drop since 2004 in the numbers of small businesses who consider they're getting "good value" from their Internet and mobile services.
Small businesses are also shown to be more dissatisfied with these services than residential consumers, with a quarter showing dissatisfaction with their landline and Internet services, and a third showing dissatisfaction with mobile services.
"Small businesses are very price-conscious," panel chairman Colette Bow told ZDNet UK on Thursday. "Quite a significant proportion, 13 percent, are not sure they're on the right deal with their mobile suppliers," she said, adding that she expects Ofcom to encourage small businesses to give their suppliers a "hard time" about the issue.
This dissatisfaction may stem from the attitudes of mobile operators to small businesses. Jeremy Green, principal enterprise mobility analyst at Ovum, told ZDNet UK that the operators' desire to "squeeze down costs" means a small business account is "not going to be treated like a business account".
"A few years ago [the operators] thought their future profitability would be assured by new revenue sources from multimedia... but most of that has failed to materialise, so they have adopted an attitude of keeping a much closer eye on costs," he said.
"That means streamlining the customer care procedures. You might get more sophisticated account handling if you're a larger account, and if you're smaller you'll be up against the effect of that streamlining."
Green also argued that the Consumer Panel's figures may represent a "storm in a teacup", pointing out that Ovum's own research indicates small businesses "seem to quite like their mobile operators".
"In terms of the call origination market, it's a fairly competitive market," he said. "I would have thought there must be better areas for Ofcom to get involved in as a regulator."
The survey found that 16 percent of small businesses had concerns about Internet security, a figure largely unchanged since 2004. It wasn't clear whether these concerns relate to the security of the business' own Web site or those of other parties.
Interestingly, it appears that 39 percent of business mobile users only use their phones to make and receive calls, with the majority of the rest also using the phones for text messaging.
Only one in four business mobile phone users use their devices for applications such as accessing the Internet or indeed anything other than calls or texts.
Bow said the concerns raised in the survey were fairly generalised, but would prove a useful starting point for further investigation.
"What this research does is point you towards problems rather than give you an answer. We're going to take it away and talk to small businesses about their specific concerns," she said.
On the consumer side, the survey shows that older and low-income households are under-informed about the potential benefits of communications technology.
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