By BUILDER Magazine Staff. Looking for a broadband provider? Consider this: A recent Harris Poll found that while 45 percent of broadband subscribers wanted advanced services (music, streaming video, games, home networking), more than 90 percent wouldn’t consider buying those services from their current provider. The reason was lousy service. Many respondents reported that they could get technical support only after calling the provider several times; 20 percent said it took too long to solve their problems; 7 percent had problems the provider never solved.
But service providers “must find a way to sell additional services to their subscribers” to stay profitable, says David Hawley, an analyst with the Yankee Group. So if customer service doesn’t improve, they may have trouble staying alive.