10 Quotes by Kirk Parsons

Given the number of major changes consumers have experienced over the past couple of years, the gap between customer expectations and actual service experience tends to widen as uncertainty from mergers greatly influences consumer perceptions. Case in point is the impact major market dynamics plays in future switching intent. Between 2004 and 2005, there has been a 5 percent increase in the intent to switch wireless carriers in the next 12 months -- a reverse from the past two years, where future switching intent remained stable.

There are so many more features and services now that (ease of operation) is becoming much more important. There'll be even more features five years from now.

It is clear that carriers need to manage their network to reflect their specific customer's usage patterns in order to provide the best possible call quality experience.

Looking at past data and previous mergers, typically you do find an increase in customer satisfaction. That's because what's happened is we're seeing artificial results for satisfaction based on an event, as opposed to real life experiences due to normal operations.

That's the main complaint that people have today.

They're out there selling the product, saying 'Here's the latest handset,' and pushing the latest services, and when you do that, you raise expectations. Customers expect it to be simple, which, technically, wireless isn't. Wireless is a very technical application and technology. It's not an exact science. It really takes a lot to deliver that call. But the industry hasn't done a very good job of explaining that side of the story.

It's encouraging to see that industry-wide service improvements, especially expanded service offerings and aggressive service plan pricing have resulted in more positive overall wireless service experiences. However, consumer expectations will continue to rise as cell phone users increasingly rely on the communication functions of their cell phones beyond voice calling.

Intuitively, you would think service should be improving over time, and there's some indication that it is. But, relative to what customers expect, service hasn't been keeping up with their expectations.

Clearly satellite companies are gaining momentum in the market, ... as indicated by our studies over the past four years.