LOYALTY TEST

Telecom companies have done quite well in engendering customer loyalty, according to an annual study conducted by Brand Keys, a New York-based consulting firm. Four telecom companies ranked in the top 10, with Sprint and Nokia ranked second and third, followed by Motorola in fifth and AT&T in seventh. Also in the top 20 was Qwest Communications at 18. Others that made the ranking of 145 companies include BellSouth (38), SBC Communications (44), Ericsson (50), WorldCom (53), Verizon Communications (70) and Alcatel (104).

But that loyalty could have been earned for the wrong reasons, said Brand Keys President Robert Passikoff, who stressed the study goes far beyond measuring brand awareness and focuses in larger measure on a company's ability to meet the expectations of its customers. “Brand awareness is a 1950s model through which you try to create a lot of noise,” he said. “Customer loyalty measures the impact of the noise. It's like asking people if they've heard of Tang, then asking them whether they had some for breakfast.”

Ranking high in customer loyalty is a good thing, Passikoff added, because it generally ties directly to profitability. But sometimes it's simply a case of a company that has been around for so long that customer trust is unshakeable — AT&T is an example, Passikoff said — or a company that has become synonymous with a particular technology. “If there's anyone out there who doesn't know the name Sprint, it's because they just landed in a space ship.”
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