The Commerce Commission’s Improving Retail Service Quality Final Baseline report identified billing as a significant pain point for consumers in the telecommunications market. Evidence suggests that consumers find billing documentation confusing and overcomplicated (both in layout and lack of clearly displayed information), and laden with jargon. This often makes it difficult for consumers to identify billing errors.
Perceptive were engaged to conduct research with consumers, which looked at bill comprehension, design, language, and calculations to establish if there were issues for New Zealand consumers when it came to understanding their telco bills. The study included an online forum, focus groups, and in-depth interviews, and covered the general population as well as minority and vulnerable groups including over 65s, Māori and Pasifika, low socio economic, people with English as a second language, and vision impaired consumers.
Key insights from this study included:
- Consumers can be passive about investigating price changes (month to month) and additional charges.
- Billing information varies significantly depending on telco and customer type.
- Certain segments of more vulnerable customers experience additional challenges when it comes to understanding their telco bill.
Perceptive has also been running a nationwide telco satisfaction tracker for the Commission since 2022 across both residential and SME markets, to understand New Zealand consumers’ satisfaction with retail service quality. The study measures satisfaction across a range of factors including overall service, functionality (i.e. coverage, speed, data quality etc.), customer service, and issue resolution. From this study, the Commission can track the measures over time to gauge whether retail service quality is improving to reflect the demands of consumers.