Ofcom rolls out performance scorecards to help you find the best phone and broadband deals

As part of a new initiative from the UK Regulators Network (UKRN), Ofcom has joined forces with regulators from the water, energy and banking sectors to release a set of performance scorecards for their respective industries.

The scorecards are designed to help broadband customers (among others) choose the best providers, and for the providers themselves to see areas where they can improve across a range of metrics such as customer satisfaction, service quality, value for money and complaints.

Data for these metrics have been collated from a range of sources including figures from the Institute of Customer Services UKCSI and net promoter scores (NPS).

READ NEXT: Best broadband 2020 

NPS is calculated as the proportion of consumers who are promoters of their supplier/provider minus those who are detractors. Each company is then awarded a score of between -100 and 100 and any score above 0 is considered “good,” while a score of 50 and above is considered “excellent”.

The Institute of Customer Services compares customer satisfaction levels between the Telecoms & Media, Banks & Building Societies, Energy and Water sectors.

Overall, Telecoms & Media ranked second among these four sectors in July 2019, with Banks & Building Societies coming out top and Ofcom’s specific scorecards reveal that telecoms customers are largely happy with their service, with satisfaction in the mobile, broadband and landline markets at 93%, 86% and 83% respectively.

 The scorecards also capture metrics on perceptions of value for money and the number of complaints. The former includes perceptions of the value for money among mobile customers, where between 82% and 97% of customers are satisfied with the value for money they receive from their supplier.

In telecoms, the complaints figure is reported directly to the regulator and is recorded per 100,000 subscribers, the figures across mobile, landline and broadband are also all below 1%, with the highest figure being 0.1%.

READ NEXT: Best mobile networks 2020

“Understanding the experience of consumers across our sectors is a vital part of improving consumer outcomes,” said Jonathan Oxley, CEO of UKRN.

“I hope this project helps consumer groups and other interested parties recognise where consumer needs can be best served and we intend that these performance scorecards will help regulators and regulated companies determine where to focus action; increase the incentives for suppliers to improve performance and provide regulators and policymakers with indicators that will help identify and address any common challenges across sectors.”

The full scorecards for mobile, broadband and landline are below and can be found in more detail here.

The arrows represent a significantly higher or lower score than the previous year at the 99% confidence level for market research results. The scores marked in green are significantly higher than the overall sector average while those in red are significantly lower.

This reveals that TalkTalk scored particularly poorly for customer satisfaction and NPS and Plusnet had the most complaints despite having an NPS score of 25.