SERVICE QUALITY AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION OF MOBILE TELECOM SERVICES IN TAMALE, GHANA

Abstract

The most worrying issue to customers of the Mobile Telecom networks today is service quality and customer satisfaction. A lot of studies have been done in this area with many targeting service quality issues from the service providers‟ perspective. This has resulted into several measures by these Telecom network companies to improve on the services they render. The National Communications Authority (NCA) has taken several steps in terms of warnings and fines as well as license revocation in recent times to deal with this issue of poor service delivery. This has however not led to the total satisfaction of customers of Mobile Telecom networks. This study assessed service quality and customer satisfaction of Mobile Telecom services in Tamale, Ghana. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques were employed in a mixed methods design. Key informant interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions were the major sources of data collection tools used for the study. A total of 378 customers of Mobile Telecom networks answered a questionnaire in this study. Two focused group discussions were conducted, one for vendors and the other for customers with each consisting of ten participants. Three key informant interviews were done, one each for the Mobile Telecom networks and the other for the industry regulator, NCA. The quantitative data in this study was analysed using the descriptive statistics function of SPSS while the thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data. The results show that customers perceived service quality and satisfaction in different ways. While most Vodafone customers were satisfied with the service they receive from their network service provider, most customers of MTN were not satisfied. The study finally brought to light, the challenges of both networks in meeting customer satisfaction in Tamale. The study concludes that, certain aspects of the operations of both MTN and Vodafone networks have to be improved in order to meet customer satisfaction in Tamale. The study recommends that customers should take advantage of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) to switch service providers whilst still maintaining their existing mobile phone number if they realize poor service delivery is not improving. It is recommended that, service providers take steps to improve service quality through effective application of new technology in the current trends in globalization so that the use of mobile phones in the study area would be enhanced as usage patterns expand to capture data with the emergence of smart phones.