DIRECTORY ENQUIRIES QUARTERLY REVIEW SHOWS 87% of the 118 DQ providers improve overall service.

118tracker.com has released the results of its quarterly review of the first three months of the UK deregulated DQ market. Improvements have been shown across the whole sector.

(PRWEB) January 21, 2004 --Now into the fifth month of the UK's de-regulated Directory Enquiries market 118tracker.com has been monitoring each provider and the market as a whole since August 2003.

With more than 40% of the one hundred and five 118DQ providers now subscribing to receive this monthly benchmark of service, quality, accuracy and costs 118tracker.com has provided a supporting hand through this critical stage of the market development.

Working completely independently from the 118 providers 118tracker.com has been mystery shopping each of the new services every month since de-regulation of 192 in August. The December report is an in-depth look at each provider and how they have faired in this exciting rapidly developing market and how some some very new faces made an impact on BTs exclusive DQ customer base.

The quarterly review covers all the new providers and includes numbers that have only just started receiving calls. The results are encouraging and show that;

23% of the providers shortened their average call duration
24% improved their average cost per call

Both 118800 and 118888 have increased their call charges, after spending millions of their advertising budgets on informing us all they were the cheapest services.
(118888 increased costs from 20p per minute to 25pence per call plus 20 pence per minute.118800 increased their charges from 19p per minute to a fixed charge of 29p plus 9p per minute.)

Share Communications have again shown some of the leaders in the sector how to communicate scoring an impressive 97.8% in communication and 92% in the ownership section of the benchmark. Share achieved the best score for overall service, in any one month.

The final league tables and rankings were based on all sections within the Performance House Service Mark (Benchmark framework); Welcome, Communication, Knowledge/Accuracy, Ownership and Close along with a measure of consistency across the first three months. The three leaders overall were;

1) 118262 Spitfire Network Services
2) 118247 Yell
3) 118500 BT

The full report can be purchased from 118tracker.com megan.smith@118tracker.com for 995 +VAT Subscribers to 118tracker.com have already received their full copy of the report.
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