Customers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their cell phone service as the major wireless operators in the United States merge together, said a J.D. Power and Associates report. Overall satisfaction with a subscriber�s wireless provider dropped 10 percent in 2004, the largest year-over-year change since the U.S. Wireless Regional Customer Satisfaction Index Study was launched a decade ago. The findings provide a harsh contrast to the claims of the merging companies and their officials, who hope to smooth over the possible negative effects of industry consolidation on the consumer. �Given the number of major changes consumers have experienced over the past couple of years, the gap between customer expectations and actual service experience tends to widen as uncertainty from mergers greatly influences consumer perceptions,� said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates. The report, which surveyed 24,096 wireless users, found that forces like mergers, regulatory programs, and competitive expansion have made it difficult for carriers to meet customer expectations. The companies that underwent major mergers had greater drops in customer satisfaction.
Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul