Title: Improving internet service providers competitiveness: ISP's perception regarding customer satisfaction

Authors: Sina Shokoohyar; Sajjad Shokouhyar; Anae Sobhani; Sepide Naseri

Addresses: Erivan K. Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph's University, Philadelphia, PA 19131, USA ' Department of Management and Accounting, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Human Geography and Planning, Utrecht University, Vening Meineszgebouw A, Princetonlaan 8a, Room 6.68, 3584 CB Utrecht, The Netherlands ' Department of Management and Accounting, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: The needs and quality expectations are not the same among different customers; therefore, internet service providers (ISPs) companies should cluster their customers and allocate their limited resources to the customers with the highest priority for the organisation. This study focuses on the quality of services or in other words, meeting the ISP customers' real needs. Customers of an ISP company in Iran are clustered by using a combination of clustering techniques (i.e., K-means, Kohonen and TwoStep clustering algorithms), and then fuzzy Kano model is used to assess the customer satisfaction. A fuzzy Kano questionnaire was distributed randomly between 1,000 customers and then needs and requirements of each cluster were reviewed and clustered. Satisfaction increment index (SII) and dissatisfaction decrement index (DDI) are calculated for each cluster. The findings of this study facilitate clustering ISP customers and perceiving their needs, and in turn can be used by ISP managers to enhance customer satisfaction.

Keywords: assessing services; internet services; data mining; clustering; fuzzy Kano model.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBSR.2021.114935

International Journal of Business and Systems Research, 2021 Vol.15 No.3, pp.292 - 316

Received: 30 Jul 2019
Accepted: 04 Nov 2019
Published online: 12 May 2021 *

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