News
Telco captures 12.2% share of new customer acquisitions in first quarter.
There are signs that TalkTalk is putting its recent troubles behind it, as heavy promotional activity over the last three months saw it capture a bigger share of new customers compared to the prior quarter.
This is according to figures published on Thursday by Kantar Worldpanel, which revealed that TalkTalk’s share of new customer acquisitions in the quarter ended 31 March was 12.2%, up from 9% in the three months to 31 December 2015.
"There are signs that TalkTalk’s efforts to repair some of the damage it suffered since the data hack last year are beginning to pay off," said Imran Choudhary, Kantar Worldpanel’s consumer insight director, in a statement.
"Increased value propositions and heavy promotional activity have led to a robust performance in the first quarter of this year. Reassurances on data security, including plans for voice recognition software use, mean consumers are willing to give the provider another chance," he said.
TalkTalk fell victim to what it called a significant and sustained cyberattack in October 2015. Initially it was thought that the names, addresses, date of birth, contact details, account information and bank information of all 4 million of its customers were potentially accessed.
It later emerged that 156,959 customers had been compromised, 15,656 of whom had their bank account numbers and sort codes accessed, while 28,000 partial credit or debit card numbers were also accessed.
"TalkTalk still has a lot of work to do," Choudhary said, adding that according to Kantar Worldpanel, more than 17% of the telco’s broadband customer base is considering churning at the next available opportunity.
Meanwhile, Sky saw its share of new customer additions drop to 23.3% in the first quarter from 28.3% in the quarter earlier. By comparison, BT’s share increased to 31.5% from 28.6%, while Virgin Media’s crept up to 13.1% from 11.1%.
