Top IM in Customer Satisfaction

Yahoo! Messenger -- according to a recent customer satisfaction survey conducted by J.D. Power and Associates. For their 2006 Residential Online Service Customer Satisfaction Study, they surveyed 10,787 residential U.S. customers to determine the customer satisfaction index on a 1,000 point scale.

Yahoo came in first, followed by MSN/WLM Messenger, then Windows Messenger. AIM came in last.

There were a couple of interesting trends revealed by the study. First, among customers reporting that they used IM on a regular or occasional basis, almost 70% reported that IM had, to some degree, replaced their use of traditional phones.

But perhaps more revealing was the fact that the percentage of Internet users who use IM regularly was virtually unchanged from last year.

"One of the trends we see in the 2006 study is that the percentage of Internet users who use IM on a daily basis is essentially unchanged from 2005 at 36 percent," said Frank Perazzini, director of telecommunications research at J.D. Power and Associates. "This indecates that some of the usage gains we are seeing in text messaging in our wireless studies are coming at the expense of IM usage."

Here's how the various IM programs ranked (based on a 1,000 point scale):

• 791 - Yahoo! Messenger


• 782 - MSN Messenger (includes WLM)


• 766 - Windows Messenger (preinstalled with XP)


• 766 - Instant Messaging Average


• 746 - Google Talk


• 744 - Trillian


• 743 - AIM/AOL Instant Messenger