An Analysis of the Usage of Telephone Directories and its Importance on Customer Life Style: A case study of Sri Lanka Telecom Ltd (SLT) Directory usage

Abstract

The Telecommunication and Regulatory Commission (TRC) of Sri Lanka has imposed a rule to provide a detail directory for each fixed line telephone customer, as the controlling body of Sri Lankan telecommunication industry. However, due to the sophisticated communication methods currently being used across the country, people have shifted to different alternative quick access of numbers and details that they want to contact in daily life. Anyhow, still customers are received a directory as per the legal requirement though it is not used very frequently. This case study discusses how far the directory is useful and its importance to the customers lifestyle in the context of finding domestic and business telephone numbers and relevant information.Reserchers selected 1000 customers including both business and domestic customers in Colombo,Kalutara,Galle,Kandy and Kurunegala. Field investigators interviewed those customers through telephones provided by SLT Ltd, and researchers conducted few in-depth interviews to get an insight of the customers behavior.Discriptive statistical tools were used to analyze the data. It was found that nearly 89% of customers do not use the Directory to find contacts, and mobile phone memory has been the most frequent method of finding those numbers.Futher, the majority of domestic customers does not know the alternative sophisticated methods provided by fixed line and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators to find domestic and institutional numbers. It is nearly 80% of customers who are willing to have new methods rather than having bulky Directories to find required contact numbers. The related importance of Telephone Directory compared to other alternative methods has been significantly low in customers' life style, and it has been a hardly using method. Thus, this study highlights the importance of introducing an easy method of obtaining contact numbers in a cost effective manner.