A survey conducted by digital commerce vendor Matrixx Software found people would like to buy mobile services from major internet brands.

The apparent aim of the survey was to highlight the consumer relationship challenge operators face in the digital commerce era. In terms of brand recognition and trust it seems the big OTTs are way ahead and could eat even further into operator core business if they fancied it.

As you can see in the first chart below, something like 85% of the 3,077 UK and US mobile users surveyed said they would buy mobile services from Amazon if they could. Even Netflix, which we currently associate solely with video on demand subscriptions, would sorely tempt the majority of respondents if it got into the CSP game.

It seems this isn’t just blind brand loyalty, but also a certain level of customer experience associated with the brand, which punters apparently assume would apply to anything else they served up. In the second chart you can see that what they like most about their favourite apps is transparency of pricing and ease of use – not qualities generally associated with traditional CSPs.

“The survey clearly demonstrates that digital-first brands have set a new baseline of expectation by which every other consumer service is judged,” said Jennifer Kyriakakis, founder and VP of marketing at Matrixx. “Telcos have an opportunity to attract an entirely new crop of customers, ones who are motivated by intuitive engagement that results in a highly personalized, transparent and real-time mobile experience.”

Of course vendors don’t just conduct these kinds of surveys for a laugh. Matrixx positions itself as an enabler of just the kind of fast, agile product development it reckons operators need to keep up with the OTT brigade. But a vested interest doesn’t necessarily discount the underlying findings. Using Amazon or Netflix is a pretty smooth simple process and if CSPs are going to grab some of this digital commerce action they need to move with the times.