Which companies do our top business leaders prefer as customers? If they had to use certain services in their personal capacity, which ones would they prefer?

This year, in an additional module, respondents were asked to rank, as customers, two widely-used services that often affect businesses seriously - telecom and travel & hospitality. Half of all the respondents were asked to rate telecom service providers and the other half were quizzed about travel & hospitality companies. Unlike in the rest of the survey, the respondents weren't given a list of companies. Also, people from these two sectors weren't asked to rank their peers. So, those in the telecom sector ranked only travel & hospitality companies, and vice versa.

Was there a variation between peer perception and customer preference? The results were interesting enough for us to juxtapose the two lists.

Respect is to be aspired for, but it may not always win customers. Peers respected Sahara Airlines more, but as customers, they preferred Indian Airlines. In telecom, Tata Teleservices may be more respected, but as customers, respondents ranked it below BSNL, Hutch, Reliance and MTNL. It must, however, be noted that the pitch could have been skewed for some inadvertently. For example, most corporates are hooked on to GSM players like Bharti, and not CDMA players like Tata Teleservices. That could have affected their choice.