What happened
Bucking the downbeat trend of the broader stock market on Thursday, Teladoc Health (TDOC -0.07%) shares eked out a slight gain on the day. The catalyst seems to have been the news of good performance in a study conducted by a noted consumer-market researcher.
So what
Teladoc announced that it has ranked No. 1 among direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies in the very specific J.D. Power 2021 U.S. Telehealth Satisfaction Study. The company's overall satisfaction score was 874, which is almost 30 points above the average for that particular category.
Teladoc added that it also took first place in all of the study's sub-categories. These include customer service and consultation.
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This is not a first for Teladoc: The healthcare company didn't hesitate to point out that it has taken No. 1 in two of the three annual studies published by the researcher so far.
J.D. Power is a well-recognized name in the field of consumer analytics. It's perhaps best known for its rankings of automobiles, although it researches a wide variety of other products and industries.
In the Telehealth Satisfaction Study, the researcher pointed out that 36% of the healthcare consumers it tracks for its research have utilized telehealth products in 2021. That's four times higher than the rate at the same time last year.
Now what
Teladoc's performance is notable, given that in the telehealth industry generally, "customer satisfaction has declined during the same period, with many users citing limited access to the services they need and inconsistencies in the care they receive," J.D. Power's managing director of global healthcare intelligence James Breem was quoted as saying.
