Throughout the year, J.D. Power gives awards to the wireless carriers – and other companies in other industries – for a few different things. The most interesting one is always customer care or customer service. J.D. Power announced today, that AT&T won top honors among the US wireless carriers, edging out T-Mobile. Who had been taking the award in recent years. Although AT&T barely got past T-Mobile. AT&T scored 820 out of 1,000 points, and T-Mobile score 815. Verizon came in third with 797 and Sprint was last with 750 points. When it comes to non-contract service providers (a.k.a. prepaid or MVNO’s), Consumer Cellular was ranked at the top, even ahead of AT&T at 878 points. Cricket and Boost Mobile followed and Net10 was ranked the lowest, of the eight providers.
What was perhaps the most interesting part about J.D. Power’s findings was the fact that customers are looking at online alternatives for contacting carriers when they need help. Stating that around 47% of users used web services to get customer service support from their carrier. That’s up 42% from 6 months ago. And that number will likely continue to climb. J.D. Power also notes that online satisfaction is much higher when the customer is using a tablet or smartphone to seek out help. They also determined that customer satisfaction is the highest when the customer uses a mobile device associated with their account for help. Those who use a mobile phone or tablet also experience shorter resolution times, compared to using a desktop or laptop.
This report shows us something that is pretty interesting, and that is the fact that more and more people are using their mobile phones and tablets to get help, instead of jumping to their computer. Although it’s not too surprising to see that customers are more satisfied when they get help from an inquiry done on their smartphone versus a laptop. Although this report does show a pretty surprising statistic. And that is the number one carrier in the US, doesn’t have the best customer care, or even the second best. Verizon was third, when it came to customer care. While that may not be a surprise for everyone, it will be for some.