AT&T has been awarded J.D. Power’s 2017 U.S. Wireless Customer Care Full-Service Performance Volume 1, which means that they have gotten the award for the second time in a row. While J.D. Power gives out a number of similar awards in the wireless space each year, the award is nothing to scoff at, and indicates great survey results among a customer group surveyed by J.D. Power on their experiences with AT&T’s customer service. The award covers phone support, in-person support, email communication, and even online chat support. AT&T managed to not only top the category this year, but to top their own previous score by about 7 points over the last survey from around six months ago. During a period of 8 total studies, they topped 5, and never dipped below 2nd place in any of them.
Predictably, when AT&T announced the award in their newsroom, they wasted no time ripping into T-Mobile, who recently received a similar award from Nielsen, in only slightly uncertain terms. It should be noted that T-Mobile has done fairly well for themselves in J.D. Power’s customer service rankings in the past, but this time around, AT&T gave them a sound showing-up by scoring 13 points above the industry average. AT&T did not specifically name T-Mobile in their short diss, but did imply that they were referring to somebody who recently received a similar award that didn’t matter quite as much as the J.D. Power award that AT&T received. Ma Bell even implied that Magenta hid some information in order to influence their scores and customer sentiment.
AT&T stated that they will continue working to improve customer service going forward. With other battlegrounds fast becoming an arms race, such as price wars and device selection, carriers have very few places left to truly compete, and customer service is one of those places. A large number of awards like this one from different agencies and entities go out each year in the wireless industry, which means that while AT&T’s award is a very prestigious one, perhaps even worthy of landmark status, consumers should take it with a grain of salt; a J.D. Power award often is not the end-all, be-all of customer service indicators. Still, AT&T has done quite well for themselves here, and nicely dispatched old whisperings of poor customer service.