AT&T Ranks Highest in Wireless Customer Care [J.D. Power]

AT&T ranked highest in the J.D. Power 2014 U.S. Wireless Customer Care Full-Service Performance Study.

Now in its 12th year, the 2014 U.S. Wireless Customer Care Full-Service Performance Study--Volume 1 is based on responses from 7,195 full-service wireless customers. The 2014 U.S. Wireless Customer Care Non-Contract Performance Study--Volume 1 is based on responses from 2,912 non-contract wireless customers. Both semiannual studies are based on the experiences of current customers who contacted their carrier's customer care department within the past six months.

"It's imperative that wireless service carriers improve their ability to resolve customer issues in one contact and reduce the number of service channels customers need to visit to address their problem," said Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecommunications at J.D. Power. "Keeping the service call to five minutes or less may reduce overall call volume to the carrier, thereby improving customer satisfaction and loyalty."


KEY FINDINGS
● The re-contact rate among full-service wireless customers who contact their carrier by phone has risen to 23 percentage points from 17 percentage points in 2011, a 6 percentage point increase in two years.
● Among full-service wireless customers who resolve their issue during a single phone call, satisfaction is 846 (on a 1,000-point scale) and declines to 662 when problem resolution takes two or more calls.
● When customer service hold times are less than 5 minutes, overall customer care satisfaction is 843, compared with 603 when hold times are 15 minutes or longer.
● The likelihood of full-service wireless customers switching carriers increases from 16 percent when their service call lasts less than 5 minutes to 30 percent when their call lasts 15 minutes or more.
● Less than one-fifth (17%) of full-service wireless customers indicate that their most recent customer service inquiry was resolved in 5 minutes or less, while 20 percent indicate that resolution took 25 minutes or more.
● Satisfaction among full-service wireless customers whose problem is resolved by a representative over the phone in less than 5 minutes is 881. Satisfaction among those full-service wireless customers who experience calls in excess of 25 minutes declines to 604.
● More than one-fourth (26%) of the re-contact calls lasting more than 25 minutes are the result of a previous customer contact that was not resolved either by visiting a retail or carrier website.

Check out the charts below to see how the other carriers performed.