J.D Power and Associates today released their customer care ranking for US wireless carriers. T-Mobile earned the top position with an index score of 103 (translates to 5 out of 5 stars). Here's the full rankings:
Also of note, in 2004 average hold time increased one minute to 6.4 minutes. More than half of wireless consumers contact customer service in a given year, so picking a carrier with customer service rankings in mind is a good idea. Some additional information is provided below.
More than one-half (54%) of wireless users have contacted the customer service department for assistance within the past year.
Among those who contact their carrier, 65 percent do so via phone and 26 percent through the carrier's retail store. E-mail/Internet contacts have tripled since 2003 to 9 percent.
Billing and network quality issues lead the list of reasons why customers contact their wireless carrier for assistance. The largest increases in type of contact inquiries from 2003 are issues relating to phone malfunctioning, phone replacement and questions/problems about voice messages and voice-message notifications.