J.D. Power & Associates Ranks T-Mobile Highest In Customer Care

J.D. Power & Associates has released its 2008 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study - Volume I, and it's no surprise that T-Mobile ranks the highest amongst the five major carriers here in the United States. T-Mobile has ranked the highest for the past seven consecutive reports, though its competitors have been closing the gap.

The study measures customer satisfaction for support in the areas of telephone, retail store, and internet. Metrics used include hold-time duration and the number of representatives it takes to resolve an issue. An important finding of the study is that the use of Automated Response Systems (ARS) greatly reduce the level of customer satisfaction in service and support issues. Likely responsible is the inflexibility of such systems as opposed to a live representative, who can directly address customer questions.

The study also found that 47% of wireless customers in the United States have contacted their provider for service-related issues in the past year. Of those, 42% had billing issues and a whopping 57% percent were in regards to inaccurate charges. Currently, 73% of people who contact their provider do so by telephone, and only 4% use the internet.

Across the five major carriers, average hold time is 3.89 minutes, though customers who visited a retail location reported an average wait of 9 minutes before speaking to a representative.