While the mobile industry has been busy hyping the benefits of “4G” to consumers, those that have taken them up on the offer have been busy contacting their respective carriers’ customer care centers at a greater rate, according to the latest customer care survey from J.D. Power and Associates. That survey questioned just under 12,000 of the nation’s more than 300 million wireless customers.
The survey found that 60% of customers with 4G devices had contacted their carrier within the past six months, compared with 47% for those with non-4G smartphones and 35% for those carrying traditional feature phones. According to J.D. Power and Associated, 18% of those 4G issues were connected with network-related problems, compared with 11% for those customer using non-4G devices.
“It’s not unexpected that customers who use new technology or services would be more likely to contact their carrier with questions or problems, particularly with the 4G network rollout that began in 2011,” said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates. “What is important to understand is that investment is needed in support services to not only handle the increase in customer interactions, but also to provide service representatives with the necessary training and information across all contact channels in order to offer a timely and superior service experience. In fact, it takes approximately five minutes more per contact, on average, to resolve issues pertaining to 4G-enabled devices, compared with issue resolution times for traditional phones.”
However, those customers with 4G devices said they spent an average of $36 more per month than customers with non-4G devices and were more likely to recommend their carrier. So there’s that.
Network issues have recently received attention as Verizon Wireless (VZ), seen as the leader in the current deployment of 4G services, suffered a series of network outages late last year.
Despite those struggles, Verizon Wireless garnered the highest overall score in the J.D. Power and Associates survey for customer care amongst traditional operators, with the survey showing the nation’s largest operator doing well in calls that are transferred from an automated response system to a live call agent and those that are placed directly to a live agent.
Sprint Nextel pulled in a distant No. 2 position, followed closely by AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile USA. All three carriers posted scores below the industry average due to the curve-wrecking by Verizon Wireless.
Among prepaid-specific operators, Sprint Nextel subsidiary Virgin Mobile USA posted the highest score, thoroughly trumping No. 2 and fellow Sprint Nextel subsidiary Boost Mobile. MetroPCS was a close third in the tally, followed by Tracfone Wireless, Leap Wireless’ Cricket brand and Net10, which is a subsidiary of Tracfone.
The survey also found that 38% of customers used their carrier’s online chat function to resolve issues, an increase of 2% from the middle of 2011, and that the chat function garnered higher customer satisfaction scores than from those customers that used a carrier’s website, e-mailed the carrier directly or used an online user forum to research information.
In addition, approximately 40% of smartphone customers surveyed said they contacted their carrier due to a device malfunction or were experiencing “repair-related issues.”
Bored? Why not follow me on Twitter?
