Three Christmases ago, Sue Nokes received a call from a T-Mobile USA Inc. customer who had been bumped up through the customer care system until he reached her. The man, Nokes recalled, told her that though he liked the carrier’s customer service reps, he frankly didn’t want to talk to them, and T-Mobile USA should have more information on its Web site to help customers solve their own problems.
“I’ll never forget that as long as I live,” said Nokes, who is senior vice president of customer service for the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier. “You’ve got to meet customers where they want to be.”
T-Mobile USA seems to be doing that well, having topped a customer satisfaction survey by J.D. Power and Associates for the third year in a row.
The Wireless Customer Care Performance Study examined the experiences that customers have at retail stores, on carrier Web sites, or over the telephone with a customer service representative or automated response system. J.D. Power’s survey was based on more than 11,490 wireless subscribers who contacted customer care within the past year.
After landing in the No. 3 spot during the first year of the survey, T-Mobile USA has ascended to first and stayed there. The survey results were a significant bump-up for Alltel Corp., which came in fourth in last year’s survey and surged ahead four points this year to tie for second with Verizon Wireless. Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and Sprint Nextel Corp. settled in a draw for third.
The industry average for customer care performance had an index rating of 99, down a point from last year. T-Mobile USA, Alltel and Verizon Wireless came in above the average; Cingular and Sprint Nextel were below it.
While fewer subscribers contacted customer service-down from 54 percent in 2004 to 52 percent last year-more complicated services and fancier phones mean that customers now contact their providers more often to resolve problems. J.D. Power noted that wireless users contacted customer care 1.94 times before an issue was taken care of, the highest level since measurement began in 2000 and up 14 percent from that time.
“As more wireless companies encourage customers to try new services, it becomes more difficult for the customer service representatives to be fully trained and kept apprised on the latest products being introduced,” said Kirk Parsons, senior director of wireless services at J.D. Power and Associates. “The downside is the carrier runs the risk of decreasing customer satisfaction and losing customers to other carriers.”
Among customers who contact their carriers, the J.D. Power survey reported 71 percent used a telephone and 25 percent tried to have issues addressed at carrier retail stores. Only about four percent of contacts were over the Internet, though representatives of carrier Web sites have said that they are trying to coax more users into trying to solve their own problems using the Web as a resource.
Call wait times also crept up to 3.57 minutes in 2005 from 3.44 minutes the previous year. Billing related inquiries-usually incorrect charges-accounted for 42 percent of the customer service contacts.
