Android News
Are good phones more important than good customer service?
August 16, 2011 | by Andrew Kameka
Carriers
T-Mobile USA routinely gets rated as the top carrier when it comes to customer satisfaction of in-store purchases. JD Power & Associates has awarded T-Mo top ratings for as long as I can remember; yet, T-Mobile has been in fourth place among the top carriers just as long. Why? My guess is that despite demands for customer satisfaction, value, and deals, better phone options and network service is what really drives the needle in customer adoption.
T-Mobile, along with third-place carrier Sprint, received top honors in JD Power’s 2011 survey. The two carriers tied for first place with a rating of 755 out of a possible 1,000. However, they rank 4th and 3rd respectively in terms of subscribers.
AT&T and Verizon, which are the top two most-subscribed carriers in the U.S. (and the most expensive) didn’t have the most satisfied customers. AT&T has a 2-star rating while Verizon has a 4-star rating behind T-Mo and Sprint’s industry-best 5-star rating.
JD Power measures how customers rate the experience of visiting a retail store and ordering by phone or Internet. It is not a gauge of overall satisfaction with the carrier’s complete experience, and many consumers likely walk into a store knowing they want a phone from that particular carrier. That doesn’t take away from the peculiar trend of costumers gushing over T-Mobile’s level of service yet the reputation for great customer service hasn’t translated to great customer retention.
That made me think about customer service when someone is already under contract.
I’ve been a subscriber of all major carriers except Verizon, and I’d rate T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T in order of my satisfaction. However, depending on what city I lived in, I’d forsake the better service for a chance at an amazing phone or stronger network coverage. It might be a bit of stretch to draw this conclusion, but is customer satisfaction not as important as people assume? How else could you explain legions of people complaining about AT&T’s terrible service for years – in retail and network strength – yet the company has continued to bring in new customers since the iPhone debuted in 2007?
Consumers want and deserve better service. But I’m not sure that’s as big a priority as good phones and a good network. I’ve been vocal in my dislike for Sprint because of terrible customer service I received before switching to T-Mobile. However, that didn’t stop me from biting my lip and returning to Sprint in 2010 because the EVO outpaced all options available at T-Mobile. Despite offering me excellent service for 96 percent of my contract length, magenta got replaced with yellow.
Considering the latest JD Power rankings, maybe AT&T can learn something from the company that it’s trying to acquire. The JD Power Rankings show T-Mobile has clearly managed to communicate with customers even if they can’t always please them with phones.
via ZDNet
Hardware trumps "customer service" (which in most of my experience is synonymous with 20 minutes on hold regardless of who you are with). I left T-Mo (G1) for Verizon (original Droid) for Sprint (HTC EVO 3D). I'm a pushover for specs.
I personally don't care too much about customer service. Everyone's got it and my problem will have resolution eventually. That's not what I'm buying when locking into a contract. Customer service comes WITH the service subscription, but is not what I originally was out to buy. It's not like people think …. oh I think I'll go out and buy 2 years of customer service today, and it happens to come with a phone and a wireless network and areas of service coverage, etc. Of course the customer service is not as important as the actual "stuff" you're setting out to buy. The people with the better "stuff" whether it be hardware, network speeds, coverage, etc will always be more important that the customer service that everyone has, even if it is delivered at different levels . Even looking at the chart above… on a 1000 point scale what's the real difference in purchase experience between 744 for AT&T and 755 for Sprint? An 11 point difference on a 1000 point scale is 1.1% In my book, that's an insignificant statistic and is not considered as a deciding factor in going with one carrier over another. Whoever has the better "stuff" I'm actually setting out to buy wins. Customer service isn't even a consideration.