Maybe AT&T (NYSE: T) CEO Randall Stephenson is right about the competitiveness of smaller wireless carriers: their customers seem to like them a lot better than the Big Four, according to the most recent results published by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
The category “all others” received an aggregate satisfaction score of 77, compared to the baseline score of 71 (out of 100) for the entire wireless telephone services industry and the best rating of the major carriers, Verizon’s 72. Verizon slipped a bit, however, compared to its 73 rating in last year’s survey, while Sprint (NYSE: S) was the big gainer, up 22 percent from a score of 70 last year to 72 this year. T-Mobile and AT&T both slipped three points, with T-Mobile coming in at 70 and Stephenson’s AT&T posting the worst score in the industry with a 66.
Last week Stephenson defended his company’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile by pointing out how smaller wireless carriers like U.S. Cellular, MetroPCS, and Cellular South ensure that the U.S. wireless market is competitive. That argument, however, really centers around voice services, as opposed to data services, as the Big Four get the most advanced data-capable handsets well before the smaller carriers do.
Yet if the more average “feature phones” start to get smarter and smarter with cost declines in powerful hardware and the spread of sophisticated software, those smaller carriers could carve out a niche by focusing on price and customer service. It’s hard to find people pleased by the customer service at the phone company, although wireless carriers can take some small comfort in that U.S. consumers hate their television services providers more than their cell phone companies, according to the ACSI.
Still, AT&T’s poor scores are likely due to its notorious flaky network more than any other single factor. Verizon, on the other hand, emphasizes network quality above all else, and consumers seem to agree with that strategy. No explanation was provided for Sprint’s rise, but T-Mobile’s drop in satisfaction was clearly reflected in their last earnings announcement, in which they revealed that they lost nearly 100,000 customers over the last three months.
The ACSI is updated once a year for various industries, and is based on telephone surveys of U.S. consumers.
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