MetroPCS, Virgin Mobile, and TracFone Earn Top Customer Experience Ratings for Wireless Carriers, According to Temkin Group

Research firm Temkin Group today released  the findings of its 2016 ten thousand wireless customer survey and revealed that mobile users reported the top three best customer experiences were with MetroPCS,Virgin Mobile, and TracFone followed by Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint

MetroPCS, Virgin Mobile and TracFone deliver the best customer experience in the wireless industry, according to the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings, an annual ranking of companies based on a survey of 10,000 U.S. consumers.

MetroPCS, Virgin Mobile, and TracFone tied for the top spot. Each earned a score of 63%, which put them all in 125th place overall out of 294 companies across 20 industries. MetroPCS shot to the top of the rankings by virtue of being the only wireless carrier out of the seven we looked at to improve its rating over the past year. Virgin Mobile maintained its top spot from the previous year, despite dropping five percentage-points, while TracFone's rating stayed steady from 2015. At the other end of the spectrum, Sprint was the lowest-ranked wireless company for the second year in a row, receiving a rating of 54% and an overall ranking of 211th.

Overall, the wireless industry averaged a 58% rating in the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings and tied for 10thplace out of 20 industries. Although every industry's average dropped between 2015 and 2016, the wireless industry decreased the least, only going down 3 percentage-points.

"Once again, these ratings show that wireless carriers continue to deliver mediocre customer experience to customers," states Bruce Temkin, managing partner of Temkin Group.Here are some additional findings from the wireless industry:

• The ratings of all wireless carriers in the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings are as follows: MetroPCS(63%), Virgin Mobile (63%), TracFone (63%), Verizon Wireless (59%), T-Mobile (56%), AT&T (56%), and Sprint (54%).
• MetroPCS (+3 points) was the only wireless carrier to improve its rating between 2015 and 2016.
• T-Mobile (-9 points), Virgin Mobile (-5 points), Verizon Wireless (-3 points), and AT&T (-3 points) declined by the most percentage-points between 2015 and 2016.
• Now in its sixth year of publication, the 2016 Temkin Experience Ratings is the most comprehensive benchmark of customer experience in the industry, evaluating 294 companies across 20 industries: airlines, appliance makers, auto dealers, banks, car rental agencies, computer makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, health plans, hotel chains, insurance carriers, Internet service providers, investment firms, parcel delivery services, retailers, software firms, supermarket chains, TV service providers, utilities, and wireless carriers.

To generate these ratings, Temkin Group asked 10,000 U.S. consumers to evaluate their recent experiences with a company across three dimensions: success (can you do what you want to do?), effort (how easy is it to work with the company?), and emotion (how do you feel about the interactions?). Temkin Group then averaged these three scores to produce each company's Temkin Experience Rating.

In these ratings, a score of 70% or above is considered "good," and a score of 80% or above is considered "excellent." In this year's Temkin Experience Ratings, 20% of companies earned a "good" or "excellent" score, while 44% received a "poor" or "very poor" score. 

Source: PR Newswire