J.D. Power reports record customer satisfaction scores for the carriers, but there's a catch.

James Anderson, Senior News Editor

October 9, 2020

2 Min Read
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T-Mobile took a clean sweep in the latest J.D. Power honors for wireless customer satisfaction.

The research firm on Thursday unveiled results from its 2020 Business Wireless Satisfaction Study. T-Mobile earned the best scores in all three categories: large enterprise, small and medium-sized business, and very small businesses.

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J.D. Power’s Ian Greenblatt

The wireless industry performed well as a whole. In fact, it tallied record scores amid a pandemic.

“Wireless has been a lifeline for business customers during the pandemic, and carriers really rose to the occasion by reliably delivering superb performance in connectivity, call quality and customer service,” said Ian Greenblatt, J.D. Power’s managing director of technology, media and telecom.

J.D. Power warned, however, that the high scores might owe themselves to the Keep America Connected Pledge led by the FCC. More than 800 service providers signed the pledge, vowing to defer billing for disrupted residential or small business customers. But that pledge ended June 30.

“… Many small business customers may be facing accumulated bills and collection efforts that could negatively affect their perception in the coming weeks and months,” Greenblatt said.

The Scores

T-Mobile scored its fourth consecutive sweep of all three business sizes in wireless customer satisfaction.

However, AT&T did make up ground in the large enterprise category. Ma Bell went from trailing 21 points in 2019 to 16 in 2020.

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Source: J.D. Power

T-Mobile led by a huge margin in the small and medium-sized business category for wireless customer satisfaction.

Sprint, which T-Mobile officially absorbed this year, previously stood in the second slot for SMBs. Sprint and Verizon trailed T-Mobile by 14 and 25 points last year, respectively, but now T-Mobile has opened up a 40-point lead on Verizon.

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Source: J.D. Power

The very small business category remains the same in terms of order: T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint.

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Source: J.D. Power

2,787 wireless service buyers participated in the survey in July and August.

In addition to the wireless study, J.D. Power ranked the same carrier field according to business wireline satisfaction earlier this year. Check out our summary of the leaderboards. You can also view our recap of J.D. Power’s 2019 Business Wireless Satisfaction Study.

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About the Author(s)

James Anderson

Senior News Editor, Channel Futures

James Anderson is a news editor for Channel Futures. He interned with Informa while working toward his degree in journalism from Arizona State University, then joined the company after graduating. He writes about SD-WAN, telecom and cablecos, technology services distributors and carriers. He has served as a moderator for multiple panels at Channel Partners events.

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