AT&T biggest improver with its own customers

Ted MarzilliCEO YouGov Direct
October 25, 2012, 2:29 PM GMT+0

Customers are showing greater appreciation for AT&T. The wireless carrier showed the best perception improvement with its own customers in 2012 compared to its rivals. AT&T customer perception broke free of T-Mobile’s levels in mid-June and has been rising steadily ever since. AT&T is enjoying its best scores since October 2010.

Verizon Wireless leads the group for the best customer perception and has remained relatively steady throughout the year. Second place Sprint experienced a big bump in the first quarter of 2012, most likely due to announcing the first markets to receive 4G LTE high-speed service. Sprint came back to earth in April and has slightly cooled down over the remainder of the year.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile were measured with YouGov BrandIndex’s Index score, an average of sub-scores measuring quality, value, satisfaction, reputation, general impression and willingness to recommend. Each score represents the perception of each wireless carrier’s own customers. All respondents are age 18 and over.

Both AT&T and T-Mobile battled it out for the first half of the year with perception from their own customers, hovering in the 45 to 48 range of Index score. Around mid-June, AT&T broke away with a 48 score versus T-Mobile’s 45, and moved up through October to its current 53 score. T-Mobile is down to 40.

Verizon Wireless began the year with a 70 Index score and has remained in that area all year. Sprint jumped from 60 on January 3rd to 76 during the third week of February, passing Verizon Wireless for all of February. Sprint has been unable to reproduce that perception gain with its customers, staying around a 65 score from March through April, then tapering off to its current 63 score.