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Cellular forums Home > Archive > Cingular cell phone service > August 2006 > JD Power Wireless Customer Care Performance: T-Mobile and Verizon
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JD Power Wireless Customer Care Performance: T-Mobile and Verizon
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| See
"http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pressrelease.asp?ID=2006122"
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| BruceR wrote:
> John, Do you own Cingular? You seem to be awfully defensive about them.
> The report is what it is and it's from one of the most highly regarded
> consumer research companies in the country. I found it interesting and
> informative. The article doesn't bash anyone, but lays out the results
> of a study from a highly reliable source. Chill a bit guy.
I posted the link to all the relevant newsgroups, because it is
relevant, and on-topic, and best of all, unlike many of Navas's
rantings, it actually conforms to the charters of the newsgroups (if the
group has one).
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| Jack Zwick wrote:
> Every year this excellent study tells you what the users really think.
> Then the shills for the loser go to work trying to belittle it.
Well, this happens with almost every study. Look at the Consumer Reports
annual wireless study, a study that everyone agrees is performed with a
sound methodology, and statistically huge sample which gives results
with a very, very small margin of error. To make it even more accurate,
they break down the survey by region, because carrier quality varies by
region.
Of course, each year after the survey is released, people like Navas go
beserk trying to belittle it. This year he complained that the survey
didn't take into account the Cingular subscribers that were still using
TDMA, even though it's a small percentage of subscribers using even a
smaller percentage of total minutes, and even though, if anything, the
TDMA users would have slightly boosted Cingular's ratings because
TDMA/AMPS had better coverage than GSM-only.
It's sad to see people that are so blinded by their loyalty to a
corporation that they can't honestly look at its performance, and admit
when there is a problem. G-d knows, I'm no fan of many of the stunts
that Verizon has pulled in the past few years, and I haven't hesitated
to criticize them for it.
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| Jack Zwick wrote:
> Churn Rates - a monthly percentage of lost customers is an unbiased
> self-reported reflection of the failings of any carrier. Yet the
> apologists/shills make excuses for that too, in some cases falsely
> calling the number a quarterly number.
I was actually amazed when I learned that the churn rate was a monthly
number (well actually an average of each of the quarter's three months).
Even at Verizon's 1.2% rate, that's still losing 14.4% of your customers
every year, and Verizon at 1.7% is losing 20.4% of it's customers every
year. Cingular consistently has more gross additions than any carrier,
but their churn is so high, even at the improved 1.7%, that they keep
losing market share.
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| BruceR wrote:
> I just can't understand why someone who is not be paid by a company to
> perform some sort of PR function would go to such (or any) lengths to
> defend them. Navas must either be paid by Cingular or a "Cingular
> Groupie" to care so much about the results of professionally run
> studies.
There are corporate groupies in many different product groups. I've seen
them in automotive groups, cycling groups, and camera groups. Anytime
any study, any financial results, or any reviews come out that portray
the product that they chose, they view it as a personal affront that
casts doubt on their buying decision. They'll come up with all sorts of
rationalizations and excuses to try to discredit whatever negative
information has been released.
You don't see a lot of it on the wireless groups, you basically have
Navas for Cingular, and that's it. Most people are not so insecure that
they can't admit that every company has its faults. Personally I'm
carrier agnostic. I chose Verizon because in my area, they have the best
coverage by far, and this is not only my personal experience, but the
conclusion of all the independent studies. OTOH, I know many people that
chose Cingular, knowing full well that the local coverage was inferior,
but they wanted to use a single handset in the U.S., Europe, and (most
of) Asia. It's rather amusing to hear them complain that their phone
works great in Beijing, but not in Santa Clara! I'd say that about 5% of
my monthly minutes come from letting people use my Verizon phone, in
places that their Cingular phone has no coverage.
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| Oops, should have been:
Anytime any study, any financial results, or any reviews come out that
portray the product that they chose in a negative light, they view it as
a personal affront that casts doubt on their buying decision.
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| Nick Danger wrote:
> I always thought JD Powers did enough surveys so that everyone ended up
> being number 1 at something.
You can commission a survey that is designed to elicit the results you
want, and if by some chance it doesn't, you don't have to use it. and if
you do use it most people don't realize how narrowly defined the survey
was. Not all the surveys are commissioned, some of their studies are
done on their own dime, and then sold, with only a summary of the
results published for free.
Some carriers pay for ridiculous studies and surveys from sham survey
companies, that can "prove" anything. This is especially common when the
reputable surveys show poor results for the carrier. They run out,
commission a survey, then endlessly tout it in advertising, while
refusing to release the data behind it. Sometimes they get called on it,
often not. Bottom line is to not believe any carrier's own studies and
surveys, unless it's corroborated by an unbiased study or survey.
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| Cyrus Afzali wrote:
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> Uhhhh, not for nothing, but the customer care index scores aren't
> percentages.
Precisely.
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| Scott wrote:
> "Jack Zwick" <jackzwick@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:jackzwick-D06A7C. 12442227072006@newsc
lstr02.news.prodigy.com...
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>
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> Actually, the churn figures are an arbitrarily calculated number that can be
> calculated different from carrier to carrier. There is no generally
> accepted calculation suggested or used throughout the industry.
Still, it's not totally arbitrary. Some carriers even break it down into
pre-paid and post-paid churn.
It's safe to say that all the carriers will choose the calculation
method that best benefits themselves, so each reports a number that is
probably a little better than the actual churn rate.
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| Paul Miner wrote:
> Not only that, I'm trying to figure out how gross additions can be
> contrary to low churn. The two don't seem to be related. Net adds are
> affected by churn, but gross adds?
Gross additions are unrelated to churn, so the carriers with high churn
like to emphasize gross addition in their news releases. What Navas
wrote is untrue.
You could look at only gross additions for Verizon and Cingular over a
long period of time, and conclude that Cingular was gaining more
customers, when in fact, Verizon almost always has more net additions
than Cingular.
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| Paul Miner wrote:
> Actually, what I was questioning was your assertion that gross adds
> are contrary to churn. I know gross adds are *related* to churn; what
> I want to know is how gross adds are *contrary* to churn? Was it a
> simple misstatement on your part? Perhaps I'm being too picky.
In the sense that you can calculate the number of lost customers by
subtracting net additions from gross additions, it's "related" but of
course the number of lost customers doesn't go down just because your
gross additions go down.
It would only be contrary to churn if a higher number of gross additions
actually _caused_ more customers to leave. In reality, the gross
additions and the net additions track each other, and the factor by
which they track each other is the churn rate.
It's ridiculous to claim that gross additions are contrary to churn.
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