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WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! AT&T tops JD Power and Samsung tops Apple in customer satisfaction surveys

Smartphone-customer-sat

We’re used to seeing Apple at the top of customer satisfaction surveys– it even promotes its multiple JD Power wins as the highest ranked smartphone and tablet on its website. However, the latest numbers from the American Customer Satisfaction Index has Samsung taking the lead from Apple, at least when it comes to smartphones.

In May, the ACSI report, which surveys over 70k US consumers, showed Apple continued its lead for customer satisfaction, but Samsung was quickly closing the gap. The new ACSI report covering only smartphones shows Samsung has since been able to surpass iPhone thanks to strong scores from its Galaxy S III and Note II:

Samsung’s flagship model for 2012, the S III, receives an ACSI benchmark of 84 (on a 0 to 100 scale), beating Apple’s iPhone 5 at 82, the company’s most recent smartphone offering. Another Samsung model, Note II, shares the top of list at 84. Galaxy S4 is not included because the ACSI study was fielded just prior to its launch.

Apple still takes the top spot in many countries, including Samsung’s home territory, and also continues to lead in overall customer satisfaction outside of the smartphone category:

While U.S. customers give Samsung’s smartphones the top scores, Korean consumers prefer Apple. According to the National Customer Satisfaction Index (NCSI) in South Korea, which uses the same technology as the ACSI, the iPhone 5 has higher customer satisfaction than Galaxy S III… Unlike Apple, which has a smartphone-only lineup, Samsung offers both feature and smartphones. At 76, Samsung continues to lag Apple for overall customer satisfaction. Nevertheless, the company’s 7% gain in 2013 is a clear reflection of the strength of Galaxy S III.

Another somewhat surprising result today, and one T-Mobile’s John Legere definitely won’t be happy about, is JD Power’s 2013 wireless customer service satisfaction survey. Coming out on top for the first time is AT&T, ranking the highest in customer service and many other categories in the survey, and followed by Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile:

For the first-time, AT&T ranks highest in wireless customer care satisfaction among full-service carriers, with an overall score of 795. AT&T performs particularly well in the walk-in and online contact channels and ranks above the full-service average in four of the five service channels.

JD-Power-Wireless-Customer-Service

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Comments

  1. Dell Mar - 11 years ago

    This isn’t anything new, the American Surveyors Survey (ASS) has already ranked the entire Galaxy line with the widest ASS hole ranking ever. This reminds me of of the US auto industry awards, were GM would fund some award that invariable their cars and trucks would win.

    Run on over to CNET were you can see payola. Top ten gadgets for under $50. All so they can tout Chromecast for pay.

  2. Richard Getz (@RichGetz) - 11 years ago

    Well done Samsung, this should heat up the competition!

  3. tallestskil - 11 years ago

    What happened? The same thing that we just found out about Samsung lying in benchmarks and Google lying about how many iPads/Nexii were sold.

    Nothing to see here.

  4. Johnny S. (@JXChain) - 11 years ago

    So how much did samsung pay them this time?

  5. Ishir Bhan (@infobhan) - 11 years ago

    The May results you link to break down the ratings by company. This listing breaks down the ratings by device. Is this an…ahem…apples-to-apples comparison? If you pull up http://www.theacsi.org/acsi-results/acsi-benchmarks-may you see the May ratings with Apple on top. But change that month to june or july and you don’t see these new findings.

  6. Edison Wrzosek - 11 years ago

    We’ve all seen this kind of crap before, so much new to see. I just saw the scope of the survey being 70k people and my first thought was, US has 300+ million citizens, how does this reflect an accurate survey?

  7. jhkyoung - 11 years ago

    I like the iPhone and it’s my preferred handest but it’s gotten quite boring, even with iOS 7.

  8. Stanley Manley - 11 years ago

    Simple, they greased the palm. No company today is above the almighty greenback. (though it’s not almighty anymore, but don’t tell them that).

  9. stuffradio (@stuffradio) - 11 years ago

    You guys are all fine with the survey when Apple is at the top. When another competitor is at the top above Apple, they automatically paid to be at the top, and the survey sample is too small. When Apple is at the top, no one pays attention to sample size.

    • That’s because apple doesn’t have 4 billion dollar budget for advertising or have known payola setups or get caught trying to rig performance tests on their phones, But, you know, we’re jumping to conclusions here and no one is paying attention (sarcasm).

  10. Raleigh Brecht - 11 years ago

    This doesn’t stop iPhone from winning 9 times in a row! Apple is life for a reason!

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.