Telecommunications in the US

Sector average score

Knowledge & Expertise

Style of Communication

Speed of Resolving Problems

Valuing the Customer

T-Mobile continues its supremacy for a fifth straight quarter and with an Overall Effort Score of 61, its position has never looked stronger.

This wave, we saw Vodafone rocket up the ranks from 10th in Q4 2024 to 2nd in Q1 2025. It may only have enterprise customers, but they have clearly been enamoured with the brand’s customer service in the past three months.

Its performance has pushed Verizon and AT&T down into third and fourth position respectively.

Most brands in the Telecommunications in the US table improved their Overall Effort Score vs last wave, indicating they are comparing slightly more favourably against the other industries and markets we measure.

Verizon was on of the brands with a lower score than last wave, along with DirecTV and Lumen.

Executive Summary

How to use this Index

Last updated: Jan 2025

Next update: Apr 2025

Executive summary

T-Mobile is a world leader for Customer Effort. With an Overall Effort score of 62, it scores higher than any other Telco brand in the Index across the three territories we measure – the UK, US and Australia.
We say

Telcos across the world should take note. The US Telco market is famous for leveraging cutting-edge technical solutions to offer world-class customer service. T-Mobile is clearly at the forefront of this, so brands around the world should pay close attention to their investments across CX to keep up.
Are Telcos ready to tackle bulk billing questions? The Federal Communications Commission has said the agency will drop a proposed Biden plan to ban broadband internet “bulk billing”. The plan promised to put an end to a requirement for tenants to pay for broadband, cable, and satellite service provided by a specific communications provider even if they did not wish to take the service.
We say

If tenants can't go to their landlord they may well go to the provider. US Telcos should make sure they are making key information and benefits easily accessible and present any frustrated customers with sympathetic staff, equipped with a range of options to show they are valued.

How to use the Customer Effort Index

Customer Effort Scores for the quarter are presented in the rankings, ordered by highest Overall Effort Score first, to show which brand scored highest with its customers for that period. Individual brand ratings against the four pillars take us underneath that Overall Effort Score, with brand-specific explanatory analysis from the CEI Editorial team.

You can use the display above to toggle between score, ranking and individual pillars. Clicking 'Performance Tracker' enables you to analyse the performance over time.

The Customer Effort Index is calculated using a self-referential scale that is recomputed every wave based on what the minimum and maximum values are. This enables us to see how each brand is performing compared to the others within the data set. See About for more on the methodology.