Telecommunications in the US

Sector average score

Knowledge & Expertise

Style of Communication

Speed of Resolving Problems

Valuing the Customer

Vodafone has taken the top spot in the Telecommunications in the US table, adding +4 to its Overall Effort Score wave on wave to reach a high of 64 – an all-time best for this table.

The jump pushes T-Mobile into second place, which previously held the top spot for five straight quarters.

Vodafone leads outright in the Valuing the Customer and Knowledge & Expertise pillars, but remains deadlocked with T-Mobile in Speed of Resolving Problems.

In Style of Communication, both brands are behind Verizon, which ranks in third place overall.

Elsewhere, Frontier Communications has also added +4 to its Overall Effort Score, while Brightspeed added +6 wave on wave to catch up with Lumen, tying both in last place.

Executive Summary

How to use this Index

Last updated: Apr 2025

Next update: Jul 2025

Executive summary

Vodafone is a world leader for Customer Effort across all three territories the CEI measures – the UK, US and Australia. Vodafone's Overall Effort Score is highest in the US at 64, which is higher than any score for this territory the Customer Effort Index has ever recorded.
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. Vodafone 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.