Business Wireline: The Best & Worst Companies for Customer Satisfaction

AT&T and Verizon are leading the pack in business wireline satisfaction, according to J.D. Power‘s latest study.

The research firm unveiled its latest Business Wireline Satisfaction study, which shows AT&T earning major praise from large enterprises.

Although its chief rival won the enterprise and SMB categories, Verizon absolutely dominated the very small business segment. Cox scored second for very small businesses the previous year, but fell way down to sixth in 2020

AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, Spectrum and Frontier are featured in the business wireline study.

J.D. Power managing director Ian Greenblatt praised service providers for weathering the COVID-19 storm. Satisfaction scores improved from 2019 across all business segments despite a hard-hit economy.

J.D. Power’s Ian Greenblatt

“Business wireline providers have shown tremendous resiliency by maintaining exceptional customer service despite myriad unanticipated roadblocks presenting themselves as they moved entire call centers to remote work,” Greenblatt said.

It’s also worth noting that J.D. Power conducted the survey during April and May 2019 — right as business were sending employees home.

“With planned redundancies and excellent and effective service, providers quickly made the seamless transition to ‘safer at home’ without seeing a dip in satisfaction — an impressive feat in these extraordinary times,” he said.

A Growing Discrepancy

One troubling trend to note, however, is that the satisfaction gap between large enterprises and very small businesses increased again. In other words, large enterprise customers reported an average satisfaction of 863 and very small business customers reported an average satisfaction of 751. That’s a 112-point gap, which increased from 97 last year.

“Smaller business customers may be less profitable, but if wireline companies can address the opportunities in very small business customer service, they will see an increase in satisfaction and, ultimately, retention,” Greenblatt said last year.

Scroll through the 12 slides below to see how J.D. Power conducted the study. You’ll also want to find out how the seven service providers fared.