VocaLabs Releases SectorPulse

By Peter Leppik

VocaLabs released the results of the latest round of SectorPulse studies ranking the quality of customer service across different companies. This quarter marks the company's sixth report on the financial services industry, and the 12th report on mobile phone companies.

Financial Services

This quarter, Washington Mutual edged ahead in customer service quality among the five financial services companies VocaLabs track. Last quarter, PayPal took the top honors with "B" grades in both caller satisfaction and call completion, and while PayPal maintained its grades, Washington Mutual improved in both benchmarks to earn an "A" in caller satisfaction and a "B" in call completion.

For the first time, VocaLabs also collected data on Wachovia, though VocaLabs did not get enough survey responses to issue the company letter grades. Nevertheless, Wachovia's results were very good, and if VocaLabs had been able to collect sufficient data to be comfortable issuing benchmarks, Wachovia and Washington Mutual would have been about tied for the best service.

VocaLabs also issued grades for Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo. All three of those companies showed poorly in call completion, earning "D" grades. For caller satisfaction, Wells Fargo earned a "B," Citibank earned a "C," and Bank of America earned a "D."

Also this quarter, Citibank's Customer Loyalty score slipped back into negative territory. The Customer Loyalty score is the average customer response to a question about how likely they are to move an account to a different bank in the next year, and negative scores mean that more customers indicated that they are likely to move accounts away from Citibank than not.

Mobile Phones

T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless have historically been neck-and-neck for top customer service honors, and this month the two companies tied. Both earned "A" grades for caller satisfaction, and "C's" for call completion.

Cingular was a credible runner-up, with two "B's," and the company has recovered from the downward dip its service scores took when it acquired AT&T Wireless. Sprint brought up the rear with two "D's."