Verizon, T-Mobile lead in wireless customer service; AT&T, Sprint below average

J.D. Power and Associates said Thursday that wireless customer service has improved overall as hold times and problem resolution has improved from six months ago. Verizon, T-Mobile and Alltel, which was acquired by Verizon, led the research firm's customer service rankings.

Overall, customer care performance has improved to 735 on a 1,000 point scale. That's up 12 points from February. Seventy-six percent of calls to customer service were resolved on first contact, up from 66 percent in February. Hold times also average 5.55 minutes, down from 6.58 minutes in February, according to J.D. Power.

Here's a look at the rankings:

In general, J.D. Power identified the following customer service trends in wireless:

• A third of contacts are about the cost of service.
• Among customers that contact their carrier two to three times to fix an issue, 17 percent are likely to switch carriers. If a problem is solved in one contact, 10 percent are likely to switch.
• Fifteen percent of contacts are due to calls or text messages from carriers.