VERIZON WIRELESS WINS J.D. POWER CUSTOMER CARE AWARD

J.D. Power and Associates announced on Thursday that Verizon Wireless ranked highest in the company’s 2011 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study, Volume 2. The carrier’s overall score was 770/1000, which was above the average 761 score in the ‘full service’ category. T-Mobile came in second place with a score of 766, followed by Sprint (752) and AT&T (751).

J.D. Power and Associates also noted that non-contract customers have shorter wait times than customers with contracts (5.5 minutes versus 4.4 minutes). “There is also a disparity between the contract and non-contract segments in terms of the quality of the experience with the service representative,” J.D. Power and Associates senior director of wireless services Kirk Parsons said. “In particular, non-contract customers are considerably less satisfied than are contract customers in the areas of knowledge about plans; personal concern for customers; and apathy towards customers.” Boost Mobile ranked the best among non-contract carriers with a score of 763.

DELL CONSIDERS USING GOOGLE+ HANGOUTS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

Michael Dell is toying with the idea of using Google+ Hangouts for Dell’s customer support. The service allows users to initiate a video chat session with multiple people inside their Google+ circles. “I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?” he posted on his Google+ page on Sunday. The idea was an instant success: 556 people had given the comment a +1 as of Tuesday morning and hundreds more left comments in support of the suggestion.

As GigaOm points out, it is currently not possible to start a “Hangout” session from anywhere but from inside Google+ itself. The social network is still in a young invite-only phase, too, so some customers would not have access just yet. Still, Google has said that it plans to offer Google+ for businesses, so perhaps Dell’s idea could come to fruition down the road.