Jason Glaser, who uses Verizon, Claro, O2, or T-Mobile, depending on the country, says he makes this choice because, “All of them have great coverage in their respective countries.”

Coverage indoors, underground, and in congested urban areas is still a challenge, even for market leaders. Dan Schiller, an attorney in Chicago, says his Verizon service is excellent “across the board except the service can be pretty spotty downtown in high rises and underground on the CTA.”

While AT&T boasted the fastest overall speeds in PCMag’s Fastest Mobile Networks 2013 tests, Verizon was voted best by readers for coverage and consistency. Verizon also reported a lower churn rate than AT&T in Q4 2013, 0.96 versus 1.11, respectively.

A closer look at the numbers reveals two network performance metrics that might explain why consumers vote Verizon. As you can see in Figure 2 below, while AT&T is certainly faster on average, Verizon delivers faster time-to-first-byte and superior web-page completion.

Source: PCMag, June, 2013

Interestingly, T-Mobile also beats AT&T when it comes to first contact and web page completion. From the users’ perspective, time-to-first-byte this equals responsiveness, and web-page completion percentage equals reliability. In other words, investing in responsiveness, reliability, and coverage is likely better for CEM than sheer speed. In the absence of the kind of capital required to achieve pervasive national coverage, solutions that improve network reliability and responsiveness can have a significant impact on the customer experience.

Cutting churn in 2014

Several points become clear upon analysis of these trends and customer reports. When it's all boiled down, the network is actually more important than ever. To revisit an earlier point, the less breakups the better---and this means dropped calls and garbled voices, too. T-Mobile's early successes will likely cause its competitors to change some of their pricing and service structures, which is what U.S. customers want. Since U.S. pricing is so inflated, compared to the rest of the world, MNOs in the states must be prepared for an all-out price war, such as the kinds we've seen in Europe. All service providers must innovate in pricing--offering personalized plans is critical to capturing and retaining the widest audience.

Consistency of coverage, high voice quality, and time-to-first-byte are the network metrics that are most important to the customer experience. Investments in wideband voice and network coverage, responsiveness, and reliability have the greatest impact on CEM.  Finally, pre-paid plans must receive better quality of service if brand loyalty is to be maintained. If your CEM strategy needs a facelift, consider these approaches, which can have a significant effect on churn rates in 2014.