THE BOTTOM LINE:
AT&T/U-verse is operating with an outdated 19th century business model (rigid top down processes with little empowerment of their employees).
They have a "take it or leave it" attitude and when a problem occurs, unless the customer is incredibly persistent, the customer will lose.
Their attitude is that they want to make their own problems the problem of their customer.
They are a communications company, but alas, their internal systems and communications are pathetic.
They have NO clue about good customer service (putting the customer first).
Having performed business process re-engineering consulting engagements with some of America's largest corporations, I can say that AT&T is one of the worst I've seen re their new customer business process.
THE DETAILS (if you care):
Our experience so far with AT&T's U-verse has been decidedly sub-par. For 20 years, I haven't liked the deceptive billing practices of Time Warner, but at least they are competent. AT&T's new customer business processes are beyond bad.
Ok, so I read on Hornfans on Thursday, August 30th (a week ago) that there were rumors that AT&T's U-verse was going to pick up the Longhorn Network the following day. Since we were on Time Warner (which has made it fairly clear that it will be a cold day in hell before it agrees to ESPN's terms for the LHN), if U-verse actually did offer the LHN the next day, I wanted to consider moving our cable and Internet service. I knew we wouldn't get U-verse installed in time for the first UT football game on September 1, but we go to all the games anyway, so I wasn't too concerned. But I did want to get it for the second game on September 8th.
So at about 2:00 p.m. on Friday, I took a break from a home improvement project and sat down at my computer to see what was going on in the world. Sure enough, just as posters on Hornfans had predicted, AT&T had announced earlier that day that its subsidiary, U-verse, had picked up the Longhorn Network.
So I got on AT&T's web site to see if U-verse was available for our address (apparently you have to be within about 3,300 feet of one of its VRAD transmitters -- some say 5,000 feet with a conditioned line). The web site said U-verse was available at our address. Not ever believing anything a single source at any corporation ever tells me (since I've done enough business process re-engineering consulting engagements for enough of them to know how absolutely screwed up most large U. S. corporations are), I decided to verify that info with a U-verse rep.
The rep with whom I talked said our address was indeed U-verse capable. She tried to get me to pay a $22 fee to "hold" my order and a September 4th installation date (Issue #1 -- they shouldn't charging to "hold" an installation date). I hadn’t checked at that point the relative cost of TW and U-verse, and so I didn't know at that point if I wanted U-verse, so I declined the $22 "offer."
We spent the next hour looking at the U-verse web site, comparing the TW channels we currently had and our current Internet service speed to the various packages available on U-verse (AT&T's web site was not user-friendly to allow us to do that quickly). At 3:00 p.m., I called back to subscribe and was told that in one hour, the first available installation time had moved to September 11th!
Figuring that I might find a way to get my install time moved up, I went ahead and subscribed. I then got on a chat session with a rep and asked for the install date to be expedited. She came up with a September 5th install date with the tech to arrive between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. I bit. My god! Something finally went right with AT&T!
1:00 p.m. arrives on Wednesday, September 5th and no rep. No big deal. Still two hours to go for that window. 3:00 p.m. arrives and no rep. (Issue #2 - AT&T's business process should mandate a call from somebody if they are going to be late). I call AT&T and while I’m on hold, they spend 10 minutes trying to figure out where the tech was. (Issue #3) While I'm holding for the customer rep, the tech tries to call on that same line. He finally shows up 30 minutes later.
The rep messes around for an hour with multiple phone calls and then tells us that our line has to be "conditioned." I used to manage large communication networks, so I know what that is and understand why it needs to be done. As you might guess, the U-verse installer isn’t allowed to do that work; AT&T’s “outside plant” guys have to do it and they are stacked up with work orders, but there MIGHT be a chance that the work could be done the next day. He also says that he won't install a new box on the outside of the house until the line gets conditioned.
I emphasize to him that we were counting on being able to record the September 8th Texas game against New Mexico and that's why I was so glad to get a September 5th installation date. He says he will try to get somebody to condition the line the next day, but that his supervisor is on vacation and he can't make that happen himself. He advises me to call AT&T to ask them to do that. He also tells me he's not going to install a new box on the outside of our house since he thinks he will use the one already there.
So I called AT&T to get that line conditioning guy out and they said they thought it might be done the next day, but they couldn't tell me when.
On Thursday at about 9:00 a.m., I see an AT&T truck across the street, so I go over there and talk to the driver. He's here to condition the line. But he says he can't condition the line until that new box gets installed on the outside of the house! (Issue #4 - AT&T’s “plant” people and its U-verse people obviously aren't in sync).
He says he will try to get the guy back out to install the box the same day, but that his supervisor is on vacation and so is the supervisor of the tech who was here on Wednesday. Apparently nobody in AT&T is allowed to do ANYTHING without a supervisor. (Issue #5 - Successful businesses allow their employees to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. AT&T is operating off a 19th century business model).
As we leave for the Austin Longhorn Club meeting (informative and intelligent Manny Diaz speaking today), the line conditioning guy advises us to call AT&T when we return to beg for a tech to come out the next day to install the box on the side of the house. So when we get back at about 2:00 p.m., we have a message from the line conditioning tech telling us that the line conditioning work was completed WHILE WE WERE GONE, but there is no box installed on the side of the house, so we have no clue what that was all about or what magically happened to solve the problem.
We had several calls to our phone while we are gone (with multiple hang-ups and no messages). We also had another message from an AT&T rep who wants us to call her to re-schedule the U-verse installation. We call that 1-888-546-4141 number and the message says, "The number you are calling is temporarily unavailable." (Issue #5 – You’d THINK that the PHONE COMPANY could give you a working number to call)
We try that number several times and give up. After a few minutes, we see an 877 area code call on our phone (with no caller ID displayed) and assume it is either the 877 number from a political polling organization that calls us frequently, or one of many other junk 877 calls we get all the time. (Later, we find out it was from AT&T, but why they didn't identify the caller-ID with "AT&T" or "U-verse," I'll never know. Realize this is the TELEPHONE COMPANY, and you'd THINK they would know to let you know who is calling!). Issue #6
So I call the main AT&T customer service number. The rep tells me that our install date is now September 18th, two weeks from our original install date! I am flabbergasted as I talk to him, thinking that when I had my software development business, if a delay was MY fault and I tried to make it the customer's problem, I would have been OUT OF BUSINESS in six months.
I explain to the rep that I need a tech to come out today to compete the work, that we are already a day behind the original install date and with the problems we're experiencing with AT&T, that I assume there will be additional installation delays and that could push us into Saturday with little margin for error on that day. He is not budging on the 18th (probably because AT&T is using the same 19th century business model with their phone reps as well), so I ask to talk with a supervisor. He spends literally 20 minutes trying to locate a supervisor (I'm not kidding), putting me on hold numerous times, coming back and telling me he's still looking for one.
Finally a supervisor comes on and essentially gives me the same September 18th date as the rep. But after I persisted, he relented and said he would talk to the Austin scheduling people to see what they could do. So, after about 5 minutes, he comes back to tell me that the earliest they could come out would be on Saturday, September 8th at 11:00 a.m. I explain that with a 4 - 6 hour minimum install time, that gives us virtually no margin of error since we will be leaving at 3:45 p.m. to go meet the UT team bus at the stadium at 4:45 p.m. on Saturday (something we’ve done since 1999).
Anything beyond a 4-hour install and we'd have to kick the installer out and reschedule for another time (likely now after the 18th of September since the part of Austin that can get U-verse appears to be converting en masse to it and consequently elongating the install date as we were talking). We persist for probably 5 more minutes, but he says he can't do any better than Saturday at 11:00 a.m.
So, exasperated, I tell him that I'll just call the main AT&T number and cancel the U-verse install. He apologizes for all that I've gone through and we hang up.
I call the AT&T number and tell the person I want to cancel my U-verse service and they go into new customer save mode. They magically come back with a Friday install date (with a window of 8 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.!). I ask why such a large window and the rep has no clue. I suspect it's because they really aren't planning to honor the install on Friday, but if somebody cancels, they will slip me in (I doubt anybody getting the LHN on U-verse in Austin is going to cancel a Friday-before-the- New Mexico-game install date).
This is definitely NOT the AT&T that my father and uncle Dan worked for from the 50s to the 70s. Southwestern Bell (or maybe it's PAC Bell) has made this company into the stereotypical large incompetent corporation that typifies all monopolies/oligopolies).
I am unbelievably unimpressed.
Contrast that with with Time Warner: it was one phone call to subscribe to the service, one email confirming the appointment, one service call -- and we had cable and Internet.
Not multiple calls over several days with emails with links that asked you to sign up as a customer but wouldn't let you do so until AFTER the installation had occurred. And not an organization whose customer had to persist repeatedly and ask to talk multiple times to supervisors in order to just get what the company originally promised.
These people need a new customer business process re-engineering consulting engagement BADLY.
AT&T/U-verse is operating with an outdated 19th century business model (rigid top down processes with little empowerment of their employees).
They have a "take it or leave it" attitude and when a problem occurs, unless the customer is incredibly persistent, the customer will lose.
Their attitude is that they want to make their own problems the problem of their customer.
They are a communications company, but alas, their internal systems and communications are pathetic.
They have NO clue about good customer service (putting the customer first).
Having performed business process re-engineering consulting engagements with some of America's largest corporations, I can say that AT&T is one of the worst I've seen re their new customer business process.
THE DETAILS (if you care):
Our experience so far with AT&T's U-verse has been decidedly sub-par. For 20 years, I haven't liked the deceptive billing practices of Time Warner, but at least they are competent. AT&T's new customer business processes are beyond bad.
Ok, so I read on Hornfans on Thursday, August 30th (a week ago) that there were rumors that AT&T's U-verse was going to pick up the Longhorn Network the following day. Since we were on Time Warner (which has made it fairly clear that it will be a cold day in hell before it agrees to ESPN's terms for the LHN), if U-verse actually did offer the LHN the next day, I wanted to consider moving our cable and Internet service. I knew we wouldn't get U-verse installed in time for the first UT football game on September 1, but we go to all the games anyway, so I wasn't too concerned. But I did want to get it for the second game on September 8th.
So at about 2:00 p.m. on Friday, I took a break from a home improvement project and sat down at my computer to see what was going on in the world. Sure enough, just as posters on Hornfans had predicted, AT&T had announced earlier that day that its subsidiary, U-verse, had picked up the Longhorn Network.
So I got on AT&T's web site to see if U-verse was available for our address (apparently you have to be within about 3,300 feet of one of its VRAD transmitters -- some say 5,000 feet with a conditioned line). The web site said U-verse was available at our address. Not ever believing anything a single source at any corporation ever tells me (since I've done enough business process re-engineering consulting engagements for enough of them to know how absolutely screwed up most large U. S. corporations are), I decided to verify that info with a U-verse rep.
The rep with whom I talked said our address was indeed U-verse capable. She tried to get me to pay a $22 fee to "hold" my order and a September 4th installation date (Issue #1 -- they shouldn't charging to "hold" an installation date). I hadn’t checked at that point the relative cost of TW and U-verse, and so I didn't know at that point if I wanted U-verse, so I declined the $22 "offer."
We spent the next hour looking at the U-verse web site, comparing the TW channels we currently had and our current Internet service speed to the various packages available on U-verse (AT&T's web site was not user-friendly to allow us to do that quickly). At 3:00 p.m., I called back to subscribe and was told that in one hour, the first available installation time had moved to September 11th!
Figuring that I might find a way to get my install time moved up, I went ahead and subscribed. I then got on a chat session with a rep and asked for the install date to be expedited. She came up with a September 5th install date with the tech to arrive between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. I bit. My god! Something finally went right with AT&T!
1:00 p.m. arrives on Wednesday, September 5th and no rep. No big deal. Still two hours to go for that window. 3:00 p.m. arrives and no rep. (Issue #2 - AT&T's business process should mandate a call from somebody if they are going to be late). I call AT&T and while I’m on hold, they spend 10 minutes trying to figure out where the tech was. (Issue #3) While I'm holding for the customer rep, the tech tries to call on that same line. He finally shows up 30 minutes later.
The rep messes around for an hour with multiple phone calls and then tells us that our line has to be "conditioned." I used to manage large communication networks, so I know what that is and understand why it needs to be done. As you might guess, the U-verse installer isn’t allowed to do that work; AT&T’s “outside plant” guys have to do it and they are stacked up with work orders, but there MIGHT be a chance that the work could be done the next day. He also says that he won't install a new box on the outside of the house until the line gets conditioned.
I emphasize to him that we were counting on being able to record the September 8th Texas game against New Mexico and that's why I was so glad to get a September 5th installation date. He says he will try to get somebody to condition the line the next day, but that his supervisor is on vacation and he can't make that happen himself. He advises me to call AT&T to ask them to do that. He also tells me he's not going to install a new box on the outside of our house since he thinks he will use the one already there.
So I called AT&T to get that line conditioning guy out and they said they thought it might be done the next day, but they couldn't tell me when.
On Thursday at about 9:00 a.m., I see an AT&T truck across the street, so I go over there and talk to the driver. He's here to condition the line. But he says he can't condition the line until that new box gets installed on the outside of the house! (Issue #4 - AT&T’s “plant” people and its U-verse people obviously aren't in sync).
He says he will try to get the guy back out to install the box the same day, but that his supervisor is on vacation and so is the supervisor of the tech who was here on Wednesday. Apparently nobody in AT&T is allowed to do ANYTHING without a supervisor. (Issue #5 - Successful businesses allow their employees to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. AT&T is operating off a 19th century business model).
As we leave for the Austin Longhorn Club meeting (informative and intelligent Manny Diaz speaking today), the line conditioning guy advises us to call AT&T when we return to beg for a tech to come out the next day to install the box on the side of the house. So when we get back at about 2:00 p.m., we have a message from the line conditioning tech telling us that the line conditioning work was completed WHILE WE WERE GONE, but there is no box installed on the side of the house, so we have no clue what that was all about or what magically happened to solve the problem.
We had several calls to our phone while we are gone (with multiple hang-ups and no messages). We also had another message from an AT&T rep who wants us to call her to re-schedule the U-verse installation. We call that 1-888-546-4141 number and the message says, "The number you are calling is temporarily unavailable." (Issue #5 – You’d THINK that the PHONE COMPANY could give you a working number to call)
We try that number several times and give up. After a few minutes, we see an 877 area code call on our phone (with no caller ID displayed) and assume it is either the 877 number from a political polling organization that calls us frequently, or one of many other junk 877 calls we get all the time. (Later, we find out it was from AT&T, but why they didn't identify the caller-ID with "AT&T" or "U-verse," I'll never know. Realize this is the TELEPHONE COMPANY, and you'd THINK they would know to let you know who is calling!). Issue #6
So I call the main AT&T customer service number. The rep tells me that our install date is now September 18th, two weeks from our original install date! I am flabbergasted as I talk to him, thinking that when I had my software development business, if a delay was MY fault and I tried to make it the customer's problem, I would have been OUT OF BUSINESS in six months.
I explain to the rep that I need a tech to come out today to compete the work, that we are already a day behind the original install date and with the problems we're experiencing with AT&T, that I assume there will be additional installation delays and that could push us into Saturday with little margin for error on that day. He is not budging on the 18th (probably because AT&T is using the same 19th century business model with their phone reps as well), so I ask to talk with a supervisor. He spends literally 20 minutes trying to locate a supervisor (I'm not kidding), putting me on hold numerous times, coming back and telling me he's still looking for one.
Finally a supervisor comes on and essentially gives me the same September 18th date as the rep. But after I persisted, he relented and said he would talk to the Austin scheduling people to see what they could do. So, after about 5 minutes, he comes back to tell me that the earliest they could come out would be on Saturday, September 8th at 11:00 a.m. I explain that with a 4 - 6 hour minimum install time, that gives us virtually no margin of error since we will be leaving at 3:45 p.m. to go meet the UT team bus at the stadium at 4:45 p.m. on Saturday (something we’ve done since 1999).
Anything beyond a 4-hour install and we'd have to kick the installer out and reschedule for another time (likely now after the 18th of September since the part of Austin that can get U-verse appears to be converting en masse to it and consequently elongating the install date as we were talking). We persist for probably 5 more minutes, but he says he can't do any better than Saturday at 11:00 a.m.
So, exasperated, I tell him that I'll just call the main AT&T number and cancel the U-verse install. He apologizes for all that I've gone through and we hang up.
I call the AT&T number and tell the person I want to cancel my U-verse service and they go into new customer save mode. They magically come back with a Friday install date (with a window of 8 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.!). I ask why such a large window and the rep has no clue. I suspect it's because they really aren't planning to honor the install on Friday, but if somebody cancels, they will slip me in (I doubt anybody getting the LHN on U-verse in Austin is going to cancel a Friday-before-the- New Mexico-game install date).
This is definitely NOT the AT&T that my father and uncle Dan worked for from the 50s to the 70s. Southwestern Bell (or maybe it's PAC Bell) has made this company into the stereotypical large incompetent corporation that typifies all monopolies/oligopolies).
I am unbelievably unimpressed.
Contrast that with with Time Warner: it was one phone call to subscribe to the service, one email confirming the appointment, one service call -- and we had cable and Internet.
Not multiple calls over several days with emails with links that asked you to sign up as a customer but wouldn't let you do so until AFTER the installation had occurred. And not an organization whose customer had to persist repeatedly and ask to talk multiple times to supervisors in order to just get what the company originally promised.
These people need a new customer business process re-engineering consulting engagement BADLY.
