att customer service

What happened when Watchdog Nation ate lunch with AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson

January 17, 2018 by Dave Lieber

My #shameATT campaign on Twitter landed Watchdog Nation in the office of AT&T CEO/Chairman/President/Big Kahuna Randall Stephenson.

Hear what happened when we gave him a red binder full of complaints

Here’s the story that originally appeared in the Dave Lieber Watchdog column in The Dallas Morning News.

A mistake I made about AT&T led me into AT&T Chairman-CEO-President Randall Stephenson’s office last week. That’s right. The C-Suite. Suite 400 at AT&T world headquarters in downtown Dallas.

Guys like me can’t get past a company’s PR gatekeepers. But here I am being escorted in the elevator by a building guard. I bring a message from you to him. I carry a large red binder with more than 100 complaints about his company.

Previously, I had written that “the big kahuna at AT&T” doesn’t list improving customer service as one of his top three goals. I launched a #shameATT Twitter campaign.

After that, the big kahuna himself calls on my AT&T cellphone to alert me of my error. He says making customers happy has always been and will always be his numero uno. He invites me to his office for a chicken salad lunch (for which, incidentally, I pay).

After spending 90 minutes in his office last Wednesday, I attest that the big kahuna cares about customer service. Absolutely.

The natural follow-up I ask is: How does it feel to fail?

And I give a little speech: “The reason I’m here, though, is specifically — besides the honor of coming to meet you — to present to you my dilemma. I really have a dilemma. And the dilemma is this. I made this for you.”

I pull out the large red binder. The cover title I created is “The Last 100 Days.” What’s inside? 119 emails from 119 customers and employees — more than one a day — from the last 100 days. I deleted the senders’ names and other personal information to protect their privacy. But these little stories are the saddest tales of corporate failure and customer frustration one can imagine.

“This is what my life has been like for the past 10 years,” I say.

I explain that since I became The Watchdog in 2005, not a day goes by, hardly, when I don’t receive a complaint about his company. Stephenson is tall. Dark hair and glasses. Friendly and courteous. When I talk negatively about his company, he listens intently and doesn’t get defensive.

“Is this something I can keep?” he asks, pointing to the binder.
“Yep.”

“OK, good,” he says. “Did they ask to have the names stripped out?”

“No,” I explain. “They wrote to me.”

“So you don’t have their permission?”

“Yeah. I want you to see what people say about this company.”

“Good. I want to see it.”

- “It’s shocking,” I warn. “Such a terrible reflection on this company. And I’ll be honest with you: When I give speeches, I will say that I think AT&T is the worst large-scale company in America. And nobody really ever argues with me.
  
  “This is just amazing — the level of ineptitude, of carelessness,” I continue. “And it’s shocking to me, and it’s been happening to me every day for 10 years. I’ve always forwarded these to your PR guys. But I’ve stopped.”
  
  “Why don’t you just start forwarding them to me?” he asks.
  
  “I would love to do that,” I say, “but here’s what I started sending to people.” I pull out a sheet that shows a keyboard shortcut I created to answer AT&T complaint emails. The shortcut is a link to the complaint website of AT&T’s regulator, the Federal Communications Commission.
  
  He says that’s an option for people. AT&T gets monthly reports to which it must respond.
  
  He taps on the red binder again: “I’ll be on an airplane tomorrow. And I’ll spend time going through it.”
  
  I say, “So that’s why I’m here, OK? I’m here on behalf of what I would call the ‘Make it stop’ campaign.”
  
  “What is that?” he asks.
  
  “Make this stop. For every 60 I get about AT&T, I get one about Verizon. For every 90 I get about AT&T, I get one about Time Warner Cable. So your ratio is so far off the charts.”
  
  His main point to make to me? “If you leave here with nothing else,” he says, “know that this is a priority of mine. This is my No. 1 priority. This is where we invest more capital than anyplace else.”
  
  He adds, “I would like to convey that we have a plan and a lot of investment” in improving customer service.
  
  OK.
  
  He points to the red binder again, screaming brightly in his modern wood-and-glass office. “I’ll find this very useful. … I want to study it. I want to see if I can put together a plan and address this on a broader scale.”
  
  He tells me that a column I wrote last month describing a customer service horror story was studied intensely by his team. He calls these studies of what went wrong a “root cause analysis.”
  
  During the next hour, I glimpse what it’s like to run a company with 150 million customers and 280,000 employees. I learn how he monitors performance using scores and metrics and data, some of it independent of the company and some internal.
  
  I learn that customer service at AT&T is changing. Much of it will go online. Call center reps are going to get more training and better technology to help them do their jobs, he says.
  
  He glances at the screaming red binder again. “I don’t know what I’m going to find. I’m dying to dive into it. It will actually be valuable intel I suspect.”
  
  Then he says something that changes my impression of him in a big way. He is removing the gatekeepers. When I ask him again where I should send the daily complaints about AT&T, he gives me his email address.
  
  Do these emails go to your phone? I ask.
  
  “Yes.”
  
  If our little meeting improves customer service for one person, I’ll be happy. But my goal is bigger. His is, too. Let’s improve AT&T’s customer service for millions.
  
  Staff writer Marina Trahan Martinez contributed to this report.
  
  Check out The Watchdog on NBC5 at 11:20 a.m. Mondays, talking about matters important to you.
  
  On Twitter:
  @DaveLieber

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Filed Under: Column, Customer Service Issues, Technology Issues, Utilities Tagged With: AT&T, att customer service, CEO, Dave Lieber, Randall Stephenson, watchdog nation

Why AT&T customer service sucks

December 20, 2015 by Dave Lieber

For 10 years, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation has received a steady flow of complaints about AT&T. Hundreds upon hundreds. More than any other company by far.

Each complaint I forward gets fixed. But in a greater sense, it seems nothing gets fixed. Is the culture of Dallas-based AT&T to accept the trove of complaints but never drill down to the root cause?

I don’t know why this continues to happen, but a recent letter I received may help us understand.

An AT&T call center employee has written The Watchdog. The employee gives me permission to share the letter, but I am not naming her because of her job. After the letter, you’ll read what AT&T has to say about it.

“Dear Watchdog, I’ve worked 17 years for AT&T. I have never, in all my years, imagined it would become the catastrophe it is now.

“As retention reps, we are told to not only retain existing customers after their promotions expire, but to also sell more to these people.

“In most cases, a customer’s bill will jump up $83 a month after the ‘intro’ pricing ends. We as reps are allotted at the beginning of week 5 ‘limited use’ promotions, giving folks the maximum of $40 off.

“By Monday afternoon, these are generally depleted as we take about 40 calls a day.

“This has created a culture of reps promising promos, but not adding them. Or telling the customer they are disconnecting the service, but just not doing it. Reps do not want to disconnect a customer, as this counts against the rep.

“You are right to request a user ID [of the rep]. However, it does not help, as every account is noted with the ID of the rep, and management does nothing to discourage the reps’ behavior (as the manager’s pay also is negatively affected by each disconnect their rep does).

“This goes all the way up to sales center manager, general manager and VP. None of the higher-ups care or do anything to stop it.

“They also turn a blind eye to ‘cramming’ by reps (mostly nonunion employees overseas) and erroneous misquotes.

“It’s very frustrating to be an ethical rep there anymore, as you are constantly under their scrutiny for not meeting numbers. The only way to meet these numbers is to be a liar and a sleaze. Three-quarters of my call center is on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicine just to deal with the company. It shouldn’t be like that.

“The part in your article [a previous Watchdog report] about us not giving our User ID is really a directive that we had from upper management. A customer’s account was compromised by a fraudster with a real ID. The fraudster called in, changed the address on the account, then called in again and ordered iPhones to be shipped to the address he changed it to.

“The problem with this is none of these general managers communicate. Each state is covered by different laws and regulations. You in Texas may call and get a rep in California. In California, I do not have to let you record the call. You also have the option not to be recorded.

“Now that we are national, you have GMs in charge of call centers in California, Missouri, Texas and Georgia. They don’t train you, don’t care about you, don’t care about the customer as long as they are getting commission off your work.

“They know nothing of government regulations, and frankly, do not care.

“I’ve been through so many GMs and vice presidents. However, this is by far the most inept. We should be helping our customers, not forcing products on them they do not want. … I really don’t think anyone in the government cares.”

What AT&T says

I showed the letter to AT&T — and asked the company for its reaction.

“Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing if this is an employee of our company,” AT&T’s response begins. “But the picture painted is not the experience we create, promote or endorse.

“We have some of the best call center employees in the industry. We set expectations and limit the offers they can use. But we also provide new agents with 12 weeks of intensive training — with a focus on keeping customers with integrity and with offers based on needs determined during the conversation.

“Once out of training, our agents get regular and organized coaching and updates to their initial training with the option of additional coaching always available.”

The statement ends there.

The Watchdog deems it strange because the answer ignores the basic flaws of AT&T’s culture as described by the call center employee.

Perspective

At my request, Daniel Lyons, a Boston College Law School professor with experience in telecommunications, studied the letter.

Lyons said if a company promises a customer incentives to either sign up for service or renew an existing contract and those incentives are not delivered, in many cases, that’s fraud.

Don’t expect help from government regulators, he says. “The more competitive the marketplace has gotten, the less regulators feel like they need to get involved. If customers don’t like the service they get, they can switch elsewhere.”

What’s happening behind the scenes at AT&T is not unlike what occurs at other companies. But AT&T touches the lives of more Americans than most.

At least we have an idea why the company can’t get it right.

[This story originally appeared in The Dallas Morning News Watchdog column.

Still here? Visit Dave Lieber’s other fun website: DaveLieber.org

Filed Under: Column, Customer Service Issues, Technology Issues, Utilities Tagged With: att customer service, bad AT&T customer service, Dave Lieber, watchdog nation

Is AT&T America’s worst company?

September 17, 2012 by Dave Lieber

The Watchdog is getting socked with complaints about AT&T customer service. Everybody has a different beef with the company.

As readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Dave Lieber Watchdog column first learned, service is promised, then denied. Billing problems aren’t corrected. And the worst? Monthly prices on some services went up last month as much as $12 for some households.

I’ve shared every problem with the Dallas-based company, and it quickly corrected some easier ones. But why do customers need a Watchdog intervention to get AT&T to solve their problems?

Ron Shelton wanted to shut down one phone line to his Benbrook home, but AT&T didn’t close the line — it added another one. He calls every month seeking a fix.

“I have talked to supervisors, overseas assistants, customer service representatives, all of whom see the problem and all of whom say they have it fixed,” he said.

But the bills keep coming. The last straw was the letter from a collection agency. “I have no idea where to go from here,” he told The Watchdog.

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Fran Longeway of Fort Worth is tangled up dealing with the estate of her mother, who passed away on New Year’s Day. Her biggest hassle? Because AT&T keeps charging for services that were canceled, she can’t settle the estate.

Kathleen Reilly of Arlington spoke “to a gazillion” people at AT&T before she wrote The Watchdog. Nobody would give her credit for a three-day outage of her home phone and a weeklong outage of Internet services. She’s also getting bills for U-verse TV installation that was never completed because installers told her the house was “250 feet shy of getting a good signal.”

Wes Allard of Mansfield sent a modem back to the company but got a bill for $87 anyway. He calls each month and keeps records of whom he talks to but gets nowhere. “Can you help us against this giant?” he asked.

The Watchdog helped Longeway, who was sent a final bill so she could settle the estate; Reilly, who received a $234 credit; and Allard, who got an $87 credit.

Customers say they feel helpless fighting price increases. (An AT&T spokeswoman told me they are “modest price adjustments.”)

Ellen Chase, a former AT&T employee, complained of a recent price increase on her U-verse bill even with her employee discount.

She points out that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson took a $2 million pay cut to $18 million because he couldn’t pull off a merger with T-Mobile, ultimately blocked by the government.

AT&T also has to pay $4.2 billion in cash and spectrum rights to T-Mobile as a “breakup fee” to compensate T-Mobile for the failed merger. Chase says she sees a connection between those developments and her bill increase.

AT&T spokeswoman Alejandra Arango says price increases took effect Feb. 1. Most U-verse TV customers saw an increase of $2 to $5 a month depending on their TV package.

U-verse high-speed Internet customers pay $4 to $7 more. AT&T high-speech Internet customers saw an increase of $3 to $5. “The maximum increase a customer with both U-verse TV and Internet will see is approximately $12,” Arango told me. In return, she says, customers get more channels and access to more features.

Contrast that with Verizon, which, like AT&T, has a strong North Texas presence. A Verizon spokesman says the only recent fee increase announcement is a $1 monthly increase to rent a digital video recorder, effective in May.

The most disheartened AT&T customer to contact The Watchdog is George Michael Sherry of Fort Worth, who says he makes only about 12 calls a month. His land-line plan is old, now discontinued. He is charged a monthly measured rate, which means he gets a limited number of outgoing calls, and for anything above that, he pays more.

Four years ago, his base monthly bill with taxes was $15. Now with continued increases, he pays $30. “For the exact same service,” he said.

Sherry, 58, has considered ditching his land line but feels an emotional attachment. Without a land line, it “would feel like I am disappearing, like no longer existing.”

Finally, Nolan Watts told me he is furious because he received a warning that he is a high data user. His unlimited cellphone service is in danger of slowing down as he nears his allotted usage, though his plan is unlimited.

His problem? “I watch about 25 minutes of TV video at lunchtime about four days a week.”

AT&T has announced a crackdown on high data users. The company suggests that smartphone customers use Wi-Fi networks rather than cellular networks for music and video.

That points to one cause of these difficulties, telecommunications expert Ray Horak says. Companies such as AT&T and Verizon have rushed out so many new services in recent years that they are victims of their own success.

Demand for streaming music and video is greater than available bandwidth. Complex services have problems sometimes not easily solvable.

There are several directions to go. A company can raise prices, throttle some services and continue to expand its network. AT&T is doing all of that.

Horak worked a stint as business manager of an AT&T office in Dallas. The internal company slogan was, “We may be the only telephone company in town, but we try not to act like it.”

Those were the days.

“The level of criticism [against the phone company] is much more severe today,” he said.

# # #

Guess which company gets the biggest play in the author’s award-winning book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong? The book shows you how to fight back — and win! The book is available at WatchdogNation.com as a hardcover, CD audio book, e-book and hey, what else do you need? The author is The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit our store. Now revised and expanded in a 2012 edition, the book won two national book awards for social change.

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