The New AT&T: Now With Even Worse Customer Service!

One of the perks of writing a business blog, for there are one or two, is that you get to vent about your horrific customer service experiences. You can do so under the guise of discussing the company in question, for there is no better way to take the temperature of a company than to look at how it treats its customers.  Let us take, for example, the new AT&T.

When I first moved to the Bay Area in 2000, AT&T was a dying company, a distant dream.  The phone company here was Pacific Bell, which I now remember fondly, even though back in the day I wrote a Time magazine column excoriating them for taking six months to set me up with DSL service.

Pacific Bell had one thing in its favor, and I don't mean the beautiful (then) new PacBell Park. The company had exquisite customer service. the first time I called them up, to set up my San Francisco phone service before I left New York, I was shocked to discover a human being answering the phone instantly.  What, no recorded message?  No voicemail hell? The rep was as lovely and sunny as San Francisco itself, and we chatted amiably about which phone number I should pick (I actually had a choice). After years of grindingly painful conversations with reps from Bell Atlantic, later Verizon, who usually sounded like I'd just interrupted their dinner, it was a revelation, and the best possible introduction to the Bay Area.

Then PacBell gave way to SBC, and there was a slight decline in customer service.  No longer was a rep waiting at the other end of the phone the instant I called. No longer could I be sure I was talking to someone in the Bay Area. The accents became suspiciously southern, and then, later, suspiciously Indian. I could feel the amount of local knowledge, not to mention customer care and concern, leaking out of the company like air from a child's balloon animal.

Fast forward to last night, when my DSL modem died. Not such a terrible problem in itself; the thing was more than a couple years old and due for an upgrade anyway. But just you try getting through to a human being to talk about it. AT&T uses one of those voice-recognition voicemail systems, which are often pretty useful things (I give FedEx high marks for their implementation). You know the one: the female robot with a gentle voice, the one who says "to get you to the right place, I need to know what you're calling about" in a tone carefully chosen to sound naturalistic and not the least bit offensive. She is, however, only as inoffensive as the options she's been programmed with.

So what's a dead modem? Tech support, right? Okay, but is it "setup help," "email question," "connection problem," or "dial-up access?" it's not any of the above, strictly speaking, and jabbing "0" repeatedly won't get you to a human being. I chose "connection problem", and it was around about that time the robot and I had a connection problem of our own. She suddenly stopped being able to understand me when I responded in the negative.

"Hmm, I didn't quite catch that," she'd say, lying like a deaf aunt. "Are you using the new Microsoft Vista operating system?" "No!" I screamed into the phone, saying it for the fifth time. You'd think AT&T would want to direct you to a human being after "not quite catching" anything a couple times.

By the time I actually made it to a human being, then, my blood was up. And it rose even further when the rep told me there was absolutely no immediate way of solving my dilemma. I would have to call back during office hours to order a replacement modem. The next day, I discovered this was a lie. You can order replacement modems on AT&T.com.  Here I was, a loyal customer, prepared to spend money, with a channel available to provide me with what I needed. Lousy customer service got in the way of a sale, in a way it never would've done with Pacific Bell.

Had I known that night I could order online, I would've done so. I was desperate enough.  By the next day, it seemed clear there were faster ways of getting a new modem. I tried calling around AT&T stores, but they didn't sell them. Again, this seems insanely stupid. I might as well have put my wallet on a piece of string and dangled it in front of AT&T headquarters, for all they were biting.

So what did I do in the end? I found a friend who had a spare DSL modem.  I kept $60 I was preparing to spend. And I walked away with near irreparable damage done to the AT&T brand in my brain. Indeed, enough customer service experiences like this, and the new AT&T will soon go the way of its predecessor.

Comments

[Xeelee]

Ah, the joys of the IVR. I should know, I work doing support for the big V. Usually I *really* try not to sound like you've just interrupted my lunch but that can change if I get annoyed by an unruly/stupid customer.

The problem with the IVR is not unique to AT&T, as Vz also suffers from it quite greatly. Many customers have told me the main reason they actively avoid calling tech support is because of the IVR implementation.

Even us agents suffer from it. I'm usually not able to get people transferred to FiOS tech support — I support DSL — and when I get an agent it's usually at the wrong department.

Sometimes I think they set it up that way so people don't call...

[Trey]

All the "Bells" used to be AT&T back in the day. When they got split up they became smaller and customer service was better b/c they weren't as huge. BellSouth is who I used to work for and I did not realize how good I had it there. Now that we're the new at&t EVERYTHING has changed. The big company is out just to make money. They do not care about their employees. Strike in 09'!