AT&T employee joins the conversation, wants to make things better

To the kind AT&T guy who wants to make this better:
(see the comments from the previous post)

My emotional state has calmed considerably since Friday evening's fiasco. You have been kind enough to comment and engage and I would like to give a thoughtful response. Unfortunately, my thoughtful response was too much for the Comments section and is now lost. But here are the main points I was trying to make:

Most San Franciscans' hatred of AT&T Mobility comes from the widespread unreliability of coverage in the City. We are a major metropolitan area and one of the most technologically advanced cities in the country. To have a wireless service that is so spotty as to be cliché is immensely frustrating. But the Bay Area is rather Apple-centric, and many of us use the iPhone as a portable computer more than just a phone, so we are willing to put up with the monopoly on service, bad though it may be, in order to use the iPhone.

Years ago, long before the first iPhone, I switched from Sprint to AT&T Wireless for my mobile service. I had to cancel the service in two days as there was no coverage on my block or in my apartment. I switched to Cingular and got full bars everywhere I went. When AT&T Wireless absorbed Cingular, service again went to nil. I live on the top floor of a wooden structure not 100 yards from the geographic center of San Francisco. To have little to no wireless signal is ridiculous.

During this weekend's experience I found myself checking out Android phones at Verizon because in this city their service is the best. My digital life is so integrated with Apple products, however, that I need to stay with the iPhone and that means AT&T Mobility.

I wish AT&T had allowed Cingular's cell sites to continue operating. I understand the complexity of cell sites and licensing and site rents and city ordinances and such, but it would have been nice if AT&T had integrated existing cell sites where their service was weak. I called customer service repeatedly in the beginning and was assured that AT&T knew of and was working on the problem. Years later with still little to no service, I feel lied to.

You asked what I would request specifically to improve my AT&T experience. You asked thoughtfully and I would like to give a thoughtful answer:

(1) Please reset my "eligibility" so I can go ahead and buy the iPhone 4 from the Apple Store. This status correction needs to be set not just in whatever database AT&T clerks use, but in the system that AT&T requires Apple to use for verification in their checkout/activation process. Even though the AT&T representative reports that their computer indicates that I am eligible, AT&T's system continues to block my transaction at the Apple Store. It should not take me a week and three trips downtown just to buy a phone.

As a greater request, you might want to implement a system to address the issue on an ongoing basis. I am not the only one experiencing this frustration. If AT&T is going to be Apple's partner in iPhone exclusivity, their computers should be able to talk to each other. And if there is a customer service department whose job it is to reset customer's eligibility, that reset should not take three business days.

(2) Last year AT&T released the "Mark the Spot" app for the iPhone. This is a wonderful mechanism for soliciting customer feedback on dead zones. But there is no indication that anyone is listening to us. The customer's perception of AT&T corporate is that you know you have bad service, but because of iPhone exclusivity, you don't care. AT&T rate plans continue to shift and increase, but without a perceptible improvement in services.

The Mark the Spot app is a great tool for soliciting feedback from customers. Why not use that data to provide feedback to customers? Provide an interactive map of this online. Imagine a company that had the balls to say, "Hey, we know we have service problems. And here they are." The benefit here is that you would not be addressing some nebulous perception of spotty service but actual, identifiable issues. "AT&T Mobility has a strong network, but it does have specific weak coverage points. Thanks to cooperation with our customers, we know exactly where these are, and here is what we're doing to fix them."

AT&T could provide an online interactive map of reported and known problem areas. Every time a user reports a dropped call or no service, its location shows up on the map. Honesty from a corporation? Who would believe it? But click on any part of this map and AT&T can provide their plan to address these weak spots in the network, with a deadline.

Knowing that you know where the problems are, and that you plan to fix them, would go a long way toward addressing customers' frustrations. Including a plan to address the problems with a deadline for completion shows the consumer both integrity and accountability. There should be real accountability for fixing these areas as well. If a deadline is not met, or if the expected "fix" is more than 12 months away, users living in those affected areas could get some sort of recognition, say $10 off this month's bill, an iTunes gift card, something.

Right now, iPhone users feel used and abused by AT&T Mobility and the poor service quality has become a running joke on both coasts (NYC and SF). Responding to customer concerns with a commitment to providing reliable service (what, in theory, we are already paying for) would significantly improve the company's image and may increase customer retention/loyalty.

Admit the problems. Identify them. Tell us what you're going to do about it.

It's the sort of character we demand from our own employees and our own companies. Imagine if a customer could feel the same way about their service provider.



P.S.
And seriously, stop using San Francisco as an example of your service in your television ads. Or in the "more bars in more places" campaign. It just really, really pisses us off. We know first hand how bad AT&T's wireless service is here, so the company just comes across as big fat liars, adding to that whole frustration and perception problem.