I have a love-hate relationship with AT&T. So do most of my corporate clients. But it is good to see Fortune profile AT&T's (relatively) new CEO Randall Stephenson as he and his team reshape the behemoth.
Days like Friday where I spent another 30 minutes (was disconnected twice) trying to reach the supervisor who promised me dupes of my rebates which after months have not arrived, I dislike the company. When I finally got to another supervisor called Larry, he told me to give it another few days. When I asked him if he would call me coming week to check if they had arrived (I offered to pay for Fedex but they insist of only sending rebates by bulk mail!) and save me the hassle of navigating through his call center again, he seemed shocked. Call a customer? What a novel idea to reach out and touch someone. He finally agreed to when I told I have been an AT&T Mobility, Worldnet, Long Distance, Calling Card and who knows what else customer for over 2 decades and spend thousands with them each year. We will see if he does call - and if the rebates arrive.
Days when I see what my clients get charged per minute when they roam overseas or on their monthly WAN charges, I get energized to beat them hard in negotiations.
But I like what they are doing with their stores. Even though they need to drastically reengineer its TCO, you have to admire what they did to win the iPhone business.
Besides trying to make the company cool, as it becomes more global - and importantly as his customer base becomes more globally savvy - he has to make his products much more competitive on price/performance.
And for pete's sake improve customer service. Like making supervisor Larry call me to check on something which should have been done months ago. And if you are going to sell on Sunday, open up customer service on Sunday. I bet a few of those 60+ million wireless customers would find that cool.
