AT&T Wireless Customers

[Sphexi]

This only applies to people in the mentioned geographic areas, who have a discount through an employer on their personal account. Anybody in NYC, NJ, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, etc. and west through Texas. If you call 611 and get to Business Care, then this is for you.

I just finished up my last day at WEST Corporation, a 3rd party vendor that provides inbound call centers for companies like AT&T. The center here in Victoria has been open for about 6 years now, we used to do oldschool AT&T, then International care for Cingular, now Business care for the new AT&T. Out of 15 business centers that provide the nationwide coverage for AT&T customers, we are the top ranked in 11 of the last 12 months. We have the best stats, the best customer satisfaction feedback, and the lowest amounts of credits.

But we're also in Canada, which means we cost more money. 6 years ago the Canadian dollar was weak, so AT&T paid WEST in USD, which they then turned around and paid us in CDN, and made profit on the exchange itself. Now the two currencies are close to parity and they don't get that benefit. In addition, we get better pay and benefits than most centers. Down in the states they may pay $8/hr with state minimum benefits for full time, up here we start at $12/hr and get full medical, dental, stock options, more. I understand we cost more, but we have the lowest turnover of any AT&T center, or any of the 30+ that WEST operates for all their clients. We're the best trained, and were one of the biggest as well at one point, over 1,000 reps on the floor for a time.

Unfortunately they decided to shut us down, WEST that is, although AT&T didn't argue too much as long as WEST fulfills their contract with them. At the end of July we'll stop taking calls, and everything will be handled by the remaining 5 centers.

The problem is this: 75% of our calls are 7 day repeat calls, meaning the person called in during the last 7 days. Most of the time they've called in multiple times, and about the same issue. Reps in other centers are underpaid, and under trained, and it shows. I'm sure many customers here have called in with a technical issue, been told it was fixed and to just "wait 20 minutes and power cycle your phone". That's BS. There isn't a single issue that cannot be fixed while on their call, save for some network related issues that require tickets to be opened with the network engineers. I've lost count of how many hundreds of calls I've personally resolved within the first 3 minutes, after 5 or more previous reps didn't do shit except lie to the customer to get them off the phone.

The best part is that's all that will be left after July. You'll basically be playing a giant crap shoot anytime you call in with an issue, because fact is the other centers are down right horrible. They tell you they put in a request for a large credit, then they don't. They tell you they'll call you back, but they never do. It's seriously that bad, and considering that the 6 current centers deal with New York City, Atlanta, all of Florida, New Orleans, and several other major east coast cities, I can guarantee after we're shut down the number of complaints will sky rocket. Already started to actually.

Bottom line: If you're a current AT&T customer on the east coast with a discount from your employer, start looking for alternatives. There's obviously a lot of very talented and wonderful employees within AT&T and WEST, but unfortunately the number of employees who don't care and don't know how to do their jobs out number them.

Try T-Mobile...I've heard their customer service is top notch.




Cliffs:
1) Company cut costs by shutting down their best and highest rated center.
2) Customers suffer heavily.
3) That could mean YOU.
4) .....
5) Profit?

 

[sjwaste]

My fiancee has an iPhone and I have a Tilt on a corporate plan. My cycle's up in 8 months and I'll probably go to Verizon or Sprint (my personal phone is on Sprint). Sucks to hear what's going on, but I'm not at all surprised. My Tilt's a brick with horrid battery life, and I just hope I never have to call in.

Good luck with the job search. I hope it works out well!

 

[Sphexi]

Originally posted by: sjwaste
My fiancee has an iPhone and I have a Tilt on a corporate plan. My cycle's up in 8 months and I'll probably go to Verizon or Sprint (my personal phone is on Sprint). Sucks to hear what's going on, but I'm not at all surprised. My Tilt's a brick with horrid battery life, and I just hope I never have to call in.

Good luck with the job search. I hope it works out well!

I already got a new job, hence why I'm leaving early. Realistically the majority of our employees are finding better jobs without an issue, local companies recognize the quality of employees we have.

 

[Mide]

Sucks to hear buddy, but thanks for the heads up.

 

[compman25]

So you assume all AT&T users are morons and have to call you? Why would I need to change carriers if I never have had to call AT&T?

 

[sjwaste]

Originally posted by: compman25
So you assume all AT&T users are morons and have to call you? Why would I need to change carriers if I never have had to call AT&T?

Tip of the iceberg. Just because the only cost-cutting you see is in a call center doesn't mean there isn't more cost-cutting happening with network operations.

This situation probably isn't entirely unique, but it's visible.

 

[Gibson486]

Customer Service is not that important now. If it truely mattered, places like Wal Mart would not be around.

 

[Sphexi]

Originally posted by: sjwaste

Originally posted by: compman25
So you assume all AT&T users are morons and have to call you? Why would I need to change carriers if I never have had to call AT&T?

Tip of the iceberg. Just because the only cost-cutting you see is in a call center doesn't mean there isn't more cost-cutting happening with network operations.

This situation probably isn't entirely unique, but it's visible.

That's pretty much the point right there.

Take for instance the unlimited voice plans. Sprint announced theirs, and magically AT&T had one within hours. It was already programmed into the billing system, we just weren't told it was there (there's about 500+ rate plans listed in it). AT&T had programmed it in almost 6 months prior, just refused to be the first carrier to come out with it, so they sat on it until someone else released first.

Before January 21st, you could get 200 messages for $4.99, 1500 messages for $9.99, and unlimited for $19.99. In an attempt to "encourage" more customers to go with unlimited, they changed the price of the 1500 package to $15 and rounded the other two up by a penny. That way the unlimited looks like a way better deal than the 1500, and more people will pay for it.

Also, most phones come with pre-installed software like the XM Radio program, or MobiTV. When you first start them up, a screen comes up that says that even though it's a free 3-day trial of the software, there MAY be data charges involved depending on your plan. 99% of people gloss over that as they would a software license screen, and now we're getting calls in because people get $1500 bills due to pay-per-use data charges in those three days. But because there's technically a tiny screen on your phone that comes up, the policy is to deny these credits outright, and unless a customer continues to push and spends the next month escalating and talking to about 20 managers, they won't budge.

Also, you pay in advance, at least most customers do. Did you know that if you cancel your phone in the middle or close to the beginning of a bill cycle, you won't receive credit back for the remainder of the month that you've already paid for? That's why they generally ask if you'd like to cancel at the end of your billing cycle, so you get what you've already paid for. Also if you start a new line, and within the 30 days cancel it under buyer's remorse, you only get your activation fee back if you do so within the first 4 days, after that you have to pay that as well.

Then again, these policies could change at any time, that's their favorite thing to do. Come out with a policy, get customers on board with it, and then change it two months later but refuse to let those customers onto the new system/feature/policy.

Originally posted by: compman25
So you assume all AT&T users are morons and have to call you? Why would I need to change carriers if I never have had to call AT&T?

Not at all, many of the people I've talked to are very smart. But at the same time, if my car breaks down I have to go to a mechanic. I'm great at math and spreadsheets and cellular bills, not great at cars. What I assume is that most customers haven't had 5 weeks of training in our billing and technical systems, and several years experience learning every issue that could potentially crop up in them. Everybody has to call in eventually, our center gets about 10k unique call-ins a day, almost 3 million people a year just to our center. Last I heard the business centers get something like 75 million calls a year, obviously a large chunk are repeat calls, but still, that's a lot of our customers calling in for various reasons.

So maybe you won't have to call, maybe you will. All I'm saying is that if you do have to your chances of being totally screwed just jumped a bit.