02Dec at&t: Why Bureaucracy and Technology Don’t Mix

Old-school pyramid management can severely cripple an organization’s ability to adequately adopt and help their customers. Today the story I have to illustrate this problem is about at&t’s service and support departments. First off, let me state that the actual DSL service I had with at&t has been nearly flawless with 6mb downloads with 768k uploads. I am definitely a power user (online gaming, downloading, video and audio streaming, and working at home) and never hit any kind of service-capping or times that the network connection from slow. However, this story isn’t about the ‘product’ but the customer service and internal processes that occur…

I’m currently in the process of moving and called into at&t about 5 weeks before moving to get my services transferred over. I talked to the billing lady on the phone, and she set up my account to be disconnected and reconnected at my new place on the same day of moving. Well, two days later, my internet went dead. Here’s what happened next:

1. (45 minutes on hold) I called at&t tech support and was told they have no idea what happened and that maybe it was a Billing dpt. problem (was there no notes on the account on why it got pulled?)
2. (30 minutes on hold) Billing dpt said that my account was disabled… but only the ‘new’ Billing dpt would know and they would have to transfer me again. (umm… okay…. if you can’t see even notes on my account, shouldn’t the ‘old’ department be shut down or upgraded)
3. (40 minutes on Hold) The “New Billing dpt.” said that “someone” pulled my at&t service way earlier than they should have for me moving (why isn’t this a more automated process instead of a manual procedure that someone could make a mistake on?). She said she would put a rush order in for me and call me back later that day. (24hrs later, no call)
4. (20 minutes of Hold) Called the Billing dpt back and was told that Provisioning Dpt could help me expedite the new service order to re-issue internet connection.
5. (15 minutes of Hold) Provisioning Dpt says that in “their computes” that they have no order for a new DSL connection for me. They have to call someone in Billing to confirm…
6. (5-10 minutes later) Both a Provisioning and Billing manager talked on the same line, they say that the original new order was ‘invalid’ and they have to put in a new one. However, it takes 24 hours for new orders to go through so I will have to wait… then call back to have it escalated. (why can’t they just remember this conversation and get it escalated themselves when it comes through?)
7. (10 minutes on Hold) After 24 hours again, called Billing and was told that they can’t complete the service setup because its considered a “new” order and new orders can’t be put on an account that’s closing in the future (it’s considered ‘closing’ even though I am just changing addresses). I am now being transferred to Resolutions dpt (?) for further help.
8. (15 minutes on hold) After talking to the department, I currently have a lady who is trying to bypass this and continue the order, but she does not know yet if she will be successful even with management help.
9. (Update) After 2 weeks without internet (by a bug caused on their end), I finally have it back up. My thanks goes out to all the AT&T people that helped in the process. However, it was very disappointing that such bugs couldn’t have had a faster turn-around time with the use of technology. The very nature of this problem of how it occurred illustrates a broken and dated system in place.

It seems now that I might not even get the internet back by the time I move which is such a shame considering that this was a error on at&t’s side. If it wasn’t for the good history I have had with their internet package itself, I would never consider using them again. On the flip-side, there isn’t a mainstream ISP out there that doesn’t have horror stories and dedicated hate websites that I know of. Is servicing customers just a low priority for executive management to refine in order to make improvements and efficiencies? One of my favorite things about t-mobile is that when you call technical support, THEY will call you back instead of keeping you on hold. This saves them money from having a line open, and it saves me time plus phone bill cost.

However, this post is not about complaining, but about the opportunity for improvement. How many times can you see that they could have made these internal processes more reliable and easier to service when something in the process goes wrong? One thing, for example, is that every action taken to an account should have a “version-ed” state as well as a noted technician name appended to it. If this was done, my account could be “rolled” back to its correct state and the person who made the error in disconnecting my service found and corrected. However, it seems now that even when my issue is fixed, no one will ever know who exactly made the mistake… who could continue making the same mistakes for years to come and never know.