BY STEVEN WINOKUR - www.tpstrategies.com

The adventure with AT&T continues. Ok, so as it got closer to the “new” scheduled date, I realized I hadn’t received a confirmation call about the appointment that weekend. And guess what?!? When I called them, they had no record of the re-scheduled appointment. So, I had to make another new appointment.

If you remember, they told me I had to cancel my old service before I could get their new one. So, two days before the installation I called a different part of AT&T (I had my DSL through Bellsouth, which then became AT&T) to cancel my current service. When the agent asked why I was cancelling (great question by the way - always try to find out why clients leave), I told her I was switching to U-Verse. She then proceeded to tell me that I was not supposed to cancel the service and that when the service gets installed, they would cancel it then.

I broke into laughter because while this was how I thought it should work, several people over at U-Verse told me otherwise. This agent, who was not in the U-Verse department, explained to me how it would work. Finally, someone who knew what they were doing! She tried to make excuses for them by saying U-Verse was new and that the agents would learn over time. Not a good excuse in my book…

So the installation date finally arrived - the technician called ahead and arrived on time. Great so far. But there was no way this was going to go completely smoothly, was there? Nope - first, my wiring was screwy so they had to run new cable. Certainly not their fault, just an annoyance that was tackled well by the technician. But the outside wiring guy never showed up so the technician had to call the dispatch and get someone out right away to put in a new box outside. To their credit, they did get someone out pretty quickly.

I won’t get into the problems I had getting my email to work and AT&T’s attempt to get me to pay for service. Well, wait, I will say something about it because I think it demonstrates a good lesson.

I was having trouble getting my email to send out using my own domain name. I was transferred to a service department that wanted me to pay for support to get it work. I complained that I didn’t think I should pay for support for something that didn’t work. The agent then proceeded to argue with me, telling me that since the Internet worked, that’s what I was paying for. They didn’t guarantee the mail working the way I wanted it to. Huh? I proceeded to explain to her that I had no problem with email before U-Verse and since I did now, their service was not working the way I needed it to. I finally got to someone who helped me for free. Word of advice - if a customer calls to complain about your service, DO NOT ARGUE WITH THEM.

Let me repeat - DO NOT ARGUE WITH THEM.

Even if they’re wrong, figure out how to deal with the situation WITHOUT arguing with them.

That’s one lesson - the second had to do with training. If you bring out new products or services, make sure your staff is well-trained on how the product works, how it gets installed and what the user has to do to purchase the new product. Like I said in the previous post, most of us have many competitors. It’s too easy to switch to a competitor that has their “ducks in a row”. Don’t make the mistake of unveiling something new and not have your processes in place to make it a smooth transition because you know what, someone else will.

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