Ma Bell Offers Challenges for For Business AND Home Customers

As Ma Bell continues to reconsolidate its monopolistic position, it's right hand does not seem to know what its left hand is doing. Not only can and does this pose challenges for consumer customers, but for their business customers as well. The latter is a scenario which poses business process control risks for enterprise customers, adding difficulty to managing their own environments.

The Consumer Challenge

When DSL finally became available in our neighborhood in November 2006, we switched from Earthlink to BellSouth so we could get the service. At the time, we could only get the lower two tiers of services, which meant that I had to pay $15 extra to have a fixed IP address. The Fixed IP address was needed when I needed to connect to some customers via VPN or to get through their firewall (I like certainty). so we paid a base cost of $32 for the DSL plus the $15. Recently, we could upgrade to the next tier of service and pay only US$37 a month, including the fixed IP address. Do figure. But there was another freebie attached: free access to the 10,000 AT&T and ATT partner wi-fi hotspots around the country. This mean I could connect in any airport for free without having to buy an air card.

This sounded great. Instead of getting ripped off by the handful of airports that charge for wi-fi, I had a quick and easy way to connect. Or so I thought. I was sitting at the gate a few weeks ago and needed to connect, but it would not accept my login credentials. So I get on my cell phone and call the customer service site listed on the log-in form. After navigating their horribly frustrating menu system, which had NO options for Wi-Fi support. I finally get a live person.

ATT: May I please have your DSL-provisioned phone number and account name please?
Me: Sure: Here it is...
ATT: I am sorry, we do not show that you are an active DSL customer of ATT.
Me: Well I am am, and that is  who I pay my bill to every month.
ATT I am sorry sir, we do not have any record that you have an account with us?
Me: I do not understand, I have been with BellSouth since November 2006.
ATT: I see sir. Their records have not yet been integrated with ours.
Me: but I write my check out to you each month?
ATT: I am sorry sir, but your are going to have to call Bellsouth support for help with this issue at 800-XXX-XXXX.

So I call the BellSouth number, deal with the frustrating menu system and get another live voice.

BellSouth: May I please have your DSL-provisioned phone number and account name please?
Me: Sure: Here it is...
BellSouth: I have your record. How may I help you?
Me: I am having difficulties connecting to the free wi-fi that is part of my DSL package.
BellSouth: I am sorry sir, but we cannot help you with that. You will need to call this number for help with that.

Well you can guess what number I was given. I was being put in a DoWhile loop with no escape. Totally unacceptable and a sure sign that a company does not have its act together.

The Business Customer Challenge

So fast forward to last week. I am working with a customer to deploy a brand new Domino messaging infrastructure. Because they are a small operation, ATT manages their firewall and router. They were asked to open specific ports to accommodate the Domino server and the Barracuda appliance. Supposedly they did it, but problems were being experienced. So, with the printed out web-request document for the change, we get on the phone with ATT managed customer service, and we get someone located someplace off-shore.

ATT: May I please have your customer information.
Customer: Sure, here it is.
ATT How may I help you?
Customer: We are having issues with a configuration change request for our firewall and router.
ATT: Sir, according to our database, we do not manage your router.
Customer: Yes, you do, and you always have.
ATT: Sir, our database says we do not, so we do not. May I please have your ticket number?
Customer: The ticket number is XXXXXXX.
ATT: Sir, that is not a valid ticket number in our system.
Customer: That is the ticket number your system generated and assigned to the request.
ATT I am sorry sir, that is not a valid ticket number...

So we ask to speak to her supervisor, and she balks. We insist, so she puts on hold. In the meantime, someone finds the phone number of the ATT engineer they had worked with previously and call him on another number. After 30 minutes, the engineer discovers they have made a mistake. We are still on hold with customer service. the problem is fixed, so we thank the engineer. We also hang up the line waiting for customer service to take us off of hold. Close to 45 minutes later she calls back to say her supervisor is unavailable. Can you say Urghhhh!?

The Business Process Control Challenge

The lag time in dealing with ATT in processing the configuration change request for the router, and subsequent troubleshooting made it very difficult, no impossible, to make required changes immediately. If this had been a business/time critical need, the customer would have been left high and dry, and their risk exposure profile would have been extremely vulnerable. It is one thing for a consumer like me to have to deal with the problems I had. It is an entirely different scenario for a business customer. In both cases, the new ATT has fallen flat on their rear ends and makes me wonder why I would want to continue to do business with them as a consumer, and why any customer would want to put their operations at risk.