Rob Saker's Blog

Good customer service operates on the premise that all customers deserve a base level of respect.  Customer Relationship Management tools are useful in identifying which customers to treat with additional courtesies, but many organizations have an attitude of using these tools to lessen the base quality of service to other customers.

The unfortunate impact of this can be a lifetime of negative sentiment.  Ford had the most highly rated vehicles for initial quality in 2009, but think about people that refuse to drive American vehicles because of their quality in the 1908’s.  Attitudes persist, and an incorrect strategic approach to leveraging CRM tools can have decades long affects.

My personal experience with this began in graduate school.  Like nearly everyone else, I had to carefully budget my funds in school. I lived in a clean, inexpensive apartment in a marginal neighborhood.  Drove a reliable small car that had good mileage.  I had AT&T Wireless service because they offered a reasonable number of minutes for the price.   I had previously tried service with Sprint, Verizon and even worked for a brief spell with T-Mobile.

I lived in Omaha at the time.  The Omaha MSA population is around 1 million, which is not an insignificant population.  Omaha is a driving town, and while you can zoom around on the expressways there is still one intersection that has by far more traffic than any other.  I believe over 100k cars pass through the point on any given day.

It was also a dead spot for AT&T.  Calls consistently dropped there. The busiest intersection in town, and the response from AT&T was “we cannot guarantee service at all locations.”

To be fair, it wasn’t the only dead spot for AT&T.  I’d lose calls throughout town and my apartment.  I learned where to end calls before they were ended for me.  I had one corner of the apartment that got service, so I’d leave the phone there and use bluetooth throughout the apartment to talk.

I had agreed to a contract with AT&T and so I continued my service with them. I continued to pay my monthly service bill, even though the service was non-functional.  My service contract was due to be up on October 3, so in late September I signed a new service contract with Verizon.  I ported my number over to the new account.  I did not cancel my old account with AT&T.  I had 10 days left on the account and I intended to complete my contract.   Imagine my surprise when I received a bill for the last amount, plus a $200 early termination fee.

So I called AT&T.

Me: Yes, I’m calling about a bill. I think there is a mistake. I see an early termination fee on my bill.

AT&T: Yes sir, that’s because you closed your account prior to your 2 year commitment.

Me: There’s clearly a mistake. I didn’t close my account.

AT&T: Sir, you ported your number over to a new provider.

Me: Yes, because your service was horrid. I had to get service, but I didn’t close my account.

AT&T: Sir, it’s our policy to close an account when a number is ported.

Me: Oh, well I must have agreed to that in some contract then. Can you point that out to me in my contract or your policies?

AT&T: Well sir, it’s not a published policy. But why would you have an account if you couldn’t use the service?

Me: I couldn’t use the phone when I did have a number with you, I didn’t see much difference in paying for it when i didn’t.

We went around for 4 hours on this. They wanted to charge me a fee for an unpublished policy, to which I never agreed to.  I eventually won. They removed the unpublished, unagreed to fee “as a courtesy”.

Note that I switched to Verizon.  The same Verizon Wireless I had previously in the 90’s, but switched because I didn’t like their coverage at the time. Verizon handled my cancellation gracefully. They left the door open to my returning.

What are my impressions of AT&T to this day? I still remember their absolutely horrid coverage, but that’s only reinforced by the negative treatment I received at every encounter with their service people.

Why is this lesson important? I was in grad school at the time I had AT&T.  I was spending $60/month on phone service and clearly wasn’t flagged in their system as an important account.  AT&T is spending billions on upgrading the quality of their network, but I’ll never consider going back to them.  They treated me as an unimportant account.  There are no unimportant accounts.

I’ve had Verizon Wireless service for 5 years.  I am one of their “important accounts,” now. I spend several times the average customer rate on their service. I have no issue with spending what I do with Verizon.  They may provide additional benefits to me now because of my account status, but at no time in my experience with them have they treated me with any less respect.

Segmentation of customers should be used to enhance the interactions with your valued customers, and to identify customers that are costing your business funds. Using CRM and segmentation to decrease the experience of your base consumer only ensures that you limit your long-term high profit growth potential.

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