April 19, 2004

AT&T Wireless Customer Service = Not Good

As many of you AT&T Wireless users know, their customer service hasn't been the greatest especially right after the number portability deadline. Read about how one customer spend SIXTY hours on the phone trying to get his cellphone issues sorted out. AT&T spent millions of dollars implementing a new customer relationship management system, only to have it crash repeatedly on use. That firm's CIO probably isn't going to last very long. Lee ordered his new phone on Nov. 25. When he went to the AT&T Wireless website to check the status of his order a day later, he was greeted with a message: "We could not find a porting request for this number in the system. Please contact Customer Care." It was the beginning of a two-month odyssey in which Lee estimates he made 15 to 20 calls to AT&T Wireless, sent nearly as many e-mails and spent 60 hours on the phone dealing with customer service representatives or waiting on hold-with the line often going dead when AT&T Wireless's customer service lines became overloaded. Read