Do you know why is AT&T’s customer service so bad? Well, you are at the perfect place to find the answer to such a question.
Maybe you’ve heard horror stories from other people, or perhaps you’ve experienced them yourself. What if it was the caller’s fault, or maybe the customer service agent was having a bad day?
Either way, you still wonder why AT&T’s customer service is so bad.
AT&T’s customer service is bad because the customer service agents are pressured to sell something to customers instead of resolving their issues. Most agents are more concerned about meeting their quota than actually helping customers.
Of course, more reasons contribute to AT&T’s appalling customer service. Let’s examine each one closely.
1. Pressuring employees to sell instead of helping
Anecdotes from employees reveal that the work environment is toxic. Loads of former and current employees, most of whom choose to speak anonymously, share their tales of having to meet demanding sales quotas instead of actually helping customers.
One employee even went so far as to say that their manager justified holding customers “hostage” on the phone, only giving them the solution to their problem after they’ve agreed to purchase something.
Employees are always under constant monitoring as well. Anyone caught not making a sales pitch early on in the call gets a scolding from the manager and a formal written warning.
2. Confusing Call Tree System
If you’ve called a company before and had to navigate an automated call routing system, then you know how frustrating it is to navigate the menus before you get to an actual person.
Unfortunately, at AT&T, this problem is even more magnified.
That’s because the automated system rarely routes calls correctly. Someone with a wireless billing problem might get directed to the internet sales team, who can’t help with the issue.
Employees can reroute the call, but that depends if someone from the other department answers.
Even if you, the customer, do manage to get somewhere promising, there’s a chance you could get forwarded again. AT&T customer service agents have strange limitations with their roles and departments.
3. Employees Located All Over the World
To maintain continuous coverage of operators for customers, AT&T has call centers located all over the world.
If you’ve called any customer service line before, you’ve spent time talking to American and foreign operators.
For AT&T, location is actually a detriment. In America alone, states have their own laws dictating what they can and cannot do during a phone call.
And overseas, they have a completely different work ethic that could bleed into their performance.
4. Everything Is About Numbers
The AT&T customer service culture isn’t customer-centric at all; it’s number-focused. That means employees are constantly getting graded on their interactions, how long they’ve had a call, and how long they have waited to sell something, just to name a few.
It’s not just the lowly agents who get the squeeze as well. General managers are also under constant monitoring to ensure their offices and employees are meeting monthly targets.
As a result, managers can always get hostile and unhelpful to their employees.
5. Unreliable Software
Part of the 12-week training as a customer service agent is learning how to use the different tools given to you.
Unfortunately, the main software system used to assist customers is unreliable, and they use it with little to no training.
Just how bad is it? Their main software is prone to frequent crashes. If you enter a caller’s information and the software crashes, that information isn’t saved.
You’ll have to ask them again from the caller, who may or may not be irritated at this point.
6. Employees Don’t Get Proper Troubleshooting Tools
Say the software does stay up, and you manage to save the information correctly. Good for you! Unfortunately, that’s only half the struggle.
The other struggle is the training you get versus the actual problems you receive when you start taking calls.
According to former employees, the training rarely gives any basic pointers on how to solve the most common issues. Instead, they get told to look at a reference guide.
Their reference guide is similar to Wikipedia; it’s a collection of guides ranging from the most mundane issues to highly technical problems.
You must learn how to scan through the material while conversing with your caller.
7. Managers Oversee Multiple Offices Across the Country
As a result of running multiple call centers across varying locations, managers have to manage an office that isn’t even in their home state.
In worse cases, managers have to monitor the performance of an overseas office.
That means managers must constantly juggle between a state’s regulations and their own. Not only that but managing so many people while keeping their quotas is challenging.
No wonder they almost never talk to a caller, even when they specifically ask for a manager.
8. Employees Get Lots of Abuse From Irate Customers
Customers who call help lines are already frustrated with their issues and guess who gets the brunt of their anger: the customer service agents.
Thinking that the agents are the company, angry customers usually unleash their rage over the phone.
That kind of abuse day in and day out severely affects a person, especially if that’s their job eight hours a day, five days a week.
And when they’re constantly getting mistreated, it doesn’t take long before they start getting snappy.
9. None of Their Systems Communicate With Each Other
One annoyed customer from the AT&T forums expressed displeasure with their recent experience. They returned a device at an AT&T store, thinking that would be the last of their problems. Unfortunately, they were wrong – the system charged them a non-return fee.
Frustrated, they tried calling AT&T customer service. Lo and behold when the phone agent refused to recognize the in-store return receipt, instead advising them to go back to the store to resolve it.
Their reasoning: they couldn’t see the receipt on their end.
How did this happen? That’s because AT&T’s entire system doesn’t communicate well with each other. Returns are particularly affected – any system-generated return authorization and label rarely updates the information for agents to see.
10. For Most People, AT&T Is the Only Choice
America’s telecommunications coverage, especially in rural areas, is laughable at best and pitiful at worst.
Most of the time, rural areas only get one provider, so residents have no choice but to sign up with that company. For some of those residents, that choice is AT&T.
Of course, phone agents have no idea there aren’t any other providers in their callers’ hometowns. Instead, AT&T imposes such restrictive limitations on its services that most customers have no choice but to abide by, lest they get hit with early termination fees.
It’s not so much that the phone agent was unhelpful, but rather the company’s draconian and borderline predatory policies.
Conclusion
Remember that none of these reasons are meant to excuse AT&T for providing such awful customer service.
Instead, they are symptoms of a system-wide problem that customers and employees alike have endured for years: treating all customers as nothing but cash cows.
That’s not to say all of your calls to AT&T will be as agonizing as what other people went through. Maybe you’ll get lucky and get your problem resolved.
But if you experience awful customer service, take a deep breath and tell yourself that you already expected this to happen.