Disconnected: Customers lost signals, AT&T lost customers, and here’s why
List the most awful things on the earth:
-Go bankrupted.
-Unexpected Pregnancy.
-Your phone suddenly goes wireless.
Thanks to AT&T, on February 22nd, 2024, almost half of the U.S. states experienced a devastating outage. AT&T soon responded regarding this emergency, claiming that they were trying to bring the service back. However, the rage was not that easy to ease.
I woke up and the first thing besides opening my eyes was grabbing my phone. Just like others, I was trapped at home because of the outage. On top of the screen, there was not even half a bar of the signal but a small “SOS” sign.
Luckily, my home WIFI is from Verizon which means I still had internet at home. Apparently, there was a significant crisis AT&T caused and everyone was forced to face it. However, now let me put away my position as a client to AT&T, but as a current marketing student, how AT&T dealt with this emergency is worthy of discussion.
Where is my signal??!
Soon after the outage occurred, AT&T immediately appeared on X (former Twitter). As shown below, AT&T stated that the company was trying its best to fix the issue, and provided a link directed to the website for the latest update. Ironically, AT&T did not realize at that point, that those affected customers could not read its message because they DID NOT have the internet.
After I switched my attention to Instagram, fierce customers were also present: Service down, do something. As one of the biggest communication carriers in the country, I could imagine every AT&T employee sitting on the computer and replying to those complaints. Tons of comments below shout out how much trouble they were experiencing: a lady was at the airport when the outage occurred and like many others, she was beyond upset. The most urgent issue has not been solved, and customers need a place to vet.
When a social media crisis happens, it is not likely to stop in a short time. From AT&T’s side, fixing the wireless interruption was the priority, and compensation followed by was the next. From the customers’ point of view, the mistake was there (or a few mistakes), what happened, when and how the problem can be solved, also the bill related to this crisis were lined up and waiting for AT&T to respond.
Later then, AT&T explained that the issue was caused by an incorrect process while they were trying to expand the network. They denied the outage was a cyber-attack. Late afternoon, AT&T claimed all wireless service had been restored along with an expected apology.
The crisis was not over yet.
Stankey, the CEO said sorry, OK?
Two days after the outage, AT&T released another post (shown below):
Based on the comments, the compensation did not make customers fully satisfied. The term “potentially impacted accounts” raises concerns among customers: how do you define “impacted” and how can I know the credit is applied to my account?
Answer from AT&T: they will reach out to affected customers by SMS or email to proactively credit them.
The answer is received, but not in a content way.
On Feb.25, 2024, the CEO made a refund announcement, to his employees. The letter was quite motivating and slightly long. The CEO took several paragraphs to describe the situation and took another page to depict the brightness of the future of AT&T. The confusing part is that the CEO did not directly apologize to his clients for this crisis, instead, he chose to write a letter to the employees without mentioning any overtime pay.
Moreover, the CEO acknowledged the efforts of the AT&T team and stated that refund compensation would not affect the revenue.
Another question: who cares about your revenue? Shareholders may be comforted, but millions of customers only care about “if there’s another small accident come on its way” since a simple software update can lead to a nationwide outage.
Scanning through the letter, it is a lack of sincerity. Not only because he put the apology in the middle of the paragraphs (with only one sentence), but also because of his ignorance of consideration for customers’ feelings, disability for preventing problems, and zero explanation for dealing with this type of situation afterward.
One month later I was writing this blog and decided to review the posts again. Below the apology post, a customer commented that her area was experiencing wireless again in March. 22. The internet cannot be restored until April.5. and here comes the funny part, another comment claiming to switch to Verizon, and Verizon happily responded to him with a link for switching accounts.
“This is not our first network outage, and it won’t be our last.”
Correct.
