The Customer’s Experience in the Face of Complexity

AT&T is my ex-telecommunications provider. Here is the story of how the complexity that this telecommunications giant has given itself and how they seem to hold the client responsible for this. We see this as a case study in how to push your clients from you in a rapid fashion. A lesson we have learned from and are intent in ensuring our clients never face while engaged with us.

The cliff notes of my experience are simple. As I was moving across town, I called the service center to have my phone number and services transferred. After a lengthy time on hold, the representative assured me that they would transfer the service quickly. The agent did inform me that in order to keep my phone number I would have to pay a premium, as well I would have to live without phone service for at least a week. After 2 weeks, the tech arrived and connected the phone service. They called me to inform me that the service had been transferred. When I returned home that evening, not only did my phone line not have dial tone, the Internet service, on which I make my living and which had already been established was also no longer working. Another call to AT&T, they tell me that if I want them to review the issue, it will cost me an additional $120 on top of the $150 in transfer charges I had already been billed.

My cries of help went unanswered. So, I called a ComCast to have them establish a home phone line for me. In the interest of fairness and disclosure, they too had some hurdles to overcome in delivering my service. All told, I was without home phone for over 3 weeks.

This seems ridiculous to me as I have worked for telecommunications companies in the past and I know that provisioning, while technically challenging is a simple matter of entering some data into a system and clicking some buttons. At least it should be. Overcoming the complexity of telecommunications technology to make it simple is the phone company’s business.

Just this AM I received an automated call from AT&T stating that they are aware that my phone service was not on and the automated attendant wanted to help me. After navigating the brutal world that their phone menu presents for 5 minutes I was put on with a very kind representative who proceeded to explain to me the complexity of delivering home phone service. The kind agent began to speak to me in telco-ese explaining to me the rigors of local exchanges and number portability. To this I replied that the reason they make billions each year is to simplify the complexity inherent in their core business. Sadly they have done a less than acceptable job of keeping it simple, this has cost them my business.

This brings me to a point about how SaaS applications and providers deliver value where the telecommunications giant fails miserably. They keep it simple for the customer. When you subscribe to a SaaS application, the provider has already dealt with many of the complexities that are required to run enterprise software; examples include security, hardware, software stacks, system maintenance, disaster recovery and end user support. This is truly simplifying the customer experience. When you call a SaaS provider’s help desk you should never hear about how the data needs to be backed up or how a security patch was applied last night, this is not your business, it is the provider’s business. In the SaaS world, the best of breed providers understand this and work hard to ensure that they keep it simple for you, the customer.

Here at Force by Design all of our consultants are put through rigorous training and testing to ensure that our clients are shielded from the complexity inherent in implementing and supporting enterprise systems. We consider this to be our responsibility, we consider that if you wanted to know the true complexity of a system inside and out you would study the system, not hire us to handle the implementation, optimization and customizations for you.

It is my pledge to all Force by Design clients that you will always receive nothing less than the gold star experience with any of our consultants. Should you ever feel this is not the level of service provided to you, I encourage you to call me on my cell phone directly at 415-724-4109 any day, any time.

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