In the new age of the social customer we spend a lot of time talking about talking...well, or about the conversation with customers anyway. It's something that gets me very excited, the empowered customer, the connected customer amid an explosion of social communities, social media, and social tools... We're in the early stages of a transformation in business and especially in the customer service side of business we are starting to see some very promising results. Social CRM is the topic of the day but putting the "S" in CRM assumes that you're building on the base of solid customer centric business processes. So that brings me to my story...
I was the perfect iPhone customer, loves gadgets, has to have the latest one, willing to experiment, tolerant of developing technology... I bought the first one just after they came out and frankly it changed my view of mobile computing completely. I've said as much on my blog and in speeches and presentations. It's a great mobile computing platform and the apps opened up all sorts of new mobile functionality. Each generation of the platform and the OS has added needed features and improved on that initial experience. From Apple's perspective, draconian control issues aside, it's a real home run, but it's missing one key bit of functionality, often you can't make old fashion phone calls on it and over the 3 years that I've used an iPhone that problem has gotten much worse. I don't know about you but I'm rather in need of that capability in my phones. I say "was" the perfect iPhone customer because I've decided to move away from it, but that decision mostly isn't Apple's fault. I continue to be a devoted Apple hardware/OS junkie and will happily use my MacBook Pro and my Wifi iPad. To me both of them are the best in their classes. Apple's choice to partner exclusively with AT&T cost them my phone business.
So what happened to drive this decision. I've been an AT&T customer for quite awhile, well actually I was a Cingular customer that AT&T bought. Three and a half years ago if you had asked me the Net Promoter question, would I recommend AT&T for wireless I would have without reservation said yes. Not that I was a completely satisfied customer, they've never had what I'd call stellar customer service, with their rigid IVR system and very, very, very long wait times for support, but they provided acceptable wireless service (generally when I made a phone call it worked and I could use SMS so I guess that's pretty much success for a phone company 3.5 years ago). But enter the real smart phone age and fast forward 3.5 years and I'm an angry customer. I would not, under any circumstances recommend AT&T wireless as a wireless carrier. That's a long way from I would recommend to I would never, how could that happen in a little over 3 years?
When I got my first shiny new iPhone I downloaded all sorts of apps and that's continued through all 3 versions. Lots of great apps have come out, social networks, blogging, location based services like train schedules including real time updates, FourSquare, augmented reality, games, note taking, RSS readers...I have pages and pages of apps and I use them every day. Heck I pay for a monthly unlimited data plan, have right from the start but guess what, I'm the reason AT&T can't provide even adequate wireless service. Yes, sadly, I thought that unlimited meant unlimited but I guess I was wrong. I'm now convinced that much of AT&T's business plan is built on charging for things that they believe you won't use...but surprise, some of us iPhone users actually use the data functions of the device (I realize this is quite the shocker to AT&T execs). Last year Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility actually said that publicly, the problems that AT&T is having is because of a few data hogs that use to much data (I thought unlimited data was unlimited, what was I thinking). I live in San Francisco and I often do business in Boston, NYC, Philadelphia and Washington DC and guess what, those areas are the worst for bandwidth and service. The interesting thing is that I have very strong signals most of the time in those markets but despite the signal I have terrible "luck" making simple phone calls. Now you might want to blame the hardware, after all this problem developed in the last 3 years but let me put that to rest. I also have a work provided Blackberry on AT&T and it has no better ability to make phone calls. Three different AT&T Twitter customer service agents have tried to help (and I applaud any efforts to reach out, don't get me wrong), but the universal solution suggestion is to switch the phone to the Edge network to make phone calls, it seems it's more stable and has more bandwidth (I suppose I should be glad they didn't say to use wifi for data to speed up the network)? I pay for 3G service but to make calls I need to switch the phone to a slower, older network, hmm, interesting. Dropped calls, call failure (they should change that error message to AT&Tfail), inability to connect, all common place and happening more and more often.
When I ordered my iPad I debated 3G or just wifi and then I had an idea, why not get a Verizon Mifi card, after all I could use it with 5 devices and maybe test out the rumors that Verizon provided a more stable network. It worked like a charm, connects every time no matter where I am. Then the first incident, opening day at SF Giants stadium this year (I live 2 blocks from the stadium) there was a a large influx of people in my neighborhood, and many of them must have been using AT&T smart phones because as the day wore on service degraded terribly. By mid-afternoon I had a 5 bar signal and couldn't make a call at all, then I had an idea. What if I used the Verizon Mifi card to connect my iPhone wifi and use Skype to call. It worked perfectly. I finally found a way around AT&T's poor network service...use my iPhone on Verizon through wifi and Skype. During Web 2.0 the same thing happened and finally I gave in to the idea that Verizon might be a viable alternative, but still no iPhone.
After some research I decided to give Verizon a try with the new HTC Incredible. It has great reviews and with all the additions to the Android marketplace the apps finally seem to be catching up, so off I went to give it a try. A stop at Best Buys (a company that totally gets customer service, they even sell the phones for the after rebate price without the rebate, which we all know is another scam...I mean at best we only use part of those rebate cards) and out I walked with a new Incredible (takes some backbone to name a phone incredible, by the way). I've had that phone for a couple of weeks and guess what? If has a feature that the AT&T iPhone and Blackberry don't...you can make phone calls with it. I was in DC last week and I had a 5 bar signal on the iPhone and Blackberry and could not make a call...on the Incredible, 1-2 bars and connected EVERY time. The verdict, the Incredible is almost as good as the iphone experience and with the added ability to use a network that has voice capabilities, thats a better choice for me. I have 5 lines on AT&T (or had), I'm switching them all to Verizon as the contracts expire. I'm even tempted to just pay the termination fee and be done with this mess...maybe
.
So what changed in 3 years? Here's what I think:
- AT&T way underestimated the iPhone data market and has not been able to catch up on the bandwidth issue. Actually I think they've invested in the coverage end of the network, and I agree that they have the "best" 3G coverage in the US...but coverage doesn't = bandwidth. They invested in coverage at the expense of bandwidth.
- AT&T has never been a customer centric organization and the addition of social CRM tools and processes simply can't change that culture...at least for now.
- AT&T exploited their exclusive clause and leveraged the fact that the iPhone was a great mobile computing platform to drive massive profits but didn't invest in the parts of their network that mattered.
- If Verizon had taken the exclusive deal from Apple they might now be in the same place as AT&T...but they're not and they've seen the start of this backlash and will avoid it in the future.
- The Android phones are catching up to the iPhone, and that's not a big surprise. They're a viable alternative to the the Apple / AT&T disaster.
- A totally different subject but I let my younger daughter switch to Verizon this weekend and pick a new phone. She had a Nokia slider that she was fond of but as soon as she saw the Kin 1 from Microsoft she fell in love. She's 11 and I'd say they might have something. My older daughter has a 3G iPhone and saw the Kin 2...that will be her next phone as soon as Best Buys gets it in stock. I discounted Microsoft and I was wrong, they have something that seems very strong in the teen to 20 something market, especially with the integrated networking and combo keyboard - touchscreen.
- A word to Apple, be careful which partner you choose, they're incompetence reflects on your brand too.
So that's my story, in the end it's about value and service. You can have an edge based on exclusive products or fast time to market but if you can't keep those customers satisfied no manner of social CRM can keep that customer. I think that the iPhone AT&T exclusive contract is one of the all time failures, they squandered a massive advantage. AT&T knows that if Verizon had an iPhone offering they would loose customers in droves, they even announced last week that they're raising the early termination fees to try and head off the defections (once again demonstrating how much they love their customers, don't fix the network just make it even harder and more expensive to leave the bad service). In the end it's about fundamentals, put your customer at the center of your process and business and you will be successful.
(I'm writing this from my hotel in Amsterdam, I'm speaking at WCIT tomorrow and happily using my iPhone and Blackberry on the quite excellent Vodafone network)
