My only experience with AT&T is as a customer. But even as an outsider I can tell that the company has huge organizational silos (albeit with a workforce that finally understands customer-friendliness). Every transaction for each of my multiple AT&T services appears to require interfacing with a completely separate information system and likely business unit that often has no record of what’s happening in the other accounts. For examples: I get three bills. When I ask for one bill I am told, “All your services have different cycles and that would be a mess.” After moving to a new residence, I returned the U-verse device (which enables TV, wireless internet and the land line connection) from my former address to the AT&T wireless store, where I was told, “We don’t accept U-verse returns here. You have to go to the UPS store.” In…
Insurance solutions, fast from a model business model
Here’s the situation: Just sold my Wisconsin home, my car in Wisconsin is about to be sold and I’ve yet to purchase a new one in my new home state. So I’ll lack car insurance. I don’t want to pay my rental car company’s expensive insurance rates. My Wisconsin insurer can’t help me – they don’t do business in California. Who to call next? Of course! That clever Australian commonly known for his sage advice on car insurance. Never mind that he’s a lizard, and a cartoon, he’s a cracker-jack sales and service guy. I visualize his chartreuse coat and over-sized burgundy eyes first, then the name GEICO pops into my mind, true evidence of the power of effective advertising. GEICO has more than a well-known name and brand characters. It also has a largely on-line business for selling insurance, a business model…
AT&T’s business model Achilles Heel
Protected markets are great things, while they last. But when they end, the protected companies pay a huge price. Do you remember when the US car industry lost its near-monopoly position with the entry of Honda and Toyota, who demonstrated that high quality was affordable? When a consumer discovers there is something better after having had no choice, he feels ripped off by the monopoly-like provider. And that ah-ha is disastrous for companies when markets open as customer loyalty is essential to retaining market share. No wonder US consumers waited a decade to recognize that US car quality has improved dramatically. The company that’s going to pay a heavy price for a monopoly-no-longer position is AT&T, the exclusive Apple IPhone network since the to-die-for phone’s introduction. With Apple likely to add other providers in 2011, one would think that AT&T would be working…