If you were the VP and GM of AT&T what sort of letter would you send your customers and why? As an ex-VP Marketing I would not have sent out the letter many received from Terry Stenzel at AT&T today. For me it makes a number of mistakes serving to highlight the gap between old school thinking and marketing and where I am, as a customer, today. I don’t know Terry, I do know he put his name and title on this. His letter is a jpg in full below. It was received as an HTML email with the subject “A Special Message from AT&T”. I don’t think it has a reply to address. So my open response follows.
Dear Terry Stenzel,
I wanted to share my thoughts on your marketing letter today. I’ll be blunt and throw in a few suggestions at the end. I’m writing because you don’t know me very well and it’s apparent that you have made no attempt to find out more about me before spamming my inbox with what I feel are facts which are irrelevant relative to my needs and the service I expect.
These were my initial thoughts:
Hmmm why am I getting this letter. Oh yes I guess I renewed a contract with AT&T on 3 iPhones a few months ago. Although I wasn’t choosing AT&T again. I simply chose Apple iPhone4. Still you should know I’ve been a customer for a much longer time period and your reference to “choosing” is one that is thanking me for “choosing not to leave”. I’ve let it be known via my Tweets and even other blog posts that I’m not altogether happy. In fact the first line almost seems like an excuse line to send this “news” to me. .
Now I read exciting plans in paragraph two. I’m sorry I don’t buy the 97% of Americans – it means that every AT&T customer is in that 3% some of the time. Leave the main city and go into the country. Visit a rural town. Nada! Nada! Nada! All the facts quoted don’t fit with my experience. In fact my personal experience is that GPRS in India in rural areas is better than in the US. In fact as a global traveler almost any country I go to has better service than what I receive at home. (Your own data should tell you that this customer is “exposed” to the world and may not be happy with the parochial approach provided in the USA).
In para three I see meaningless facts. You are the Northern California and Reno manager and my account is in your region in the Bay Area. You can’t even tell me what the implications are for me locally or the names or a URL to names of rural towns that I may frequent on a weekend motorbike ride. You fail to understand that I can name all sorts of coffee stops between here and Eureka or Reno, Clear Lake, Mendacino, Pinecrest, Bridgeport etc where I’ll be in the 3% and there is no way I’ll see 3G or data.
Your fourth paragraph may be the truth and yet quite meaningless given that my own experience as a user and frequent traveler shows that the service is getting worse not better. As for “where it matters most” that is a huge matter of opinion. My mobile would be useless in an emergency in many of the places I ride on a weekend (and I’m not off road). Frankly that may be when it matters most to me. Will all the billions you are squandering I’m sure a small country could be totally mobilized.
Finally in the last para before signing off you suggest I stop in at Facebook. I did. It instantly confirmed to me that others had a similar response to your email letter. It also poses a problem. I refuse to “like” AT&T so I can comment there. Facebook needs a “hate” button or some other intermediate solution.
Then finally I get to the corporate signature and the VP stuff and I realize there is no email to respond directly to you. I scroll back to the top. I see this is “from the office of” to confirm you are a bigshot. I have a personal message from a bigshot that you probably didn’t write, or even vett very well.
A few questions:
- Was it really smart to send this out in the first place? Who’s advising you?
- Is it really on message? What purpose did it serve? Other PR examples you have put your name to are more specific.
- You tried to personalize it (Dear Name) and yet you don’t expect to get a personal response. Why no reply to email address? Why no TwitterID, or Facebook ID?
- Why send me to a Facebook page? I instantly see I am not alone and I become more incensed. Why aren’t you on that Facebook page? Why can’t I find you? In fact you aren’t on Facebook are you?
A few suggestions:
- In a direct mail / email campaign never send people off to a site you are not familiar with. As you apparently don’t have a Facebook account I can almost certainly presume you didn’t either write this letter or take the time to understand how customers will respond. Be present.
- I think this is the first time you are sharing with me. I searched my gmail and indeed it seems to be. The info you shared is not relevant to Northern California it is nationwide. You aren’t telling me why we are doing better here than in other states, or how I will be safer. You haven’t said how much of the investment is coming our way. Fact is this could have been sent by the CEO or someone else and there was no need to personalize it. You could have wrapped this message in some promo item left it as AT&T and I’d never have responded the same way.
- You have so much information on me and so many ways you could customize messages to me that I’m simply appalled that you can’t send me one in context. I wonder what sort of market research and internal statistics you generate. Even some basic segmentation would help you.
- Rethink the direct marketing you are doing. Hire some new people. Send me an @message on Twitter with a thank you for my feedback. Find a way to start managing the complaints that will come. There’s a huge problem. You letter doesn’t communicate one personal fact about your job or your region and how you are making it better for me. Yet you signed it.
- If you want to talk to people personally and build relationships then get on facebook, get on twitter and make sure your name is on the AT&T Facebook page. The current AT&T Facebook page should be a case study for Social Media Marketing that sucks, because the organization clearly doesn’t understand it.
- When I travel around India I see buildings painted with Reliance, or Vodaphone everywhere. Coverage is there too. When I ran beer marketing we had appropriate hoarding strategies too. Consider starting by painting walls, hanging signs and making a noise as you roll out your infrastructure into the rural areas – we are here! You will get a better bang for you buck and I’ll know that service is actually available. The locals may cheer too.
- I don’t particularly like being a customer of AT&T. I think the service is overpriced. I considered moving all our accounts out of contract iPhones to ??? but that really wasn’t a choice. The problem as I see it is bigger than your billions or AT&T coverage. The number one problem is… you are not working for me; to radically cut costs, to provide better more appropriate plans, to make Apple services more open, (eg FaceTime), or even enable other options like a “desktop client” that rings. Even GoogleVoice can do that and they aren’t a telecom company. If you have ever read my blog you would also know I have deep thoughts on how “communication” can be improved. Oh and I haven’t even told you about my data billing complaints and issues over the last 8 months.
- Lastly, the webworld is full of noise, suggestions, and people willing to help. It starts with listening, thinking about communities, relationships, and being human. You’re very successful, and it took strength and smarts to get to where you are today. This email is disappointing from someone in your position, and doesn’t really reveal any of your plans to take AT&T forward or add value for me.
So readers if you are still with me.
Visit the AT&T Facebook Page. or A conversation with AT&T executive Terry Stenzel – East Bay Business Times – He responds that he hates giving “competitors” a mention or find Terry Stenzel – LinkedIn. Then AT&T- News Room -AT&T Investment Delivers Improved Wireless Network Experience in Modesto which actually quotes data that is more locally meaningful. AT&T: We spent $65 million improving 3G coverage across the Bay area – Cell Phones & Mobile Device Technology News & Updates Stenzel is quoted again and yet the numbers are meaningless. Are new cell sites all the same or do they have different capacities? Did Northern California get its fair share?
What do you think? Am I off base and just picking on someone or is this really a failure of a DM message that would have worked 10+ years ago and simply doesn’t work today? How does AT&T begin to address this problem?
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Incredible summation. Just received the same email and you’ve basically encapsulated my frustrations. Can’t wait to leave AT&T.
So right on! Brilliant. He doesn’t get it at all! I rec’d the same bs and was so angry that I googled him and found you. Great comments!!
I couldn’t agree more. Plus, I got this highly annoying letter as a hard copy actual letter in the mail, with the carbon footprint for that. Plus, that means I now have to dispose of it. Oh joy!
I have never had cell coverage here at home in Big Sur. I doubt there will be any time soon. I wish self-congratulatory marketing twerps would remember that some of us are not remotely interested in their corporate ‘victories’, esp. when we don’t get anything we need out of it.
Plus, just as icing on the pig (as my mom says) the facebook page doesn’t allow me to post comments. Nor the ATT website, without figuring out whether I am registered and if so what my password may have been….
SOOOO, does this look to you like someone who wants a conversation with me???
Hi,
Just found this article while searching for Terry’s email address to respond to his lame letter.
Thank you. I shared this on FB.
I’m in Reno and I borrow friend’s Verizon phones a lot around here to make phone calls. AT&T: Not at home, not at skiing, not at both kid’s schools, and not at 2 of 3 closest Starbucks.
You are spot-on, Stuart! Thank you for taking the time to objectively state the problem not only with this do-nothing, know-nothing corporate flunky but with the impersonal, unhelpful customer service infrastrucutre our service providers force us to endure today.
Until there is true accountability by service provider executives, and their bonuses are set by customer satisfaction ratings and not just profits, their companies will continue to underserve our interests.
I too am still unfortunately an AT&T wireless customer (via acquisitions of Cingular/SBC) ONLY because I wanted an iPhone last year. The cell coverage in my area of San Francisco is so poor that I cannot count on service for work calls and will most certainly jump to Verizon as soon as I can with my iPhone once the AT&T exclusive with Apple hsa expired next year.
Cheers!
I received my letter from At&T by mail. I immediately got online to respond. Couldn’t find an email address for Mr. Stenzel. Found this response. This letter angered me. We live in Northern California wine country, just one hour north of San Francisco, in Sebastopol, CA. But we’re considered living in the country. So, not only is our cell reception at home almost non-existent, but we still only have dial-up internet out here. No DSL, broadband, or high-speed internet is available here. Our only option is something like Wild Blue Satellite for higher speed internet. But the reviews on it are not great. When is AT&T actually going to get ALL citizens linked with 2010 technology ??? (living in the dark ages here!)
To clarify . . . I mean Mr. Stenzel’s letter angered me, not the response I found here!
Thank you for posting!
Your repsonse is exactly what I was wanting to do but was unable (as was anyone else) to find a way to reply directly to Terry Stenzel. What a piece of work that letter was!
Ha, I received that same letter and I chose to drop AT&T more than 18 months ago. Ironically, I’ve been thanking myself for that choice around this time every month since – when I did that, I sold my 3GS, bought a Canadian unlocked iPhone 4 and moved to T Mobile.
As for the coverage in NoCal, in 1995 and 1996, over the course of 4 or five trips, I spent about 10 months in Marin, Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties. During that time I had a Verizon (I think it may have actually been called NYNEX back then) phone and was constantly frustrated by the lack of coverage. (Corincidentally, I was working as a contractor for a subsidiary of AT&T at the time on a fixed-price project and my work brought me into contact with AT&T employees at all levels.) So when I voiced my concerns about this pitiful state of communications infrastructure in, or at least very near to, the heart of America’s technology engine, virtually every AT&T employee I came into contact with laughed and said that the problem was usually caused by my being in the shadow of the various “terrain features” that characterized the region.
My first thought was that those very same “terrain features” could be used as excellent locations for cell towers and that would, in turn, render them mostly shadowless, thereby significantly improving the situation. However, when I voiced these opinions, I always got the same response, to the effect of, “Well, those very same technology people who staff all these tech firms don’t want to look out their windows and see cell towers atop all these foothills and other high ground. So every time a carrier tries to put a tower in a location that will provide optimal coverage, they (the locals) raise a s%$#-storm, file lawsuits and circulate petitions to stop the attempt.”
Since those initial trips to the area, I’ve been back a number of times and, frankly, I can’t seem to detect *any* improvement in cell coverage – it seems to be almost identical to what it was in the mid 90s. Granted, I have no way to determine if capacity has improved – and since those old analog days, I have no doubt that it has. But, it appears that my calls dropped, more or less, in the same places as they did during my 1990s trips and I was without coverage in the same areas as well.
All of which leaves me with one conclusion; if you people won’t allow the carriers to put the infrastructure where it will solve the problem – and this can be done with those towers disguised as trees and other “natural” objects – then the problem is *never* going to get resolved. And, if my information is accurate, you’ll continue to get exactly the quality, coverage and scope of service that you deserve. In fact, it’ll be precisely the quality of service you fought to have.
‘Course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I actually responded via snail mail to the hardcopy i received of this letter. because all i had was the address on the envelope to respond to. i also filed a complaint at the fcc which over at&t’s milking their overage fees. here is what i wrote (p.s. i found Terry’s AT&T blathering letter more than a little irritating):
September 27, 2010
AT&T – Northern California & Reno
Attn: Terry Stenzel
Vice President and General Manager
4430 Rosewood Drive, Bldg 3, 6th Floor
Pleasanton, CA 94588
Dear Terry:
enclosed is a copy of a letter I received on your behalf thanking me for selecting AT&T for my wireless service. I would like to respond to your letter – you yourself may see this response and perhaps reply. first, I would like to state that I did not select AT&T for my wireless service. as an apple iphone owner, I was given no choice of wireless provider. i was forced to leave my previous wireless provider, verizon, with whom i was very happy. i have not been happy with the dropped calls and slow or difficult internet connection using my iphone and at&t. truth is, however, i’m not sure if it’s the phone or AT&T’s network at my location – all i do know is that with verizon and my phone thru verizon i rarely had dropped calls. all of this, however, pales in comparison to an issue i have with at&t policy regarding customer notification of a critical threshold – namely, reaching the anytime minutes limit. i receive many kinds of texts from at&t regarding various aspects of my account. at&t will text me when i have an address change, or to confirm autopayment, or to let me know if there is a problem with my account and that i need to contact customer service. the one thing at&t refuses to text to me, however, is when i reach the critical threshold of my anytime minutes limit. instead, at&t requires me to initiate any check of my minutes balance via text, or online or telephone. I, the customer, must initiate the request for my minutes balance. of course, by the time i initiate this request i may have already passed my anytime minutes limit. what is the result? i have twice exceeded my limit and at&t has charged me the exhorbitant rate of 45 cents per minute. last month i paid twice my normal bill and the month before that i paid 50% extra on my normal bill. why? any normal customer, upon receiving notice that they have exceeeded their minutes limit will of course immediately adjust their phone usage to minimize the impact on their bill. but since at&t refuses to notify the customer when they hit their limit, the customer may unwittingly be talking to their friend about the groceries at 45 cents per minute instead of limiting phone use to only what is necessary. i have already gone back and forth with your customer service via email – but they don’t seem to understand my point. it is perfectly ok for you to charge a higher rate if a customer exceeds their limit. but it is not ok for you to refuse to provide a text warning the customer of this rate change when it is easily within your technical power to do so, when you already clearly have the usage information live and could easily text the customer to alert them of this critical threshold. when you already send a variety of texts informing me of all other kinds of activity on my account, but take advantage of the clear fact that your customers are human, they will sometimes exceed their minutes limit and in that case, will likely unknowingly continue to use their phone without adjusting that usage since they may have no idea they’ve reached their limit. i think this is dirty business. i want a telephone provider who wants the best for me. not a telphone provider who instead finds ways to collect higher rates from me thru denying me proper notification of critical changes to my account – namely, rate changes to 45 cents per minute. there is absolutely no technical reason why you cannot sent me a simple text saying “you have reached your anytime minutes limit”. you could easily do this. you just choose not to. i want my money back that you collected at 45 cents per minute on my account. not because you don’t have a right to the money. if you had notified me of the rate change via text i would not be writing this letter. but since you refuse to text me when my rate changes, i want my money back. again, your policy decision not to text the customer when they reach their anytime minutes limit is a bit of dirty business. so, thanks for your letter but your policy actions speak louder than words.
sincerely,
(insert my name here)
(i also gave him my personal mobile number to call)
p.s. please don’t ask me to go to a higher minutes plan. that is not what i want. i like the plan i have. i am just asking that you notify me via text when i reach my minutes limit. ask yourself if that is a valuable service that every customer would appreciate. then ask yourself if that type of text notification would hit at&t’s bottom line.
exactly.
that’s why i feel at&t’s current policy is to not notify the customer of this critical information
I’m with Chris here… found this while attempting to find Terry Stenzel’s email.
I’ve been complaining about my service in the center of San Francisco ever since 3G was introduced. For over two years now, there is a clear ‘dead zone’ of about 12 square blocks, in the center of the Haight/Ashbury district. Even the local AT&T sales people will let out an exasperated groan when you mention this ‘hood.
Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people pass through this area either on foot, bike, tour bus, or vehicle over the course of a weekend. I can guarantee that they drop calls, lose data service.
And of course, there’s the question of having a phone for emergencies/safety: As I was witnessing a dog attack near the corner of this busy district a couple months ago, I could NOT get through to 911.
Even before this letter arrived, I was aware that AT&T planned coverage improvements. But I wanted to KNOW what that meant? Did it mean more cells which would improve my service, or just that they’re bumping capacity/speed on current cells, which would do nothing.
I have a family plan with 5 lines… (now 4, soon to be 3… there’s a pattern here as I prepare for Verizon.)… and called with ONE request.
I wanted one of their HUMAN tech people/marketing people/customer service people to MEET me at the corner of Haight and Ashbury so that I could clearly identify, show them, the issue and ask what their improvement plans were for this particular problem. They refused. “That’s not possible, sir.” They promised to send an ‘engineer’ to check the signal. Of course, further questioning revealed that the results of the engineers tests were not public knowledge and that no report would be available to me.
Terry? Wanna meet me at the corner? I’ll buy coffee.
Thanks for the review/comments/letter Stuart.
So, if randall’s [ceo] email address is then wouldn’t Stenzel’s be ?? We should test this theory.
randall’s [ceo] email address is randall (dot) stephenson (at) att (dot) com then wouldn’t Stenzel’s be Terry(dot) Stenzel (at) att (dot) com ??? We should test this theory.
Right on the money Stuart! That was an incredible effort on your part. Great open letter.
After getting my slightly different letter “from the DESK of Terry Stenzel” I too tried to find a way to contact him directly about the abysmal coverage I “enjoy” right in the shadow of the GG Bridge! If you cannot cover the urban area forget the rest! And they (AT&T) refuse to find a way to correspond with their captive audience! Grrrr.
Apple needs to do something or risk people jumping to Android and more efficient carriers. Competition is the cure.
It’s six months later and I, too, was so angry with AT&T (and another similar stupide letter from Terry Stenzel, via snail mail) that I went looking for his name and found this site. I recently spent a total of more than four hours on the phone, trying to get my land line clarified. Four phone calls – each one about one hour and finally gave up in disgust. The “customer service” reps are like robots, with their set script. No one can help, I cannot be transferred to someone who can, there is no way to complain. I will do everything I can to get away from AT&T. I am starting to research alternative cell phone carriers – not much choice since I live in a rural area.
Like you last year, and like Elizabeth in May of this year, I just got a letter!
Via Snail Mail…
Evidently your message fell on deaf ears, as I’d expect from what is essentially a company out of touch, and it’s bigshot (or maybe BigBot nowadays) execs. My letter states without citing what or where “AT&T made more than 2200 network upgrades in 2011…throughout Northern Calif & Reno.”
Seems the language, the value of the information presented to me, and the ability to know me, and my needs as a customer are still so generically far off, I wonder how a company bigger than most countries armed forces can still be in business.
I live in Sonora, CA and am sure being a biker you know my area well…NOTHING has changed! Xfinity, who by the way is about to get all my Internet, Phone (VOIP), and TV business, just upgraded our area and offers internet speed at as much as 17 times greater than AT&T here in the downtown neighborhoods.
AT&T UVerse is still offering their pittance of 6mbps which has never actually tested faster than 5mbps with uploads testing at 1mbps rather than the 3mbps I pay for. Still far below what their central Calif UVerse customers get, I’m feeling a bit like “What am I chopped liver?”.
My wife and I have been with AT&T landline services exclusively for over 25 years, and Internet customers for over 5yrs, adding extras freely and we had confidence till recently. You would think there would be a “Long Standing Customer” price structure for us, but NO! The new customers, who change providers like underwear whenever they can’t pay, or can opt out to get someone else’s new package price get the deals, and for loyalty we get our pockets picked.
Now if we had a reliable option for our wireless services, we would never do business with AT&T again. After comparing the available services, I’m embarrassed to have allowed myself to pay such outrageous prices for services that are can be had elsewhare
I can get Xfinity at basically the same cost for 25mbps service, and what has finally cinched the deal to drop AT&T…the same day I get this useless waste of advertising dollars from Stenzel, I get a bill for $100 on a “free replacement” Gateway device, to replace a model AT&T was aware was defective at the time they were being distributed. All I can see right now on the paper in my hand is $$ signs, for the money I pay for antiquated service, inflated costs and defective equipment
I am about to contact AT&T Customer Service, but first will also be posting this to Twitter with @ATT @ATTCustomerCare added, and Facebook on my wall and also on AT&T ‘s wall where I’ll Like them just for the sake of having my say.
I hope I get resolution on this bill, as I made certain to ask the customer support agent “Will there be any charge for this Gateway?” and was told there would be none, as it was her recommendation that I needed it replaced since the Password function was never operable, and users could not access or control the 2Wire device.
Thank you for your article on Stenzel, and the failure of AT&T to understand our needs, it helped boost me to push this issue beyond the simple call to Customer service. And thanks for letting me vent here too!
Gene Salvetti
Sonora, CA
Soon to be ex “AT&T Only” customer of over 20 years
What I find interesting…. is I’m still getting responses to this and like yours they are deeply passionate. It’s also amazing that it hasn’t been addressed. In this day of social media, comments like yours are tracked and picked up on. There’s no reason for an organization to miss it.
As for Comcast… yes usually faster speed, however organizationally in terms of what they deliver… in my experience it’s sort of more of the same.
Just be very very careful when you cancel a service. The telecom bills charge next month’s service on the current bill right? So on your closing statement, you might see a service charge for the following month, you know, AFTER the closure date of your account with them. The telecoms rake in millions each year doing this. It’s deliberate bc I went all the way through customer service with Verizon and up through corporate on this and confirmed it as an MO, a strategy. Most people don’t read their bills correctly, just pay it, and they continue to get away with it. So be advised: if they do try this, it will take for freaking ever to get customer service to remove next month’s service fee off. Take a day off from work. Seriously. Or just call corporate and complain like hell.