Posts tagged AT&T
“I have learned to accept minimal service”
Apr 13th
This was a quote said today by a customer. It is not the first time I have heard somebody say this. Why have people been taught to learn to accept this type of service in today’s competitive business world? It is very simple. Carriers have routinely provided poor service, with constant turnover in employees, billing issues, and poor response time (if any). Customers have given up and always go back or stay with AT&T. Why not.? If every Carrier provides a poor service, might as well stay with the biggest. People are tired of changing and have given up on finding a quality vendor for their data and Internet services. Might as well learn and adjust to your vendor. Would you do that if you were shopping for a car?
Well I do not need to tell you. In the 21st century, when competitiveness is higher than ever, nobody should ever, ever accept this. There are better vendors at equal or better prices. However, you may have to get out of your comfort zone and change to a smaller company who does not have a well know name or has a business model which you may have never heard of before. Do not give up. There are better companies. You deserve it. Nobody should ever accept poor service and should demand credits for such. Step into a new Paradigm.
March Madness
Apr 7th
I am a big fan of the NCAA Final Four Tournament. Since I was a kid, I have not missed watching the Final Game on the tube. I remember vividly the games where the underdogs, Villanova and North Carolina State, were able to come through. This year was no different, with a small mid-major school of Butler against Duke. An undergraduate student population of less than 5,000, going up against one the best college basketball schools over the past 30 years. A young coach from Butler, going up against a legend and Hall of Famer. The game lived up to the hype. I got familar with Butler and their story. Soon, I was a big fan and liked what they have brought to the Final Four. Although, Butler fell a basket short, it was a thrilling game to the end.
As I reflected on the game, it reminded me of how the NCAA Final Four tournament, is similar to the business world. Everyday, start ups and small companies are working to make a name for themselves. No longer a start-up, Intelletrace is a small company, playing in the multi-billion dollar industry of telecommunications. We are constantly fighting against the more established Carriers, like AT&T and Verizon Business. People are familiar with their company names and most likely have done business with them in the past. Like Butler, we are constantly working at getting better and looking at ways to be creative. What we always hope for, is establishing a relationship with our customers and having the lost shot. Most of the time the last shot is a slam dunk or an easy lay in.
Is this the Information Age?
Feb 2nd
I would say we are very much in the Information Age. With the power of the Internet, we are able to grab information almost seconds after an event has happened. When Northern California was hit with a powerful thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago, I woke up at 3am after I thought a bomb must of been dropped in my backyard. I quickly went downstairs, jumped on the Internet to find out what exactly had happened. Within minutes, I found out lightning had struck in Mill Valley (about 15 miles away from I live) and struck down a large tree.
If I can find out information about a thunderstorm within minutes, why in the world AT&T cannot provide customers circuit id’s, demarcation points, and expiration dates for their customers in a timely manner. I met with a client today, he has not once had met his sales engineer from AT&T and all of his technical questions are being answered by a sales person. Pretty scary, when you are relying on a sales person for technical info. I am somewhat technical, but I would be the first to tell you I am not an engineer and will always bring in an Intelletrace engineer when customers want technical solutions. When it came it getting an audit on all of his circuits, it took almost a month for AT&T to provide this. Intelletrace has an online portal, where customer can gain instant access to all of their circuits, id’s, expiration terms, invoices, and trouble tickets.
This same client also has an Internet circuit with Qwest. After a 2 weeks, he is still waiting to get the information about his utilization. This information should be instant and not a mystery to their customers. How can customer manage their network and plan from growth if their Carrier cannot even give them information to assist them to plan? Intelletrace provides a portal so you can run reports on your bandwidth utilization real time.
I still find it hard to believe in the 21st century, businesses continue to fall behind and keep making the mistake that customers will continue to buy form them and keep coming back. Intelletrace recongnizes this and continues to work on making the customer experience simple and enjoyable. We now are utilizing the latest communication tools provided by social networking, online portals for managing bandwidth and tracking trouble tickets, and online fiber building lists.
We understand with PDAs and online tools, people are expecting information instantly. In the Information Age, they should!
Working Together
Jan 31st
Recently Intelletrace and O1 Communications had met to see how we can work together to create a closer relationship and greater revenue for both companies. O1 has been a customer for almost 5 years, providing them Internet, backbone services, and custom data solutions. O1 Communications is the leading vendor for Intelletrace when comes to Internet T1′s and MPLS T1 solutions in California. Not only is O1 Communications easy to work with, providing Intelletrace easy flat rate pricing for our sales team, but will provide short term services for special events. Also, O1 can deliver services in less than 10 days. O1′s install time frames seems unreal, when AT&T can not deliver services in less than 30 days, and it does not even leave their network.
O1 Communications is one of several Carriers, which Intelletrace sells to and buys from. The telecommunication market is a multi-billion dollar industry, and we always look to our customers first to provide services, instead of just buying from the big Carrier.
Intelletrace has recently started selling to one of these big Carriers, XO Communications, after being a growing customer of theirs for almost 6 years. Intelletrace is certainly going to start looking towards XO first now, when we believe they are a good solution for our customer. XO saw how a smaller Carrier can quickly act and be competitive to meet their customer’s needs. I encourage other larger Carriers to see this paradigm shift in the market place and see how they can do more business with other Carriers, beside the LEC (Local Exchange Carrier). I challenge every Carrier to start looking at ways to get of the box to provide a better service and solution for their customers.
No More Mr Nice Guy!
Jan 10th
I am not big on New Year’s Resolutions, but in 2010, I am going to start discussing some of the dealings we have with the Carriers. Why now? I am getting sick of the excuses and the blame put back on the customer. In today’s information age, why does it take 4 to 6 weeks for Carriers to get back International quotes. In fact, I am still waiting 2 months for a local private line circuit price from AT&T in New Orleans. You will not believe the excuses, from there is only 1 person in ALL of AT&T who can price this and he is on vacation, to why doesn’t the end user call the local AT&T rep instead of Intelletrace. You know why, because AT&T will not call them back. Unbelievable! With the powerful tools and applications the Internet brings us, why does this complacency still exist? AT&T is the worst of them all, yet customers still go to them because they feel they will get the best service out of due to their size. With all the layoffs in the past 30 days, this type of service is only going to get worst. More stories to come… I am just sick of it!!!
Marc Alciati
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Industry: Telecommunications
Occupation: President CEO
Location: Novato : CA : United States
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