Common Sense Journalism: AT&T's massive outage shows how not to do customer service in social media age

Common Sense Journalism

An extension of the Common Sense Journalism monthly column by Doug Fisher, former broadcaster, newspaper reporter and wire service editor. From new media to old, much of journalism is just plain common sense.

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." - Unknown (often improperly attributed to Thomas Jefferson)

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

"Common sense is not so common" - Voltaire "Common sense is instinct; enough of it is genius" - George Bernard Shaw

Sunday, January 08, 2017

AT&T's massive outage shows how not to do customer service in social media age

AT&T's U-verse service (disclosure, I'm a customer) has had massive outages across the country -- apparently -- for a day or more. The company's response shows how not to do customer service in today's social media world (or one that, just in general, relies on that internet pipe).

I say "apparently" because AT&T has been less than forthcoming in what it's telling people. You won't find anything on the company's much-touted @ATTCares account on Twitter.

Its @Uverse account is nothing but marketing

What few statements have come from AT&T PR folks have been opaque

The tech support site has a canned statement

And canned chat

The best info is coming from third-party sites like downdetector.com

This probably should be taught as a textbook case study in business and communications schools about how not to handle things in 2016. (I'm also fascinated that it seems few news organizations seem to have picked up on how widespread these problems seem to be.)

Labels: ATT, customers, Internet-general, marketing, PR