7 | Industry Voices — Greenblatt: AT&T balances customer satisfaction with pressures | ----------- | |
FierceWireless: Wireless | 2020-01-07 03:30 | ????0? | |
While important, a renewed focus on customer satisfaction alone will not succeed without AT&T contemplating the complexity of its business. At its core, customer satisfaction is about providing the right people with the right offering at the right time and right price. According to recent findings in the J.D. Power 2019 U.S. Wireless Total Ownership Experience Study - Volume 2, this complexity has served AT&T well. AT&T customers are most happy when they bundle three services with their wireless (ISP, TV, and home phone). And AT&T customers are also happy when they jump from two to three services. When a subscriber can simplify by getting their desired services from one vendor and get a triple play discount, satisfaction increases dramatically. AT&T remains a blue-chip stock because it has managed this dynamic exceptionally well for as long as bundled services have been available.To its credit, however, AT&T joined other major brands in disrupting the disruptors with its compelling introduction of HBO Max into the competitive streaming space. There is both critical and commercial appeal to the new offering. Consumers appreciate this entrance, demonstrating that AT&T knows how to respond to market shifts in an agile manner and indicating desperately needed agility. Others in the space often have an easier time with such changes due to their smaller relative size or head-start on CX-focused initiatives, for example.Easier said than done, no doubt. But note that the roughly half a million lower ARPU (average revenue per unit) subscribers are behind in priority to the nearly 1.3 million (almost 20k/day) traditional pay-TV subscribers that departed from DIRECTV, U-verse TV, and AT&T TV NOW in Q3 2019. Thankfully, there is every reason to believe that AT&T can rebuild relationships with these customers, given its technology, library content, distribution agreements, tremendous institutional knowledge, and executive fortitude needed to excel at selling high-quality video services to the public.On the technology front, AT&T possesses the necessary fiber infrastructure to deliver broadband access services to meet soaring demand from connected homes across the country. Of critical importance, AT&T continues its customer growth here, adding nearly 120,000 new high gross-margin subs for Internet service (typically a 90%+ business at scale) during the same time period. It is also well-positioned to leverage 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) to address markets – mostly in sparsely populated areas – currently serviced via satellite.Historically, AT&T’s customer service performance has been stellar, with the firm winning 146 national and regional J.D. Power awards since 1995, including recent back-to-back-to-back wins for its Cricket brand. Although the current scale of the organization presents a challenge heretofore unforeseen in the telecom industry, the test will be if AT&T is willing to invest in the transition back to its peak levels of performance for customer satisfaction given its recent focus on debt reduction. While excelling in many ways, whether serving large enterprise business wireless customers or residential internet customers, enduring excellence will be difficult in this dynamic industry. Observing the progress of this transformation will be among the most interesting storylines of 2020 and a definitional stage in the rich history (and future) of this American communications icon. -- ???????? | |||
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