The iPhone, ATT, Verizon : Great Lessons What Is Your Experience

The iPhone Is Coming To Verizon …Very Soon

The Wall Street Journal’s  lead article Friday confirms Verizon will offer the iPhone soon. Reportedly Verizon will announce the details Tuesday.

In a related article, Apple has issued a directive to all stores that there will be no vacations for three weeks beginning the fourth week of January. I couldn’t be happier with the opportunity to switch from ATT My view is shared with everyone I know who has an iPhone

The Number One Reason This Announcement Is A Big Deal

Everyone that I know including myself loves the iPhone and hates ATT’s service.  Apple recognizes this since a big percentage of the volume of calls to their customer service center are because of ATT not resolving customer issues having nothing to do with Apple.

I have previously written detailed article about my  experience started trying to work with ATT for a solution. In summary, I have good experience overall across the US and Canada. The area that I use my phone the most which is my home office and surrounding areas is almost impossible for me to use my phone. This area has plenty of towers and ATT reports I should have great service but of course I don’t

This announcement is a huge deal because it demonstrates Apple’s laser beam focus on customer satisfaction and highlights in my view ATT’s mishandling an iPhone market domination opportunity.

Lessons: Apple Strategy Outstanding,  Verizon Strategy a Plus  ATT Strategy Doesn’t Work

I have experience with both Verizon and ATT. Recently I tested another phone with Verizon and I was very pleased with the entire experience including the attention at the Verizon owned store,  customer service, billing and phone service.  The only reason I didn’t changes was that at the same time I was testing a new phone I read Verizon would be carrying the iPhone and I wanted to wait.

Apple has done a great job of developing strong customer loyalty.  I am sure there are people who have given up their iPhone to switch to another service after being worn out by ATT but I don’t know any of them.  Everyone I know who has an iPhone wants to keep it.  Apple understands what will appeal to the consumer and consistently delivers.

Verizon has been out there focused on offering a very strong cellular network.  Every Verizion customer I know is happy with Verizon service and coverage….No Exceptions! My brief experience with the store staff, customer service and tech support was very positive.  Verizon is  focused on solutions and not excuses.

Verizon and Apple Together Should Be An Outstanding Experience For Consumers

This all makes for an excellent case study on how ATT  did not capitalize on a huge opportunity. If they had consistently delivered on quality of coverage and customer care, Verizon would not have a chance.  Now Verizon has the opportunity to take huge market share.  I betting they will.

What Is Your Experience?…Please Comment

Steve Pohlit

Business Development Consulting
Executive Coach

727-587-7871

Email


ATT, IPhone, IPhone4 – Excellent Viral Marketing for Competitors

I love the IPhone. I owned the first IPhone within 2 weeks of launch and have upgraded to the 3G and then 3GS. As soon as Apple released a new model, I was there for upgrade. Not this time.

I would love to be testing the IPhone4 right now.  ATT has pushed me to the point where I don’t want to extend my contract for two years. Why….ATT’s service sucks.  It has not always sucked. In fact for well over 2 years I enjoyed my service.  Then something changed. I began reporting this situation 6 months ago.

Bottom line .. I want great service at my primary location, had it and now it is opposite that. When I discuss this with ATT the responses are amazing.  Tonight was the icing.  The lady said “the reality is that the service you are getting is what you can expect”  I asked her how much experience she had and she said “my experience level is irrelevant”. Amazing.

So I thought ..well maybe it’s me.  However, when I would make comments about my phone and dropped calls, I would hear …”that is so common with IPhone users.  So I tested that with people I know with IPhones and that is very true. All and I mean all IPhone owners I know complain of dropped calls.

I would love an IPhone4  However, ATT wins…they have worn me out and I am now waiting for Apple to expand to other carriers.  Rumors on line that will be this fall. Regardless of the timing it cannot be soon enough for me.

New IPhone4 owners I am sure you will love your new IPhone and I wish you the best with ATT service.

ATT –  you have had an amazing opportunity to dominate the market. You have benefited from Apple’s success and have not taken notes on how they lead.  Your negative goodwill accelerates. Verizon and others gotta love it. This is a great example of viral marketing for the competition.

Is it too late for ATT?  Not at all ATT could turn this around in a heart beat because customers love the IPhone and they do not like change.

Steve Pohlit

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
Temporary CEO, CFO, Controller Services
International Business Resources

Social Media Services
New Digital Media, Inc.

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Facebook

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MySpace

727-587-7871

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About: Steve Pohlit CPA,MBA has been the CFO and COO of  major domestic and international companies.  Steve has extensive business ownership experience having purchased and started off line and on line businesses.  Steve offers his  business building experience to companies and entrepreneurs with business coaching and business consulting.  His  focus is on building business  profits and net asset value at above average rates.   All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

Customer Service For AT&T's iPhone 3GS Network

Everyone I know who has an iPhone experiences drop calls. Some more than others. I am no exception except that I don’t accept dropped calls as normal.

In all fairness, my iPhone 3GS works very well most of the time. Recently I have spent time in California, Toronto, Chicago, Edmonton, Alberta. My home is in Florida. With all of this travel I had very little difficulty with service. My service issues begin when I near my home….within about 100 ft to be more precise. I have several iPhones since 2007 when the first iPhone was released. Since then I have had several periods of weak connectivity but overall I have not had a problem. That changed beginning late last year.

Once it was clear to me that something had changed and my phone was not the problem. I began calling AT&T.  I think having to do that should be considered as a terrorist interrogation technique.  There have been a couple people in that company I connect with who were very nice to talk to and demonstrated they understood the issue.  They also assured me the problem would be fixed.  The problem is not fixed.  And tech support actually misrepresented the action the took. I was told today that an engineer had been dispatched to my home area and found nothing wrong.  No engineer ever showed up and the most that was done was for someone to look at some screen and conclude their towers were operating properly. I never doubted that because a malfunctioning tower would be detected and fixed.

If I heard it once I heard this once I heard this at least 5 times just this week. We apologize, our towers are fine. Please be sure your software is up to date and turn your phone off and on as we sent some data or something to your phone.  There is a lot more but the bottom line is, this issue is not resolved and the discussions I had with tech support were totally not helpful.

Business Marketing 101: make sure you invest in retaining the people who are doing business with you now.

Business Problem Solving 101: Variance are solved one person at a time.

Business Relationship Building 101:  Almost nobody expects technology or any product for that matter to work perfectly all the time. It is how you handle the problem that determines whether you are building positive or negative goodwill.

My Conclusion About AT&T

1. There are indicators AT&T’s network is inadequate and Apple which is an excellent company will find alternatives.
2. AT&T continues to fuel negative goodwill
3. Markets have a way of compensating for weakness. Look at how many companies that were once huge have or are near closing their doors.

Key Lesson For Those Learning Business Principles: Pay attention to what the losers do and then …don’t do that.

Sending you energy of health, happiness, prosperity

Steve Pohlit

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
Temporary CEO, CFO, Controller Services
International Business Resources

Social Media Services
New Digital Media, Inc.

Twitter

Facebook

Linked in

MySpace

727-587-7871

Email

About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is The Managing Director of  Top 1 Coaching/Consulting of  The JT Foxx Organization. He is  an expert business coach and consultant focused on building massive business  profits and net asset value. He is very experienced with Internet marketing and social media marketing.  All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

Customer Service For AT&T’s iPhone 3GS Network

Everyone I know who has an iPhone experiences drop calls. Some more than others. I am no exception except that I don’t accept dropped calls as normal.

In all fairness, my iPhone 3GS works very well most of the time. Recently I have spent time in California, Toronto, Chicago, Edmonton, Alberta. My home is in Florida. With all of this travel I had very little difficulty with service. My service issues begin when I near my home….within about 100 ft to be more precise. I have several iPhones since 2007 when the first iPhone was released. Since then I have had several periods of weak connectivity but overall I have not had a problem. That changed beginning late last year.

Once it was clear to me that something had changed and my phone was not the problem. I began calling AT&T.  I think having to do that should be considered as a terrorist interrogation technique.  There have been a couple people in that company I connect with who were very nice to talk to and demonstrated they understood the issue.  They also assured me the problem would be fixed.  The problem is not fixed.  And tech support actually misrepresented the action the took. I was told today that an engineer had been dispatched to my home area and found nothing wrong.  No engineer ever showed up and the most that was done was for someone to look at some screen and conclude their towers were operating properly. I never doubted that because a malfunctioning tower would be detected and fixed.

If I heard it once I heard this once I heard this at least 5 times just this week. We apologize, our towers are fine. Please be sure your software is up to date and turn your phone off and on as we sent some data or something to your phone.  There is a lot more but the bottom line is, this issue is not resolved and the discussions I had with tech support were totally not helpful.

Business Marketing 101: make sure you invest in retaining the people who are doing business with you now.

Business Problem Solving 101: Variance are solved one person at a time.

Business Relationship Building 101:  Almost nobody expects technology or any product for that matter to work perfectly all the time. It is how you handle the problem that determines whether you are building positive or negative goodwill.

My Conclusion About AT&T

1. There are indicators AT&T’s network is inadequate and Apple which is an excellent company will find alternatives.
2. AT&T continues to fuel negative goodwill
3. Markets have a way of compensating for weakness. Look at how many companies that were once huge have or are near closing their doors.

Key Lesson For Those Learning Business Principles: Pay attention to what the losers do and then …don’t do that.

Sending you energy of health, happiness, prosperity

Steve Pohlit

Business Consulting, Executive Coach
Turnaround/Crisis Management
Temporary CEO, CFO, Controller Services
International Business Resources

Social Media Services
New Digital Media, Inc.

Twitter

Facebook

Linked in

MySpace

727-587-7871

Email

About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is The Managing Director of  Top 1 Coaching/Consulting of  The JT Foxx Organization. He is  an expert business coach and consultant focused on building massive business  profits and net asset value. He is very experienced with Internet marketing and social media marketing.  All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

Marketing To My Target Audience Using The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Traffic Jam

This morning The Wall Street Journal asked if the recently announced iPhone to be released July 11 would be accepted by business.  The answer influences the volume of iPhone sales and of course Apple’s earnings. This is my response which may give insight as to how business owners should consider many options that are presented:

“One path to answering this question is to consider the different functions within a business. For example, a typical accounts payable function currently is not enhanced by an iPhone. Account payable staff have the resources to do their job. Alternatively a technical field representative who is mobile could very well benefit from continually developing iPhone technology.

I appreciate this question as the use of cell phones and technology devices including the Blackberry and iPhones is a very topical question with business owners who I guide to making more money with their business.

In summary I am not an advocate of a universal policy allowing or prohibiting such devices. My advice is to decide at the functional level.”

Recently Entrepreneur.com Published An Article On Squeezing Out Profits In Tough Times actually titled “Less is More”  This is an area where I have considerable experience and expertise. Today, I submitted my comments which followed the logic of my FREE Report offered at IR Consulting, Inc. and mentioned for the readers of Entrepreneur the availability of this report.

Last night I was reviewing the update to Traffic Jam which is John Reese’s site and it really is marvelous so I encourage you to look at my Blog Rush widget on the right side of this page and click through and sign up for an account for your blog.  Then your blog entries feed Traffic Jam. A word of caution: if your blog is new I would wait until you have a reasonable volume of posts before applying for an account,  as that is one of the criteria for acceptance.  One of the values of Traffic Jam is for you to quickly see blog content published in your area of interest.  When you do I recommend commenting on the blog posts and including your site links which is a great way to get back links to your site.

In summary, published content is one of the actions that add credibility to your business. I am more focused on publishing certain of my content in areas most likely visited by my target audience. The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur Magazine are examples of where I have published content recently.

With the increasing volumes of information being published primarily as a result of more blogs coming on line daily, it is in your best interest to identify where your target customer is most likely to be visiting. Then focus on attracting their attention with content that delivers value and demonstrates you know what you are talking about.

Sending all my readers the energy of vibrant health, happiness and prosperity.

Steve Pohlit
http://www.stevereports.com

Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. I am building my practice and welcome new client inquiries. Call me for a fee consultation at 727-587-7871 Remember many of my business building articles can be found at Steve Reports and my prosperity building tool is The Prosperity Tool Chest

Stephen Pierce Recommends 7 Internet Marketing Tools: Steve Pohlit Comments.. Twitter Fans Take Note

Stephen Pierce’s blog is dTalpha The content is mostly Podcast If you have an iPod or an iPhone subscribe to his dTalpha podcast at iTunes. Twitter fans heads up – Stephen announced a beta site that shows what is hot on twitter. I am not giving the URL’s here on the same day they were released by Stephen. You will need to listen to today’s Make More Money Monday podcast. Have a pen and paper or do what I do and that is I open up a new tab in Firefox for each site he recommends then I go to the site as he gives it. I then can spend more time with it later.

My business is showing people with a business how to make a lot more money. Every week Stephen offers suggestions that will help all size companies. This week is no different. There is a trends site, a stories site and a video advertising site that should be relevant for just about everyone. He also recommended several very cool niche sites for fans of twitter, adsense and selling on eBay.

The following is what I posted in response to today’s podcast:

Stephen, very cool suggestions.

I am a twitter fan (follow me at http://www.twitter.com/stevepohlit) so I am particularly interested in the beta site you mentioned. Also I am definitely checking out the trends site and stories site you suggested. Of course I have notes on all your recommendations and as person who works with people with varying business interests in my efforts as a build business profits consultant, I never know when one of your recommendations that may not be topical for me at the moment is perfect for a client.

This is a reminder that all dtalpha fans are welcome to contact me for a complimentaty consultation on their business. Of course this will need to be scheduled but I can generally get to you within 5 business days of receiving an email (stevepohlit@gmail.com )

One final thing – if you didn’t get Stephen’s Mind Power University package you should revisit that decision right now. I don’t know if there is still a special price or not but there is some powerful material in that package. Thanks Stephen

Steve Pohlit
http://www.stevereports.com

Steve is the President of International Business Consulting Resources. His firm specializes in guiding companies to rapid increases in revenue and profits with a sustainable growth rate. I am building my practice and welcome new client inquiries. Call me for a fee consultation at 727-587-7871 Remember many of my business building articles can be found at Steve Reports and my prosperity building tool is The Prosperity Tool Chest