AT&T CEO has no time for his customer

A CEO is usually the company’s key PR player (say hi to Steve Job

) but there are also CEO that is a PR disaster (say hi to Randall Stephenson of AT&T).

Who? you might say. Not many of us here in Malaysia has heard his name, but apparently AT&T is a huge telco in USA. So huge it seems that the CEO does not like to receive emails from the customers. Or else you will be served with a cease or desist letter from their lawyer.

That’s what happened to Giorgio Galante. He wrote two emails in two weeks to Mr Stephenson and voila.. there come a phone call from AT&T Executive Response Team (must be something like the corporate commando unit for them) that warned that further emails will result in a cease and desist letter. (listen to audio here)

We all know the US of A is a birth place and heaven for the suing culture and the hordes of lawyers there. But this? Maybe Mr Galante sent threatening emails that scared the juice off the CEO. Apparently, the first email was a request to bump up his iPhone eligibility date and a request for a tethering option, and the second one outlined his displeasure with AT&T’s new data rates and ultimate decision to switch to their competitor Sprint. Threatening? Yes, he did threatened to leave their service. And after that call from the ERT, you can bet that AT&T has lost a customer for sure that day.

Any of you who is a CEO or aspires to be one – please put this at the top of the ‘No No’ list. Oh ya.. can someone please send this guy some info on ‘Customer Service 101′.

Just to emphasise my first sentence just now, Galante had sent the email about offering tethering to both Randall Stephenson and Steve Job. Steve Job actually responded to that email. How cool is that?

To read Galante’s email to Stephenson, and to hear the resulting voicemail, click here.

Banner picture courtesy of geekrage.net