If Customer Loyalty begins with Employee Loyalty then it stands to reason that the surest way to drive customers away is to disrespect your employees.  I have watched the morale among AT&T employees steadily decrease post Cingular merger and this is now translating into disrespect toward their customers.

Case in point:  many folks purchase the popular Blackberry devices because it allows them to combine a PDA and a phone into a single device.  It syncs nicely with the data contained in Outlook on their desktop machine and means having to only sync and carry a single device when away from one’s desk.  AT&T has decided that everyone who purchases or has already purchased a Blackberry device must pay an added cost monthly “unlimited data” plan whether they want/need it or not.

For those who need instant email on the go the data plan is a necessity.  For those who simply wanted a phone with the built in convenience of a PDA, but don’t need instant email, they just got the shaft.  This change in policy was made with little consideration of their customers and without warning.

Disrespect for employees leads to disrespecting customers which leads to a lack of customer loyalty.  So, AT&T how’s your ‘”churn rate” looking these days…….

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.