All kidding aside though, direct alliance is taking stuff from plat, plat individuals are upset and want to be able to get new businesses, but that takes BAT sellers jobs. What exactly will even come to this? I know convergence is literally what every single person says in every conversation I have with them, but I’m over here thinking, what even is next? I’m curious to hear people’s thoughts. I know it has been a lot of change in mid market, but this much change in 2024? I’m holding on real tight.
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JVB is the best leader. What a genius. I love that a lot of the fat is getting trimmed. Knutson blows!!!
AT&T Apex wholesale channel is actually doing well. I work for a company that buys lot of circuits from wholesale from AT&T. All we have to do is provide the billing and decent customer service. We also have the advantage where we have agreements with every major carrier and and consolidates all the circuits and broadband into one bill.
Direct T badged sales are nearing the end of their life cycle. T has focused on SP and AR sales and have realized significant return from those channels. The only direct resources you’ll likely see are in the Fed space . Even Fortune 50 have SP intrusion. T badged will be reduced by 50% over the next 24 months.
T can’t afford B2B sellers, slowly going to introduce SP’s to customers and stop hiring super expensive sales people to sell a $50 a month service.
AT&T has a great product line, not cheap but solid products.... but the Worst Customer Support in the world. Like do they try too loose customers on purpose???? I can tell you for a fact the majority of customers I have sold too 10-15 years ago have already ported away or went to an AT&T Reseller because they hate our support bottom line. Products solid Support su-ks. Half the people in Platinum work other jobs or just do jack all day which makes it hard for Fiber and BAT Sellers because their left selling to Taco Trucks and Donut shops. Go Sell 20 GAs to a TACO Truck and an ADI to a donut shop. Alliance will slowly start to take over and the majority of Mid Market sellers will be doomed.
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The average consumer customer does, but that statement doesn’t apply to a lot of business accounts. Many value support, responsiveness, local people and the human interaction - and will add those factors into their choice of provider. If it was just price AT&T wouldn’t have a segment with billions of $ business revenues in it, as AT&T is never the cheapest.
If we lose the ability to provide that extra value and we are no better than the rest, then sure, they are all going to move to the lowest price.
Because the customer buys based on price. Have the lowest overhead and the best price and get the sale.
Mid market sellers should be looking over their shoulders. Last month, AT&T moved the Alliance Channel under JVB's MM segment and that pretty much tells you what will happen the rest of this year and beyond. Solution Providers are being given MM modules and the writing is clearly on the wall. Remember how T used to have a ton of corporate stores? Over the past few years, they have been moving corporate stores over to Authorized Retail in an attempt to outsource this channel. The same is happening with corprate sales and solution providers. It makes sense for T's bottom line. Why worry about paying salaries, dealing with HR and workers comp issues, when you can pay a third party a flat commission? It's over, folks. If you are a mid market seller, you should probably be looking for a new job.
Much of this has lead to many poor customer experiences. They are like kids caught up in a bad divorce.
As AT&T looks to figure out the absolute cheapest way to support accounts, there will be a significant percentage that leave in the process. It is expected. The company is willing to settle for keeping probably half the accounts as long as they are the ones that can handle 99% of everything via self service tools, and not need an account team. All the medium and high maintenance ones can go to another provider and learn it isn’t any better there.
Thus employees in these segments are likely going to drop to a bare minimum where the few left just run the largest fire drills of the day, every day.
This is leading to very fertile opportunities for competitors if they want to staff up and take advantage - but they all appear to be shrinking sales and account teams as well.
Businesses better just get good at figuring out & solving for a lot of their needs and wants through their online portals. Something goes wrong or bills wrong? They will probably never get it resolved. That’s where a lot of this is headed. Customer service and support isn’t just dead at AT&T, it is mostly dead for business segments across all the providers,