Looks like AT&T really needs a boost................ from Cupria and IPSL.
Potential customers need a good reason to switch from cable to a telco that will provide them with the next generation HD Triple Play.
deeba
AT&T goes door to door for sales
By Jon Van
August 27, 2007
Companies love to interact with customers online because it's more efficient than providing a live customer representative on the phone, but as telecom competition escalates, the players find they can't always follow the cheapest pathway.
AT&T Inc. this month launched an advertising counteroffensive against cable titan Comcast Corp., which has been stealing its phone customers. It is sending salespeople door to door to drum up business.
"We need to reach out to customers in many different ways," said Steven Mitchell, vice president and general manager for AT&T Illinois. "People are more comfortable talking in their own homes. They will tell you their needs more readily than if you approach them at the mall, where they're busy doing something else. So we're sending our agents to meet them" at home.
As the phone giant loses customers to cable competitors, it has had to adjust its outlook, Mitchell said, but door-to-door marketing isn't easy.
"We start in the afternoon, talking to people who are home and noting where no one's home," Mitchell said. "Then we circle back later to hit the houses after people get home from work."
Some door-to-door activity is winding down as summer ends because AT&T assigned the jobs to college students working as summer interns who are now back on campus, he said. Other agents work for outside vendors hired by AT&T.
Comcast, AT&T's nemesis, has been going door to door to win customers "since day one," said Angelynne Amores, a spokeswoman for the cable operator.
AT&T's wired voice and Internet services are now being marketed in company stores that previously sold only wireless phones under the discontinued Cingular brand. The wired side of the company is becoming more like wireless in its aggressive ad campaigns intended to win customers back from Comcast by emphasizing lower prices.
It's a far cry from a decade ago when Chicago's dominant phone company faced little competition for residential customers and requires a new approach to marketing, said Mitchell.
"My job is to make AT&T Illinois act like a small company," he said. "We have to change to meet the changing market."
AT&T goes door to door for sales
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