Can A Business Be Too Good?

Last week, many AT&T customers had a frustrating day when the company’s mobile service went down for almost 12 hours. And it is a testament to the ubiquity of our need for connection when just hearing this story gives all of us a little internal cringe. AT&T itself also understands how important this is as it did not take the company long to announce that it would issue a credit to those potentially impacted – to the amount of $5.

Wait, that’s it?

On first read, these things did not seem equal to me. From a business perspective, not having service for that amount of time could really slow things down. From a personal perspective, I imagine there were some kids trying to get picked up by their parents who couldn’t get through to them. And that’s just to start, it is easy to spin out from there and imagine many inconveniences this could cause. And $5 for that just feels … cheap.

That amount, however, was touted by AT&T as the average cost of a full day of service. And yes, that math checks out. So instead getting stuck in feeling like it’s not enough of a recompense, maybe instead it just shows that with how much we rely on our phones that the cost of service is a bargain.

This then sent my mind down that business perspective lane again – is it possible that a company can get too good at providing a service? I mean, we wake up every day and our phones work, connecting us to the world in a myriad of ways, and even though all of this is still relatively new we just take it for granted. And we use it that much and it only costs $5 a day. Well, to utilize the most overused comparison there is – that’s only like a cup of coffee!

On the one hand, this sounds great for phone companies. They send us a bill every month that we can’t imagine not paying. The biggest danger there is from customers moving to other companies but not actually discontinuing mobile service overall. On the other hand, when a rare problem comes and a company goes to correct it, even making a solid good faith gesture (like AT&T did) may feel too little, too late. So, do you have to overcompensate? If you don’t, will it send some people to a competitor?

I do not have any answers to these questions, but just thought they were interesting to ponder as this is a business situation we do not encounter often.

Warmly,

Josh Bousquet
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