Mobile

AT&T releases app to track dropped calls, and why it’s okay to say you’re wrong

The largest predicament surrounding the iPhone (AAPL) seems to be the network: indeed, there seem to be a large number of dropped calls experienced by iPhone users lately, which until recently wasn’t really acknowledged by AT&T. Today, AT&T released an iPhone app that will track problems with the AT&T (NYSE:T) network.

Using this tool, users can pick a category of problem (dropped call, failed call, no coverage, data failure, poor voice quality) and a frequency of this problem occurring, which is sent to AT&T along with your GPS coordinates. This will allow AT&T to increase its attention towards problem areas in the network.

I never quite understood why companies believed admitting to and fixing a problem was difficult and undoable because of the admitting part. Through such a tool, AT&T gains many advantages. Let’s take a look.

  1. Users like that AT&T recognizes the problem.
  2. Users like that they took action and released an application to help fix the problem.
  3. AT&T gains many data points from millions of iPhone users—each with exact GPS coordinates to see which hives are the worst offenders—from which they can identify pain points and improve their network.
  4. In the end, users gain a better experience using AT&T as improvements stemmed from this app are issued.

AT&T not only was able to increase its public image and improve their network, but they were able to do so by crowdsourcing millions of AT&T iPhone users’ data, all pretty much free of charge.

Sometimes, it’s okay to admit you’re wrong—as long as you fix the problem. It shows responsiveness and shows that the company is trustworthy to the point where they—gasp—admit that they made a mistake.

  • They probably wanted to wait till they sold ~10 million iphone4’s before admitting it to utilize the benefit of doubt and hence to be able to sell that many.

    sorry I didn’t take into account the time of this post