AT&T's deceptive marketing tactics and lies #attliedtome

This is an excerpt of a recent Facebook post I made to AT &T's Wall. More detailed post on the entire tiresome saga to come soon.


AT & T U-Verse,

I think you guys think your customers are fools who don't understand your lies, deceptive and dishonest marketing tactics and meaningless shallow apologies. Not even two weeks since I signed up for the service and..

1. While signing up the customer service rep messes up the installation date and sends an installation rep 1 week late from the date originally promised.

2. While signing up, the customer service rep merrily says 'yes' after I ask him whether I have HD service in the package. I only know that I have an HD receiver and not HDTV once the rep comes to install it at home.

3. I'm sent a bill of $117 for the first month, in spite of signing up for a basic package. I call up customer service and he tells me that they've charged me for HBO and Cinemax. I point it out to him that those channels are free for 3 months. He then realizes his fault and transfers me to 'someone' who could give me my bill details, only to be redirected to an automated voice telling me that 'this office is currently closed'.

Not only am I going to cancel your service, but I'm also going to never ever recommend it to any of my friends or colleagues. You probably imagined that you could eek every dollar of profit from unaware customers, but you unfortunately met the wrong person; someone who works not only in the marketing domain, but works in the social media space for a living. Goodbye and please don't apologize, I know you don't mean it. A detailed blog post and official complaint coming soon from my side.

Sincerely,

Your 'could have been' customer #attliedtome

The hard soft truth

The title is a bit confusing, but so is the mind of the people I am going to talk about briefly. In five more weeks, assuming everything goes as per plan, I will graduate on August 20,2010 and will embark on another journey of job hunt which every MBA does after becoming another statistic!

What I am going to discuss in this blog is my experience of working with people in the last two years at Thunderbird. Let me start with a question.

How important are soft skills in business? Whenever I ask this question to my peers, they give me a grin and turn their heads away. "It's just one of those papers you have to turn in, it's just one of those classes in which you can say anything and get away with it"......and so on.

At business school, I always strongly felt there was and is a strong feeling of repugnance, antipathy and even arrogance on the part of students when it comes to learning soft skills in business. "It ain't that cool". How many of us have heard these lines before? Yes, many of us and these lines have come from our peers.

Soft skills deal with people, hard skills deal with business. This is my perspective towards the entire soft skill discussion. While it may sound cool to be a master in accounting, finance, marketing, operations or supply chain, people give you a look when you tell them you want to specialize in cross cultural communication or in organizational behavior.

I am not surprised. However, whenever I see such responses, I always pose one question to those doubting thomases casting their curious eye on the importance soft skills in business. The question is simple, the answer isn't: "In your business or professional life, what percent of problems caused while working in teams were purely due to a lack of operational efficiency and lack of knowledge as opposed to a communication breakdown or lack of people management?"

A majority of problems in organizations deal with people more and less with work. Human beings are emotional in nature and conflicting working styles and cultural backgrounds are bound to create friction.

Another excuse for not giving importance to soft skills: "I will learn them on the job, I have enough work experience, I don't need them". What is the point of calling the fire brigade and dousing a fire after the building has been completely incinerated? The entire purpose of mastering the art of managing people lies in being proactive in building people and organizations on the basis of those people you invest in.

While management literature teaches us all the basics of doing business and affecting the bottom line, very often it fails to address the key issue of managing people. While studies and research in organizational behavior has come leaps and bounds to overcome doubts posed by the hard skill lobby, I strongly feel business schools should help students more by counselling to change their attitude towards soft skills as opposed to merely trying to increase their aptitude by trying to offer more soft skill based courses in the curriculum.

If someone ever asked me what has been my biggest takeaway from business school, I would say that I have learnt to understand the way people think. I have understood the fine intricacies of communication and learnt to manage them while I am applying my hard skills to achieve the best results. I could write more about my soft skill learnings but would like to call it quits before the skeptics accuse me of writing blogs to promote my Thunderbird education through my blog.

Someone once said, "tell me the hard truth". The keyword is 'hard'. Clearly, had this person mastered the art of 'soft' skills, he would have never felt the need to ask the 'hard' questions. I rest my case.

Have a great weekend!

Is religion the root cause of all evil in the world?

Before I state my opinion, I would like to clarify that the objective of this post is not to point fingers or state in any way whatsoever that there is something right or wrong with a particular religion. The blog aims at assessing the why of what is happening. I will be as objective as I can in most of my posts. If there is a post that I have a strong stance about, I will state it explicitly.

There are two sides to this discussion. One side says that religion is the root cause of all evil. When we talk about this, our mind gets diverted to terrorism and how a radical brand of Islam is being portrayed as a carrier of terror. The other side says that it's not religion but the way it is being used is what is creating all the problems in the world. I am neither an expert in the Bhagvad Gita, Quran or the Bible. However, from my perspective, I look at religion as a tool that tells you to do good in life. All religions in the world talk about tales of victory of good over evil. Religion is intended to be a carrier or a messenger that tells people in testing times to take the right path. It acts as a conscience to some who need a guiding light in times of dichotomy.

So then is religion the cause of evil in the world? I don't agree. This might sound weird but think about religion as the internet. I look at religion as a medium towards leading a good life. The internet can be used to connect with loved ones on another side of the planet, find out information about every possible thing in the world and also act as an excellent aid in research, information gathering and networking. At the same time, the internet can be used for fraud, illegal money laundering or even pornography and pedophilia. Do we blame the internet for everything that happens and decide to ban it?

We are the creators of the internet and we are responsible for using it in the right way. If it falls into the wrong hands, it will definitely be misused. In the same way, religion is the medium to reaching god or any spirit that we worship that tells us to do right. Unfortunately, politics is too selfish and less sacrosanct to tackle the problem of terrorism at its root. The root is definitely not religion. Poverty is one of the roots of this huge tree. If one is poor, one doesn't get the right kind of education, there is every chance of a young mind to lose sight of what's right in life. These minds are susceptible and can easily be taught to do things at an early age in the name of religion. For all those who hate any religion of the world, I just have one message.

Just the way man created technology to create nuclear bombs, man also has created religion. It depends on how it is interpreted to different people. But to merely blame religion for the root cause of all evil would be a travesty of justice to those who follow, preach and practice religion in the way it was supposed to be. If you ask me, I think human beings are the root cause of all problems as they have also damaged god's reputation by misinterpreting religious scriptures. So what's the solution then? Like in most cases, the solution lies within. We are the problem, we need a solution. Until and unless we realize that, what will continue is the mere political bashing and the usual mud slinging that we normally hear in the media. Oh did I say 'media' again? Think about it.

Have a great weekend!

Herzlich Wilkommen!

Hi,

This is my entry into the world of the so called blogosphere. Some might say I'm a bit late, but better late than never. Looking forward to sharing some of my thoughts, experiences, feelings and opinions in future blogs. You might have read a million blogs before from people, ranging right from excellent to egregious, but I can assure you that you will have a great time reading stuff from someone with a background in creative writing and poetry and especially someone who doesn't believe in holding his opinion back. So sit back, relax and read, I guarantee you that in the world of blogosphere this sure will not just be another brick in the wall!