AT&T BusinessDirect tops competitors

Source: Technology Digital

Date :6/19/2007 10:57:18 AM

Study done by Yankee Group marks the third straight year that AT&T's customer portal has been recognized as providing the strongest online support.

AT&T Inc. recently announced that for the third consecutive year, it has been recognized by a leading industry research firm as providing customers with the strongest online support and service experience in the industry through its Web portal, AT&T BusinessDirect.

AT&T BusinessDirect was once again ranked as the best e-portal in service categories deemed critical to enterprise customers in an annual survey of leading carriers providing wired and wireless services conducted by the Yankee Group.

AT&T BusinessDirect combines service management and support reporting tools into a single, secure extranet site that provides users with increased visibility and cost control over their network performance and investments. Each month, hundreds of thousands of AT&T business customers conduct more than 3 million transactions — ranging from ordering services, to maintenance requests, to billing inquiries — using AT&T BusinessDirect. The number of BusinessDirect customer transactions increased 12 percent in 2006, and AT&T expects use of the service will continue to grow even higher in 2007.

The Yankee Group study, completed in December 2006 and published in May 2007, compared ordering, maintenance, billing and network management functionality in the portals of five Tier-1 service providers. In addition, the study concluded that AT&T had the strongest enterprise portal across all of these areas with the widest range of product coverage, functionality and integration to the enterprise.

"Web-based self-care emerged as an invaluable tool for providing enterprise customers with more information and choices for how to manage their carrier-based services," said says Paul Hughes, vice president of Enabling Technologies Service Provider Group at Yankee Group. "This is the third consecutive year that AT&T continues to be the industry leader for online customer service and support with AT&T BusinessDirect. AT&T stood out in 2006 by demonstrating leadership in the integration of mobile devices into the Web portal. Other carriers should follow its lead."

"We are once again honored to be acknowledged by Yankee Group as the leader in business portal services. This confirms AT&T's ongoing commitment to and investment in providing a superb customer experience," says Mark Metzendorf, vice president of eSales and Service. "We've worked very hard and are extremely proud of the industry leadership status that the AT&T BusinessDirect portal has achieved."