How your account rep is compensated could affect service levels and bills
When negotiating an enterprise cellular contract, it can be prudent to inquire how your sales team gets compensated.
So advises a cellular analyst in the business of helping large companies save money on their wireless bills. Brett Thompson, managing partner at Cellular Optimization in Indianapolis, contends that in general, carriers that reward their account reps based on new activations rather than based on percentage of your total bill tend to offer better service.
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That’s because the other compensation model doesn’t motivate your account team to help you find the most cost-efficient plan for your business or solve billing overage problems. In other words, asking a representative to lower your bill when the rep is rewarded financially when your bill remains high is akin to asking the fox to guard the henhouse.
Thompson cites stalled billing resolutions and overage charges as examples of fallout from the way cellular businesses operate.
For example, mobile operators seem to be less flexible these days in how they deal with overages. Thompson cites one organization, a Verizon Wireless customer with users on a $5-a-month text messaging plan, which rang up more than $200 in overages.
“It used to be that when this happened, the carrier would bump you up to the next level plan — a $20 monthly unlimited plan. You’d pay the extra $15 for that month, $20 per month going forward, and the carrier would make the plan change retroactive.”
In this case, Verizon charged the $15 to upgrade the plan, says Thompson, but chopped the credit due the customer from 100% to 50%.
Still, this move was friendlier than what you can expect with AT&T, he says.
With AT&T, “however much over [your limit] you are, you’re over,” he says, because AT&T “salespeople are incentivized to get more money, not less.” AT&T reps, says Thompson, are compensated based on your service total; if your bill goes down, they get less.
Thompson notes that the cellular networks aren’t regulated with tariffs the way landline services are. So there are behind-the-scenes cell plans that aren’t published. One unadvertised AT&T plan is $1,075 for 20,000 pooled minutes, with a cap of 40 lines and overages charged at 25 cents a minute, says Thompson. Each line added after the first costs $9.99 per month.
There are other tiered plans including $535 for 10,000 pooled minutes with a cap of 20 lines. Thompson has had customers coming in way under their minutes maximum ask to switch from the $1,075 plan to the $535 plan.
“AT&T will make the switch [on the primary line]. But then they take one of your $9.99 lines and make it the $1,075 line,” increasing the bill, rather than lowering it. “They don’t want to credit it and they’ll fight you,” he says.
Another chilling story from Thompson involved an AT&T rep stalling for 11 months on a $20,000 credit owed Thompson’s client, which was clearly documented and basically uncontested. “On the day before my client received the credit, the account rep got assigned to a new account.”
The new rep on the account took the hit in pay, he says.
