Rumor Mill

Hey first time posting, I work for an actual cingular agent, and i have to say first off, regarding the "indirect agents do not know what they are doing" comment is ridiculous. there are many indirect agents out there that may not know exactly what they are doing, and in fact, in my area, the one corporate store around has more bumbling idiots working for them then the agent i currently work for, and in regards to corporate stores closing, i havent heard any rumors that it is going to happen, but i have heard (from actually the owner of my agent) that the way the trend is going with cingular is that it may be more profitable for cingular to go more towards agent stores and slowly faze out the corporate stores. think about that for a second...
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Well that is an interesting look, I know that there are problems on both ends, we have one corporate store that is just a mess and one in our area that is a indirect dealer that are very "Customer Service Friendly" they call us for the customer and they are just awesome. But, it sure will put a lot of tenured people out of work if it proves true, so my hope is that it is not true

Maybe in your case the indirect dealers are faring better where you live but that statement holds no water on the large scale. If you tried to activate a phone w/ at&t through the indirect channel you'd have to have them call up the order rather than process it for you right in the store. Now I'm igorant of the commisioning structure for your store but you can't expect new stores to pop up for cingular on acct that they would do their business through the indirect channel without them paying a high price to cause people to want to get into the indirect business. It would be a big problem if they tried to regulate anything or control what gets done and what doesn't. If other major characters have direct stores I believe that other people ...
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1. I have heard this rumor coming from my friend at Cingular corporate.. and no he is not a CSR. It's only on the table for discussion... and NOT a decision to be made overnight. A) too many complaints from customers and potential customers with level of service... main complaint, they just want me out the door and take customer after customer for commissions. B) Sales Reps does not help current customers with issues because then they can't make a sale. C) Cost too much to train, and the ending result is they have all the knowledge required, but still lack customer service. D) It is more cost effective to have CSR reps transfered to stores than hire new... because CSRs are trained on all aspects, programs, and Cust. Care.
So they ar...
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... and Corporate stores (at least in Dallas) can no longer bill purchases to your account. 😁 Go Authorized Dealers!

They are increasing general access for agents, but they still aren't able to access a customer's account like a corporate store is. As far as a Sales Rep not helping a current customer, is BS. I work for a corp store, and let me tell you, we help everyone that comes into our store, new or current. We take every opportunity to make the sale. Even current customers may need features, granted not as much, but many still need to know about sms, mms, etc.

We have a payment station too, which means we don't really have to offer to review the cust's bill, but we still do, because alot of the time they are paying more than they need to. They thank us when we tell them we can save them money on their bill.

I'm not saying all agents are inc...
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cingagent said:
Hey first time posting, I work for an actual cingular agent, and i have to say first off, regarding the "indirect agents do not know what they are doing" comment is ridiculous. there are many indirect agents out there that may not know exactly what they are doing, and in fact, in my area, the one corporate store around has more bumbling idiots working for them then the agent i currently work for, and in regards to corporate stores closing, i havent heard any rumors that it is going to happen, but i have heard (from actually the owner of my agent) that the way the trend is going with cingular is that it may be more profitable for cingular to go more towards agent stores and slowly faze out the corporate st

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Actually, they aren't picking "colors" when closing stores. They are looking at gross adds, revenue, and lease byouts when looking at which stores to close. They are closing my store (orange) and relocating us to a nearby blue store because of lease byout and remodel costs.

OK I've had about enough of this. I never do this but this is a very touchy subject as I am a direct dealer for a legacy "blue" store.
Where I am the "Orange" corporate store was actually shut down leaving us with 5 yes 5 indirect agents after the blue agents were converted sending us the the most dumb ass problems and mistakes you can believe. It seems like the only thing they say for "Customer Service" is "Theres a corporate Store right down the way, they should be able to help you with that."
It is quickly reducing me to a freakin customer service rep. I know I'm a little late with this post but I was reading through this and I could hardly believe what I was reading. For me the thought of a indirect causing anything but...
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I agree, when the indirect store near us runs into a problem, instead of calling cingular for help, they just tell them to come to our store. We aren't here to fix their problems, they are grownups, they can call and fix their own problems for the customer.

How about actually calling customer service like we do most of the time. It takes five minutes, and a cust serv rep on the phone can take care of anything you need done.

We don't do magic because we're a corp store. We just call and get help when needed from 866CINGULAR.