AT&T announced on Wednesday that it would start crediting customers for internet outages and long wait times, the latest initiative in a yearslong effort to revamp the company’s customer service.
Starting Thursday, individual AT&T customers and small businesses that experience a fiber outage of more than 20 minutes or a wireless outage of more than an hour will automatically receive a full-day bill credit. Customers who call the company’s technical support line and are put on hold for more than five minutes will receive a $5 Visa gift card.
The new policy is a part of a $750 million investment the company has made in its customer service over the last four years, said Kellyn Smith Kenny, AT&T’s chief marketing and growth officer. AT&T customers will also be able to check the status of their outage on a newly created website.
The announcement follows a year of high-profile internet outages involving AT&T and other companies. Last February, tens of thousands of AT&T customers across the country experienced an hourslong outage. In September, Verizon had an outage that affected more than 100,000 customers.
The most damaging incident occurred in July when the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike issued a software update that temporarily shut down a large portion of the world’s computing systems.
Ms. Kenny said that AT&T outages had not become more common in recent years and that they continued to affect a small percentage of customers.
A major focus of the company’s investment in customer service has been automation, including the use of artificial intelligence to handle customer service, as well as letting customers communicate with AT&T representatives through messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp.
Verizon, for its part, announced a new batch of A.I. customer service tools last year.
