- AT&T has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau
- Yet, their biggest challenge is regaining trust with customers
- Transparency has helped them find their way
AT&T should be the best company in the world. It’s certainly one of the most successful, earning billions in revenue every year. Prestigious business indexes like the Fortune 500 consistently place AT&T among the highest-ranked corporations. It’s part of a century-old legacy extending to Alexander Graham Bell and the invention of the telephone. Even its TikTok game is surprisingly on-point.
Brand reputation, on the other hand, tells an entirely different story. Nowhere is this dynamic more clear than AT&T’s Better Business Bureau page. The world’s largest telecommunications company and cell phone provider currently holds an A+ rating — awarded for resolving customer complaints, meeting industry best practices, and being transparent about its operations. And yet, this stellar score sits beside the customer review average: 1.11 out of 5 stars.
Last year, AT&T CEO John Stankey said that improving the company’s reputation is a top priority. But at this point, its biggest challenge is simply regaining trust. AT&T has become so associated with scandals and bad news that actual improvements are met with skepticism from the public. That being said, AT&T does excel on one front: transparency. The brand’s resource library is a near-perfect communications template that might act as a foundation for rebuilding connections in the future.
How the country lost trust in AT&T
If we want to understand AT&T’s transparency initiatives, we must first consider why modern customers lost trust in the company. That story began in 2006 when USA Today revealed the NSA was secretly collecting phone call records from millions of Americans. USA Today’s sources explained that while the database itself was a unique technological innovation, the data was provided by AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth — all without their customer’s knowledge or consent.
While this story shocked the public, AT&T’s involvement wasn’t exactly breaking news. AT&T has a history of compiling phone records to quickly respond to warrants and subpoenas from law enforcement. However, this new operation was on a scale never before attempted, transmitting data wholesale without requiring individual subpoenas. The news associated AT&T with growing dissatisfaction in how government agencies managed domestic security in a post-9/11 world.
As more information about these programs went public, AT&T became mired in the inevitable backlash. When the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, it revealed new details about how the company routed internet traffic records to the NSA. Later, the National Intelligence Director confirmed that AT&T’s assistance was an invaluable component of the Bush administration’s wireless surveillance program. While judges eventually dismissed the associated lawsuits, AT&T’s apparent lack of concern for client privacy became part of its brand reputation.
Why transparency was AT&T’s silver lining
As AT&T’s reputation for privacy soured, the company looked for new ways to improve transparency with customers and watchdog groups. This effort ultimately led to the biannual Transparency Report. Each new volume summarizes AT&T’s communications with law enforcement and government agencies over six months, highlighting the number of requests from national security groups, criminal and civil courts, and emergency services.
Most importantly, each transparency report presents the terms and conditions by which AT&T will respond to government requests, such as the difference between subpoenas and court orders. Readers can even find the number of times AT&T denied or partially-filled requests due to incorrectly filed government paperwork.
AT&T’s attempts to regain public trust didn’t receive much media attention, but they did mark a turning point in how it managed its relationship with law enforcement. While a telecommunications company cannot simply ignore court orders, it also cannot ignore customers’ rights and privacy expectations. Striking that balance while maintaining trust requires open communication, so these reports were a promising first step.
But AT&T didn’t stop at being transparent about privacy. The company also publishes many reports and briefs covering its activities outside of service fulfillment. Here are just a few examples of the data AT&T publishes and updates regularly:
- Individual donations to public officials and political candidates
- Efforts to align with the Paris Climate Accords
- Contributions to social issues such as accessibility, digital access, and human rights
- Corporate governance policies
- Network security briefs
- Supply chain management summaries
These documents and many others like it are available from AT&T’s official reports library page, which provides over a decade’s worth of records and insights.
What AT&T should do next
While AT&T certainly gets its share of bad press, we should acknowledge that it sets a high standard for corporate transparency. These reports are comprehensive, accessible, and clarify the brand’s position on various matters. They also provide valuable context on issues that typically won’t receive any nuance in a heated social media conversation. Finally, the reports library page acts as a valuable resource for researchers and journalists who might otherwise struggle to extract specific details from PR agencies.
However, we should also acknowledge that transparency is just a first step for companies of AT&T’s size and reach. These records help AT&T communicate with reporters, regulators, and watchdog agencies. Still, the average consumer won’t change their mind about the brand by reading AT&T’s reports — assuming they look the information up at all. AT&T must also recommit to its brand values, nurture customer relationships, and find authentic ways to express why privacy matters to everyone.
When Stankey said he wanted to improve AT&T’s reputation, he noted that doing so would be a multi-year initiative. He’s absolutely right, but there is a path forward. If AT&T can put the same effort into building trust as it does in transparency, it might just succeed.