AT&T Business Customer Service

As a business owner, it's time to have a dedicated business line for it. I haven't had a landline in forever but it seems like the easiest way to accommodate my needs. I know there are things like VOIP where I can have business calls diverted to my phone, but I want to have a separate number for my company right now. Therefore, I went ahead and called AT&T since I'm already a customer to see if I could get something set up. 

As a customer, I know that AT&T has millions of customers, and sometimes their customer service is quick and sometimes it takes a while. Therefore, I wasn't sure what I was getting into. Sometimes you have to wait on hold for a while before talking to someone, and sometimes you can get right through. This is probably because they have business accounts, personal accounts, television services, landline services, and mobile services. With so many different divisions, there are a lot of potential reasons why customers could end up needing to talk to someone. 

For that reason, I called this line which was supposed to take me to their business services quickly, but in seconds I ended up back into their general queue. When I called, an automated assistant greeted me with, "If you are calling about regulated local exchange telephone service, press 1. For any ATT sales or service needs, press 2."  I pressed 2 since I had no idea what the first category was, and after a brief pause was sent back to the regular line. 

This time an automated assistant stated, "To get started, tell me your account number or phone number associated with your AT&T account or say new service." Since my business line would be a new service, I went ahead and said new service, and then it told me, "Sure, one second. What’s the zip code where you need a new service?" After giving my zipcode, it said, "Thank you, one second please. Is this call regarding a personal or business account?" It then repeated its request for me to wait and I listened to a dialing tone for a few minutes. Then it said, "One minute while I get an agent to help you." 

Then the line went completely dead for about a minute which was odd and I thought the call was dropped. Luckily I didn't hang up because then it finally picked up on the hold line. I had to wait about ten minutes but did get to an agent who helped me finish setting up the line.