Synchronoss, the New Jersey-based company that has a contract with AT&T to handle iPhone activations, says it is "extremely pleased" with the way the iPhone activations went.
In an earlier post I described how I spent innumerable hours on hold over the weekend trying to get AT&T to actually activate the iPhone I bought on Friday evening. They finally did on Sunday, after 39 hours elapsed.
That brings us to Synchronoss, which has a contract with AT&T to handle the activation.
Publicly traded Synchronoss, oddly, hasn't been very public about its iPhone involvement. One of the few articles about its services was one last week in Investor's Business Daily, which says: "Its software takes care of the process from the time the customer has made the decision to buy to when the transaction is processed and the account is activated on the network."
That sounds like a pretty key ingredient in the activation mix. Also, the e-mail updates that iPhone customers received said AT&T in the "From:" line but were actually, as the headers reveal, sent by Synchronoss.
So I sent e-mail to Synchronoss CEO Steve Waldis on Sunday asking him what happened (I was hardly the only one with problems).
Domenick Cilea from Springboard Public Relations replied the same day. He sent me a bullet point list in response:
"This weekend set a new bar for the communications space and introduced an activation approach that shifted the paradigm to activate phones in the comfort of a customer's home or office."
"The OVERWHELMING majority of the people who activated the iPhone had a fast and seamless experience and were 'breezing' through it in minutes."
"The amount of exceptions that were received, a normal activity in any activation, was much smaller than expected. Some of these processes require other third parties."
"Many of these exceptions have already been processed and resolved."
"Synchronoss is extremely pleased with the way its software performed. It exceeded expectations."