As connectivity becomes more essential to daily life, AT&T is reshaping its Mass Markets business around a simple principle: earn customer trust by delivering reliable service, transparent pricing, and proactive accountability.
In a wide-ranging conversation, Jenifer Robertson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of AT&T’s Mass Markets organization, described how the company serves more than 100 million customers across mobility and consumer businesses. Central to that effort is a multi-year shift toward customer-centric operations, anchored in expanded fiber deployment, 5G investment, and a renewed focus on frontline execution.
One of the most visible outcomes of that strategy is the AT&T Guarantee, launched in early 2025. The guarantee commits AT&T to network reliability, competitive pricing, and responsive customer service—backed by proactive credits when expectations are not met. According to Robertson, the initiative has improved brand perception and net promoter scores, even among customers who experience service disruptions.
Robertson also highlighted AT&T’s rapid expansion of multi-gig fiber, which doubled household availability in roughly a year, alongside simplified pricing that eliminated contracts, equipment fees, and promotional roll-offs. These changes, she said, addressed long-standing customer pain points while accelerating adoption.
Looking ahead, AT&T’s focus on convergence between fiber and wireless is driving new product innovation, including automatic internet backup, AI-driven Wi-Fi personalization, and connected home services designed to deliver seamless connectivity.
For Robertson, the challenge now is speed. As technology and customer expectations evolve faster than ever, AT&T is pushing to move more quickly—while maintaining the reliability and accountability customers expect.
Diana Goovaerts:
We are here today with Jenifer Robertson, who is EVP and GM for AT&T's Mass Markets division. What exactly does that mean? Well, Jen leads the team responsible for AT&T's mobility and consumer wireline businesses, which provides solutions to connect customers at home, work on the go. She also has profit and loss responsibility for AT&T's Mass Market business, which is one of the largest revenue drivers at the company. She also leads AT&T's consumer facing teams who sell and support mobility and consumer wireline products and services.
Oh, and no big deal, but her group also oversees product management, go-to-market, and operations for the consumer product set across AT&T 5G, AT&T Fiber, AT&T Internet Air, AT&T Prepaid, and Cricket. What I'm trying to say here is that Jen has a lot on her plate, and today we are going to take a deeper dive into some of those areas.
So, Jen, thank you so much for making the time in what I imagine is a massively busy schedule to speak with us.
Jenifer Robertson:
Oh, it's great to be here. Thank you so much.
Diana Goovaerts:
Yeah, so I kind of gave a quick rundown of your bio, but why don't you take the time and introduce yourself, describe your role, and what parts of the massive plate energize you the most?
Jenifer Robertson:
I would describe the role as I have the privilege to serve over a hundred million customers every single day, and I get to work with the people across AT&T who do that. And it's obviously the teams that you just mentioned, and they do all the heavy lifting of making sure we have the products and the services, and that we're facing off to customers in the right way. But I also get to work across all of AT&T because it takes us all to make that happen. So I get to work with our business counterparts, our network teams, our technology teams, and our marketing partners. And I even get to work in with our external affairs, legislative affairs, and legal and finance teams to really make sure that we bring all of AT&T and the best of it to bear, to make sure we're delivering for customers.
And that's what energizes me. What energizes me is that customers' demands are ever evolving. They change every single day, it seems like. But there are broader trends. Technology continues to evolve so that we can better serve those pain points, better solve the friction and those experiences. And so as customers' needs change, we can better solve for them. And we come in every single day thinking about how do we go do that. And the fact that it's a constantly changing problem, a constantly evolving need, it's pretty energizing to come in and say, "Okay, well, what does today entail?" And that's what brings all of us back each day. Some days are harder than others, but most days are really great because you're solving those problems.
Diana Goovaerts:
So I heard you mention customer probably 10 times in that short description that you gave. So it sounds like you're kind of championing them within AT&T. So tell me a little bit about where that mindset came from for you personally, and how do you manage to keep customers at the forefront inside such a large organization?
Jenifer Robertson:
I fundamentally come from a place of service. My family serves others. I think they do it in much more of a altruistic way from the aspect of first responders, from military, from doctors and nurses. I came to AT&T and felt a little bit like, "Okay, I'm in corporate. What does that do?" And then I learned that AT&T really is a company of service. Its people are service at heart. And that was inspiring for me to feel like, okay, I'm not as disconnected from my family as I thought I was. But you look at it and you say, "What we do here matters. We connect people." And fundamentally at our core, AT&T matters because connecting changes everything.
We look at it and say, we connect people to greater possibilities, whether that's the moments that matter most, whether that is the fact that we can connect them to education, to financial opportunities, connecting changes everything in our world. And the fact that we get to do that for people is a real privilege, and the people at the company know that. And it doesn't matter what department you're in, people know that and they carry it as a real spirit of honor.
And so about five years ago, we centered ourselves around the customer. We made a concerted effort to reorganize, not just in my organization here in Mass Markets, but the whole company said, "We're going to rally around this spirit and we're going to get ourselves recentered." We said, "It's 5G wireless. It's fiber connectivity. We're going to get very focused on those being our priorities, and we're going to do it all for the customer." Which was a very energizing moment for the whole company. And I had the honor of being able to do that in the role that I was appointed to at the time, which was the chief customer officer. And it brought together 25 years of experience across all of our customer facing teams and several different roles inside the organization.
And being able to bring together that experience of working with field operations teams, call center teams, retail teams, and seeing what made it hard for them, but also being in the headquarters teams of, okay, now I know what makes it hard for these teams, but also have access to the tools to help close the loop and solve it really brought together all of those experiences. And said, "Okay, how do we come together and make this right for the customers, but also the people who serve them?"
Diana Goovaerts:
I heard you speaking earlier in your answer about the importance of connectivity and getting customers connected, not just with wireless, which is one of the big things AT&T is known for, but fiber, which is one of the other things that you guys are known for. I happen to know that you oversaw the launch of AT&T's 5 Gig fiber offering, which at the time was a very big deal and it still is, but that was kind of a market shaping moment. So what was the technical hurdle or operational hurdle that you're proudest of overcoming to make that happen?
Jenifer Robertson:
It was a technical hurdle. And what I'm proudest of the team for doing there is the speed with which they operated, the technology complexity, but the fact that we made it matter in the market for customers. All of those things happened simultaneously. So we actually had in the same cities and neighborhoods, our first generation and our second generation fiber networks deployed, and we had those in a mix mash of networks, that's a technical term. The networks were out there simultaneously and we had to solve for that technically. How do we bring those together and then serve in what we call a multi-gig way customers and bring that solution to customers? So that obviously involved our network teams bringing the technology to bear and upgrading the network.
Then we said, "Okay, but we want to do this with speed," and that created some supply chain constraints. So there were logistics involved. But to do that in a way that mattered in the market and to spend that kind of capital, we knew we had to execute quickly and then we needed to bring it to market in a way that our marketing and sales teams could penetrate and get the return. And so within a year, we moved from under five million customers eligible for that speed to over 10 million, almost 11 million households eligible for that speed, which was an unbelievable pace. And then our sales and marketing teams came in and said, "Okay, we're going to make this speed available and we're going to break an industry construct." We launched our simplified pricing that had no contracts, no commitments, we didn't charge for equipment, and we got rid of 12 month rolloff pricing, which was a customer pain point.
And so we just brought these speeds and this pricing construct to customers and said, "We're going to give you the best fiber product out there with these speeds and this pricing construct. Let's go knock it out of the park." And so it was truly, again, the best of AT&T coming together for the customer. And that was the amazing part. Solve the technical challenge for them and see what we can do, how fast we can do it.
Diana Goovaerts:
Yeah. And I mean, it was kind of wild, the ramp that you guys had there, but one of the other things that I've seen kind of percolating up to the top of my consciousness recently are the ads that you guys have been running about the AT&T Guarantee. So that is a pretty interesting thing to put in writing, to promise that to consumers. Can you give me a little more detail about what's included in the guarantee, how you helped shape it, and what impact it has had on how your team internally and AT&T operate?
Jenifer Robertson:
You bet. We're so proud of it. We launched it in January of 2025. We are the first and still the only in the industry that can guarantee our fiber and our wireless networks because we have both at scale. We have over 30 million households passed in fiber. We'll grow that to over 65 million by the end of the decade. We have the nation's largest and most reliable wireless network. We have a partnership with AST with satellite, and so that compliments our wireless network. We've just done a recent acquisition of Spectrum that'll make our wireless network even stronger. And so you look at these assets we bring together like no one else in the industry, and we step back and say, "We have what we need to provide the best experience to customers." And like I mentioned, this has been a multi-year journey that's never done.
But we do know that over the last five years, we've earned the right with customers to step forward and say, "You can trust us on the fact that we provide you a reliable network experience. And while we don't always get it right, we get it right the vast majority of the time. And when we don't, we're so confident in what we provide you that we will proactively make it right when we get it wrong." And that matters to customers because they don't expect perfection, but they want to know that when you get it wrong, you're going to take responsibility and they won't have to do anything. It won't create another pain point for them.
And we found that out over the last few years. This idea was in research for a couple of years before we launched it. And then we launched it in January and it contains three components. It obviously contains the network reliability piece that I just talked about. It contains a piece around price value that matters to customers and us guaranteeing customers, "We will bring you the best deal that we have available and we'll ensure that you have those best deals, whether that's ensuring that you don't have to have the top rate plan on wireless to get the best smartphone device, or you don't have to have those contracts with fiber and you don't have to come in and have those equipment fees, or coming across and saying, and we'll give you the best customer service because it's what you deserve." And saying, "You know what? We'll get you your call into technical care answered within five minutes or less, or we'll guarantee you a call back. And if we fail to do that, there's a reward on the other side for you because we value your time."
And the same thing holds true for our technicians. Same day, next day, repair. And so we look across those three things and say, network, price value, customer service are the things that matter to customers, so we're going to guarantee it. "And if we don't meet your expectations, we will make it right." That's the whole concept to the guarantee. And it was a multi-year journey. We finally reached a point at the beginning of 2025 that we could be public about it.
And the other piece that was so amazing was that we launched it internally first and our whole company rallied around it. So it was actually an employee culture moment that just created this energizing piece for our customer facing experts. And that was probably one of the most surprising, but also one of the greatest points of the year was just watching how proud our employees were to step back and say, "We're going to guarantee this and now we feel a new sense of pride serving our customers." So more to come on the guarantee as we go into 2026.
Diana Goovaerts:
I mean, I just kind of want to follow up on that question very briefly. I mean, what has the response been from customers? Because telecom traditionally, customer service has been an issue for, especially cable cos, but telecom historically, it's been something that they've struggled with. So what has the reception to the guarantee been?
Jenifer Robertson:
It's been very positive. We've seen brand perception increase. We've seen net promoter score increase, and we've actually seen those scores increase within the cohorts of customers who have experienced outages with us. And so it really does tell us not only does the guarantee have a halo effect among customers who have a good experience, but when we proactively make it right and we turn around and apologize, but make it right, that has an increasing effect where customers say, "Got it, thank you." And we move on. Just transparent, proactive communication with customers and ensuring they know that we value their time, their property and their money. It's amazing how simple that simple formula is. And I learned that from one of our field technicians a few years ago. He was one of our top performing and I said, "What's your secret?" And he said, "I value the customer's time, property, and money."
Diana Goovaerts:
Yeah. And accountability goes a long way.
Jenifer Robertson:
Really does.
Diana Goovaerts:
But I also wanted to talk about another of the initiatives that you guys have launched, and that is AT&T's Next Up Anytime, as well as the free internet backup and security programs that you guys launched. Those were, like fiber, big swings that had big financial implications. So talk to me a little bit about the process that you guys go through when you're deciding whether one of these customer-centric risks is actually worth taking.
Jenifer Robertson:
Yeah. I'll take the internet back up first. It just connects what we were just talking about. When you have both networks and you have them at scale, you do have a network operator's economy of scale. And so our ability to come in and say, "Well, if you are a customer of both and your fiber goes down, we will automatically fill you over to wireless." That's a customer pain point when your fiber goes down. And the good news is fiber is so much more resilient than a copper broadband network. Copper can go down for a variety of reasons. It's very susceptible to rain and rust. I mean, just doesn't like rain. It's very susceptible to rodents in the neighborhood. I've learned to really hate rain and squirrels. I hate to put it that way, but it's just like that. It is what it is.
And you look at fiber and truly the biggest risk we have with fiber are people doing gardening and yard projects because they don't pay attention to where the drop is within their yard. And so what we're able to say to a customer has both is garden your heart out. You can go out there and do all your yard projects you want. And if you accidentally cut your fiber in your yard, if you have AT&T Wireless, it'll automatically fail over and you stay connected. We will get a technician out to you to repair that and we'll switch you back to fiber, but you'll stay connected in the meantime.
And that's a customer pain point that it solves. And for us on a marginal cost basis, on a cost basis of serving you both ways, the value of solving that customer pain point, the differentiation of us being able to do that in a way that no other carrier can, and the ability to serve on either network for a period of time, it's nominal. And so we can look at that and say it's so worth it to solve that for the customer and to be differentiated, the math just is not, it's not hard.
And then we look at Next Up Anytime and we solve another customer pain point, and we say, "Come to us, upgrade anytime you want on your device." Customers are naturally selecting when they want to upgrade their devices. Why make that a limitation at this point? Let them choose. Let them come in and say, "Yep, there's some parts of my family that are going to want the latest and greatest every single time, and there's others that are just going to wait it out." I have that on my own account. And so we can pick and choose that per line and just say, "Here's what I want and what I need." Let's solve for that.
And if that's a differentiator in the market, great. That wireless account that has that many lines is absolutely worth the value of solving that pain point. And so we put financials to it, but candidly, a great customer experience that's simple is going to win customers and be the differentiator in the future.
Diana Goovaerts:
I just wanted to follow up on the failover point. So I mean, how big of a lift was that to implement? So if they have both wireless and fiber, does it fail over to, for instance, a wireless hotspot? Does it fail over to their router? I'm just trying to, in the context of financial implications, the more technical it is, the more expensive it is. So talk me through that little connectivity issue.
Jenifer Robertson:
It does not fail over to a hotspot in the sense of a separate PUK like you could purchase today. It fails over to your AT&T wireless device, and it's very, very simple. It sets up through your wireless device. And then you've just articulated future instantiations, which could absolutely be through the residential gateway, all of it automatic for the customer, no effort required, and nothing happening at the moment that it disconnects the fiber connection since we know the customer and we have all of your devices within our systems. Currently through the wireless device, and absolutely possible through the residential gateway.
Diana Goovaerts:
We'll keep an eye out for that. But I wanted to talk a little bit about the difference between where you sit in the corporate ladder, right, and the frontline teams that you lead. Everybody from field ops to customer care. So talk to me a little bit about your management style when you're steering teams of that size from your seat through these big transformations.
Jenifer Robertson:
Yeah. I've had the ability, my very first job here was as a frontline manager and a call center. And I've had the ability through the years to lead call center teams, to lead our retail teams and frontline sales teams across all our different channels, and to also lead our field technicians. So it's a unique seat when you can see all of those teams operating and how they interact with each other. What I would tell you is it's two parts. For the leaders that have those large teams and the ability to have done that, getting your message across at scale is about very clear and consistent communication. Keeping it clear and crisp and consistent and saying that message over and over so it gets out to the front lines and they know what their mission is, that's the most critical. And then understanding what's in their way, what are the roadblocks and removing those roadblocks.
If they know what they need to do and they know the leadership's going to remove those roadblocks for them, it makes it so easy for them to serve customers. It makes them so proud to carry the AT&T Guarantee, and they're going to love doing it. That's what they come to work every day to do. And so that's the key for the large teams. The piece for leadership is you have to carry that message forward and you need to be present so you can see what those roadblocks are. I don't get to do that last part as much as I used to, and that's the part that's a lot of fun to go do, but I do have to find the leaders that have the capability to go do that the right way.
And so the second answer to your question is, well, what do I look for in those leaders? And in those leaders, I look for three things, and that is humble confidence, resilience, and empathy. And a humbly confident leader has the humility to go out there, take the risks, learn in front of others, fail in front of others, know that other people bring value to the table, but the confidence to still go do, set the vision, take the action, and know if you fail, you're going to pick yourself back up and come back tomorrow and do it, which is the resilience piece. You have to be hungry, you have to be motivated, you got to go drive. And then the empathy to be present, actively listening, showing gratitude for your team, and understanding what they're going through so you can solve those problems and remove the roadblocks for them.
So looking for those types of leaders so they can turn around and be present for their teams, crisply and clearly articulate the goal, and then remove the roadblocks, you can get messages out through a large scaled organization pretty quickly, and then you just have to keep repeating the process.
Diana Goovaerts:
Yeah. And I think to your point about finding folks who aren't afraid to fail in front of others, that's a key thing. That's a big deal culturally because making sure that people feel safe to fail, I think is very important. But I also wanted to talk about change leadership, right? So one of the things we hear about a lot in telecoms is that culture shifts within companies can be very hard, especially for telcos. And so how do you personally get buy-in, build alignment between all of these different teams that you lead when you're introducing something to them that either they or the industry hasn't seen before?
Jenifer Robertson:
Yeah, it is challenging and the guarantee and this shift towards a customer-centered culture, as I've mentioned a few times, it's been multi-year. And it's not that we don't care about the customer, but you do have a lot of conflicting messages. And so when we started this in 2020, it very much was, how do you get this massive machine just re-shifted and clear that we're serious? This is the priority. And there's a few ways you do it. A top-down message is very helpful. Our CEO, John Stankey, made that very clear. He shed a lot of assets and distractions and said the company is prioritizing 5G wireless and fiber connectivity. Our goal is to be the best connectivity provider out there, and this is how we're going to do it. And he said, "We will center ourselves around the customer." And so that helped set the tone.
Then you have to go about doing. And so you keep that message going. Then you have to have a bottoms up. I mean, you have to start working the pick and shovel work from the bottoms up. What I would tell you for me is working across. How do you go rally your peers? How do you have the conversations from everybody's seat showing that empathy? What's in it for them? How do you work with network, with technology, with our marketing partners, with the other business units to say, "Okay, what does this mean for you? How do we align metrics? How do we align instrumentation to track those metrics? How do we do the right trade-offs so that we can all get rallied around a guarantee?" There was a lot of research. There was a lot of back and forth on what does it look like. There was a lot of consternation.
Do we go out and guarantee the network? That puts a lot of demand on the network teams. Well, okay, let's change how we allocate capital so that you can then deliver on the network promise in a different way. Let's change operating metrics that you're measured on for success. Okay, that buys more buy-in. Let's make sure the training's there for the frontline teams so that they know what to do.
So you just kind of come up with a list of, well, we can get there if these things were true. Well, then go make them true. And so that working across to get that alignment, keeping the top-down focus and commitment, and then just start working the little things bottom up, you kind of get this groundswell happening anyway. You keep the pressure going top down, but you're really making the change happen across. It's a three-way approach.
Diana Goovaerts:
Yeah. And one that takes time to your point. The go make it happen is so simple, but it belies years of work. So I just kind of want to make sure that point is not missed. But you mentioned a CEO, John Stankey. One of the other things he talks about a lot is convergence, especially between fiber and wireless. So what technical or product innovations are you focused on bringing next? Because a lot of people have a lot of different definitions of convergence and what that looks like in practice. So I'm curious how you're thinking about this.
Jenifer Robertson:
Yeah. Our internet wireless backup is the first example of why convergence is from a product perspective, why is it better to have wireless and fiber from AT&T? What makes it different? Otherwise, it's just a bundled discount and that is a great way to go anchor our household first, but that's not a converged product. And we've said consistently that's not the goal. So we've talked about internet wireless backup. We just this week announced our Connected Life product, which is a great example of we're bringing forward from Google their smart home environment. And so it's a very, very strong set of products from Google that secures the home and provides a great experience there, but it's connected by AT&T's most reliable and fastest network.
And so that's our first step into this smart home connected and secured home that is better because you have AT&T's fiber experience. Now, because you have internet backup, it never goes down. And so you start to see that spread through the home. You can expect that that will extend into other connected home smart home experiences made better by AT&T.
The other thing we announced this week that connects is wifi personalization. So specific to the AT&T network, we are able to provide AI-driven wifi personalization of how your network's used in your home, how are those devices used where the traffic is, and give you insights and customize how that wifi is projected through your house. That personalization and control is something customers tell us they want. You bring in wireless usage, in home usage, the ability to control your in home experience, secure it. Also have that ecosystem of devices, and you really start to see a platform that we can build on that not only covers you in the home, but can start to travel with you outside the home.
That's what we're talking about when we say converged. And we're laying the ground pieces now more to follow as we go into 2026. I'd add Turbo is one we've launched as well, but we've already launched that one. Doesn't answer your future question.
Diana Goovaerts:
Honestly, I think that's the most coherent description of convergence I have heard to date. So thank you for that. But I wanted to end our conversation with a question about you. So what is a lesson that you've learned in the past year that is shaping how you are leading all of your divisions going forward?
Jenifer Robertson:
Our biggest lesson, I'll say it's for me, and we've learned it as a team, but I will say I have learned it too, and that is we have to be willing to go out and take the big, bold step, and the big, bold step is public. And that's one thing. We are a company, as I said, built on service. We're a company built on making sure we get it right for customers, to use old telco language, five nines of reliability. And when you hold yourself to that kind of standard, you never want to fail for customers and you really don't want to fail publicly.
And in today's world to move as fast as we need to, we have to hold ourselves to a very high standard, but we have to move as fast as technology's going and as fast as customer expectations are changing. And so going out with very big, bold moves like the guarantee and putting ourselves out there and saying, "We're going to take this step, we're going to tell you we might not get it right, but we'll make it right." And then continuing to innovate and put new products out there at a much more rapid pace, it's been the biggest lesson of the last year. And what I'd tell you is we're still not getting it right. We're not moving fast enough, but we are moving at a much more rapid pace.
And so as we look into 2026, the biggest challenge we've put on each other, the biggest challenge I put on myself is how do we accelerate much faster? And you'll see some humble confidence from the team as we do that.
Diana Goovaerts:
Great call back to end our episode on. Jen, thank you so much for your time, and we will be watching closely to see what you guys are up to in 2026.
Jenifer Robertson:
Thank you so much. Great to talk with you.