“I think the lesson right now is that you have to be very good at what you do.”

John Stankey
CEO
AT&T
.…on how to have an emotional attachment with customers, via the Dallas Morning News.

Here's "who said what" in Dallas Innovates Every Day. Despite an economically challenging year that included AT&T’s spinoff of WarnerMedia, Stankey believes his company delivered in 2022—for both customers and shareholders.

In a story by Natalie Walters in the Dallas Morning News, Stankey said his company’s renewed focus on its telecom DNA paid off, with the addition of 2.9 million postpaid phone connections and an additional 1.2 million fiber connections in 2022—and some key lessons learned.

“Lessons are learned based on the moment in time you find yourself in,” Stankey told the DMN. “The moment we find ourselves in right now in 2023, we’re clearly seeing an affinity in the market and with customers for very focused, very capable, very innovative products and services. That relationship that a customer chooses to have with the product or service is one that is based on their belief that they have an emotional attachment to the product or service that they’re buying.”

“Maybe 10 years ago, the game was about collecting a portfolio of capabilities and services that a customer could buy,” Stankey added. “In our environment today, which is very instant-gratification-driven and app-driven, customers pick the best of breed at any given moment in time, and they’re very discerning. Not having distractions that pull me away from a variety of different things every day, I think, is essential for us to be successful.”

For more of who said what about all things North Texas, check out Every Last Word.

Get on the list.
Dallas Innovates, every day.

R E A D N E X T

Every Last Word: Quotes About All Things North Texas
Read “who said what” in our roundup of quotes about all things North Texas, including ENO8's Jeff Francis; MyndVR's Chris Brickler and Ted Werth; Axxess' John Olajide; the Urban Land Institute's Ron Pressman; Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson; the Mavs Foundation's Katie Edwards; UT Arlington's Yi Hong; HomeUSA.com's Ben Caballero; ParkHub's George Baker Sr.; and more.
How Axxess' John Olajide Built a Bootstrapped Unicorn in Dallas
Axxess founder John Olajide built his Dallas-based healthcare tech company from a fledgling startup in 2007 to a global company with 1,000 employees serving 3 million-plus patients. But the journey getting there wasn’t a straightforward path. He tells his own story to inspire others and strengthen the ecosystem. And he's confident that "we'll be celebrating several more unicorns going forward."
The Last Word: Google's James Harding on the Promise Shown at the HackDFW Marathon
The eighth annual HackDFW, powered by Say Yes to Dallas and presented by Google, connected hundreds of aspiring technologists to several Fortune 100 companies. It was a unique 48-hour marathon that challenged more than 550 people from 80 universities. Tech teams created ways to innovatively tackle waste management, climate change, better understand decisions from the Supreme Court, and much more.
The Last Word: UT Southwestern's Kathleen Bell, M.D., on Long-Haul COVID
As many North Texans try to move on from the pandemic, Dr. Bell is focused on the "tens of millions of patients" who've developed long-haul COVID—and who are experiencing life-altering symptoms long after their COVID-19 infection cleared.
The Last Word: Wired's Steven Levy on How Tech Is Changing Us, and Why There's No Stopping Innovation
Levy has been writing about technology for more than 30 years. A founding writer at Wired, he's widely considered to be the premier tech journalist in the U.S. He’s covered the digital revolution since the early 1980s, reporting every major trend and profiling its key figures. Today, as a keynote speaker on the closing day of Dallas Startup Week, he took stock of how we got here—and what's next.