My first response to the “SOS” on my mobile phone was “What? How can I exist without being able to call or text?!?”

That was at about 6 a.m. Thursday. By late morning, me and hundreds of thousands of other AT&T customers still had no service. In the absence of information from AT&T, my fears quickly turned to a possible terrorist cyber attack (I recently watched “Leave the World Behind” on Netflix), how I would contact 911 if I got run over by a truck, and if I would ever again be able to access my many online accounts that require 2-factor authentication – which usually comes via a text to my iPhone.

By mid-afternoon, I finally had service again. The SOS was gone. But what remains is the lasting impression that AT&T – one of the world’s largest communications companies – failed miserably at communicating during the nationwide outage.

No texts saying we’re working hard to figure out the problem, or “Hey, dear customer, we’ve got it fixed and here’s what happened.” No emails to my AT&T email account, either, as if the outage never happened.

The company’s media messaging was equally dismal. The outage began somewhere between 3-4 a.m. ET, yet AT&T didn’t publicly acknowledge it until 11:15 a.m. with a posting on its website. Later in the day, AT&T provided a statement to CNN stating: “We apologize for what has been a very frustrating day for many of our customers.”

AT&T’s social media response was no better. The lone posting on X (formerly Twitter) provided a link for customers to get more information – but the link didn’t work. In fact, it was through CNN – not AT&T – that I learned you could use WiFi calling on your phone to circumvent the downed cellular network.

The feared terrorist plot wasn’t put to rest until early evening when AT&T announced that the “outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack.” Whew!

Just as AT&T worked to repair the “application and execution of an incorrect process” – whatever that means – they also need to repair their crisis PR response. They seem to have forgotten, or never known, the basic tenets of crisis management: Be proactive, transparent and accountable – and do all of that quickly.

News moves fast, even when your cell phone isn’t working. There is little time for companies to ponder a response, keep customers and other stakeholders waiting and wondering, and let an avalanche of social media fill the communications vacuum left by your silence.

Achieving the above tenets is relatively easy: Acknowledge something has gone wrong; keep stakeholders up to date on what you’re doing to fix the problem and what that problem is exactly; accept responsibility and pledge you’ll work hard so this never happens again.   

By the time AT&T got around to this, the words were right but the timing was far too late. “We have restored wireless service to all our affected customers. We sincerely apologize to them. Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future.”

A slow response can unnecessarily cause short-term pain and potential long-term brand damage. For AT&T, the short-term pain was reflected in the stock market, where its shares fell by 2% on the same day the S&P 500 rose by the same percentage to a new record high.

It’s too early to know if there will be long-term damage, which would be reflected in customers jumping to other cellular companies. I’m not ready to switch, but I am still waiting for a text, call or email from AT&T.

UPDATE: On Sunday afternoon, I received a text from AT&T apologizing for the outage and telling me the company is “committed to doing better.” They also provided a $5 per line credit to my account – and to everyone else impacted last week – stating that is the average cost of a full day of service. A click on the text link took me to a fuller apology note, which concluded: “We’re also taking steps to prevent this from happening again in the future. Our priority is to continuously improve and be sure our customers stay connected.”