More Fiber
Premium,MVM
join:2005-09-26
West Chester, PA |  Verizon CEO Confident He'll Get Lost DSL Customers Back
quote:
Only next year, after Verizon hits their 18 million homes passed mark, will the telco decide what to do next with FiOS.
Like fixing poor customer service? |
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Voyager2K2
join:2001-10-04
Wayne, PA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| said by More Fiber  : quote:
Only next year, after Verizon hits their 18 million homes passed mark, will the telco decide what to do next with FiOS.
Like fixing poor customer service? Since back in 1999, Paraphrasing Justin: Warm bodies to answer phones are always going to be the biggest expense for broadband providers.
What do you want? Cheap or somebody to hold your hand every time there is a problem? I have been with VZ since 1999 and I always was able to get my DSL (now FIOS) worked out in a day or two (once). |
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jc100
join:2002-04-10
| What many are not aware of is those warm bodies ARE NOT even Verizon employees. The same as sprint and other companies. The work for an organization called Teleperformance. How do I know this fact? I have had friends who worked with sprint and verizon. Basically, you are hired by Teleperformance and then subcontracted to the respective company. More or less, my friend said his training was watching a few videos and taking a few written tests to know the basics. So there goes your answer why we have warm bodies. Nothing is done in house. Training, while lasting a few weeks, seems to be sub par. In the end, you're left with people who don't directly work for the company they represent. There by, you remove any reason for them to give 2 shits or feel they have to go beyond simple answers. Sad but true. We all know if verizon was cutting their pay checks (same with Sprint's shit customer support), there might be a little better service. After all, people tend to work harder when A) Trained well B) are at the mercy of their company doing well for having an income =). |
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Niarlan
Excelsior
Premium
join:2002-11-09
Manville, NJ | At least wireless is done almost all internal. |
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jc100
join:2002-04-10
| That I'm not sure about, so I'll take your word. Call support, that's definitely external. Hence, I think if these companies REALLY want to improve upon things, they'd resolve this problem. If you got your OWN staff that you train properly, you then insure consistency. When you subcontract, you are at the mercy of that company to do it all. Plus, people feel less obligated to care when their job is not directly associated with said company's performance. |
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lolwhat
We Are Toast
Premium
join:2001-06-11
USSA
 ·AT&T Midwest
 ·Future Nine Corpor..
| reply to jc100
As one of those former Teleperformance employees - actually, I worked at CallTech before Teleperformance acquired them - I can tell you more reasons that people don't give a shit:
* I was paid nine dollars an hour, and I couldn't get "benefits" (a term I use loosely) before ninety days of employment.
* I might get yelled at, later on, by Quality Assurance if I couldn't resolve a customer's problem. I definitely got yelled at, immediately, by the floor supervisor if a call were taking longer than x number of minutes, no matter how complex the problem was. Some supervisors would outright encourage people to hang up in the middle of a long call; one was fired for actually hitting the End Call button himself on numerous occasions.
* The floor supervisors also had other, passive-aggressive ways to take it out on you if you "messed up their numbers." In one case, I was denied a reward (albeit meager) that I was supposed to receive for extremely positive feedback from one customer. The supervisors were getting pressure from higher up the chain, of course, but it was they who directly made your life miserable. The upper ranks didn't soil their shoes in the call centers, unless they were having a press conference with some public official.
I could go on, but I think you see my point. Even if Verizon wrote your paychecks directly, how motivated would you be? |
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N3OGH
Bear patrol must be working like a charm
Premium
join:2003-11-11
Philly burbs
·Verizon FIOS
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to Voyager2K2
Only time I've had to call Verizon customer service for DSL was when my friend's router went down, and he didn't know the user name and password. Person was clearly foreign, but got the job done.
The real story (at least for me) is the fact that in the 3 or 4 years I've had DSL with Verizon, it's been rock solid. No slow downs, and pretty much zero down time. Never even went down during an extended power outage we had a few years back (I keep my "mission critical" stuff behind a UPS).
I would prefer cheap, with less then stellar tech support. Especially if it works well.
Then again, I probably know more than the tech support folks, but hey, why pay twice 
--
Petty people are disproportionably corrupted by petty power… |
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Tzale
Proud Libertarian Conservative
Premium
join:2004-01-06
Sweden
·Verizon FIOS
 ·Optimum Online
| reply to More Fiber
said by More Fiber : quote:
Only next year, after Verizon hits their 18 million homes passed mark, will the telco decide what to do next with FiOS.
Like fixing poor customer service? What poor customer service? Verizon FIOS is a pretty flawless service. I have not had one complaint with it in the year that I have had it.
-Tzale
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Neoconservatives (G.W.B) are not true conservatives. A conservative believes in defending the Constitution. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - RON PAUL 2008 |
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GreatBambino
join:2002-05-13
Rexburg, ID | reply to Niarlan
Most verizon wireless techs don't really work for verizon either. They are contracted out as well. How do I know this? I have a friend that is a tech at a store near me and I have a friend at a store in virginia that has told me the same. |
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dennismurphy
Put me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ
·Optimum Online
| said by GreatBambino :Most verizon wireless techs don't really work for verizon either. They are contracted out as well. How do I know this? I have a friend that is a tech at a store near me and I have a friend at a store in virginia that has told me the same. The store technicians - yes, those are contracted out to a single provider.
The call center folks? All in-house. There are "overflow" contracts in place - so that if the regular call center is too busy, you'll get an outsourced person... BUT keep in mind that NONE of them -- VZW employees OR outsourced people -- are overseas. Everyone is right here in America.
N-O-N-E of Verizon Wireless is contracted overseas. Not the call centers, not the technicians, not the programmers, nobody. Everyone is here in America.
As someone once said ...
"The customers are here... the employees are here... the network is here ... why send support overseas?" |
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More Fiber
Premium,MVM
join:2005-09-26
West Chester, PA
·Bay Area Internet ..
| reply to Voyager2K2
said by Voyager2K2 :What do you want? Cheap or somebody to hold your hand every time there is a problem? I don't need somebody to hold my hand. What I detest is having to sit on hold for an hour or more to get through to somebody in billing to correct a bill that a) should have been right in the first place, b) was supposedly "fixed" the last time I called, and c) drags out month after month.
said by Tzale :Verizon FIOS is a pretty flawless service. I think you're confusing the product and the support. I agree FiOS is a technically superior product. I'm talking about the FSC and billing.
Apparently you've never had to call billing to get an issue resolved and wait in the call queue for hours, only to have someone tell you they will take card of it, and it doesn't get taken care of, or had to call the FSC to replace a dead router, only to be told it's my PC. |
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Techie714
join:2005-08-02
Anaheim, CA | reply to dennismurphy
Hey thats good to know. Companies that do that have my dollars! |
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HD_Ride
Premium
join:2000-10-18
Trenton, NJ
·VoicePulse
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to Tzale
said by Tzale :said by More Fiber : quote:
Only next year, after Verizon hits their 18 million homes passed mark, will the telco decide what to do next with FiOS.
Like fixing poor customer service? What poor customer service? Verizon FIOS is a pretty flawless service. I have not had one complaint with it in the year that I have had it. -Tzale The “Service” and "Customer Service" are two different animals. Yes the service is the best, even the DLS service we had for 7 years must have had a 99.9% uptime for us. I think 3 or 4 times within that 7 year time period the DSL service went down, then maybe another 3 or 4 email outages, not bad for 7.5 years. Fios has been stable as well but the flip side is their customer service still sucks. It looks like you are a long time member; you must have seen a billing or install horror story along the way. Every time I’ve made the slightest service change it has triggered a billing error nightmare. Then you call and go though Auto-Assistant Hell before you actually get to speak to a live person. if you are really lucky your issue may get resolved in one or two billing cycles. the only thing that keeps us onboard is the service itself, it certainly isn't the customer service |
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mystryfiostk
join:2008-07-17
00000
| reply to jc100
said by jc100 :What many are not aware of is those warm bodies ARE NOT even Verizon employees. The same as sprint and other companies. The work for an organization called Teleperformance. How do I know this fact? I have had friends who worked with sprint and verizon. Basically, you are hired by Teleperformance and then subcontracted to the respective company. More or less, my friend said his training was watching a few videos and taking a few written tests to know the basics. So there goes your answer why we have warm bodies. Nothing is done in house. Training, while lasting a few weeks, seems to be sub par. In the end, you're left with people who don't directly work for the company they represent. There by, you remove any reason for them to give 2 shits or feel they have to go beyond simple answers. Sad but true. We all know if verizon was cutting their pay checks (same with Sprint's shit customer support), there might be a little better service. After all, people tend to work harder when A) Trained well B) are at the mercy of their company doing well for having an income =). Someone's talking out their azzz.
The overwhelming percentage of calls to a Verizon FSC are answered by Verizon union employees.
I don't need a friend of a friend to know this. |
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br1an
join:2003-09-21
Syracuse, NY
| reply to jc100
said by jc100 :What many are not aware of is those warm bodies ARE NOT even Verizon employees. The same as sprint and other companies. The work for an organization called Teleperformance. How do I know this fact? I have had friends who worked with sprint and verizon. Basically, you are hired by Teleperformance and then subcontracted to the respective company. More or less, my friend said his training was watching a few videos and taking a few written tests to know the basics. So there goes your answer why we have warm bodies. Nothing is done in house. Training, while lasting a few weeks, seems to be sub par. In the end, you're left with people who don't directly work for the company they represent. There by, you remove any reason for them to give 2 shits or feel they have to go beyond simple answers. Sad but true. We all know if verizon was cutting their pay checks (same with Sprint's shit customer support), there might be a little better service. After all, people tend to work harder when A) Trained well B) are at the mercy of their company doing well for having an income =). jc100 please do some research before you ever decide again to make such a completely misinformed and ridiculous post. Both technical support and customer service are Verizon Union Jobs, and they pay quite well. When you call in, you are usually going to get routed to a Verizon employee in the closest call center to your geographic region who will do their best to help you. |
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fios grunt
@verizon.net | vol (verizon online) is a dlec (Data Local Exchange Carrier) and the call centers are overseas... fios fsc agents are in the states |
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