A former employee has stepped forward to tell us what it’s like to work as tech support rep in a Verizon DSL call center. Learn about how the supervisors aren’t really supervisors, the numbers and call times the reps have to meet to keep their jobs (and the sneaky tricks they use to meet these numbers), and more…
“Dear Consumerist,
I started near the beginning of a new center that was taking care of business DSL Technical Support and when the job started it was a great job. We were greatly encouraged to take care of our customers and technical knowledge was second to none. I spent around 2 years working for the company and multiple help positions.
The center was made up of several different departments. These included Level 2 Technical Support, Level 3 Technical Support, Business Intelligence, Quality and Management. Furthermore Level 3 Technical support was further divided into Business Order Status, Supervisor Take Over, Ticket Management, Outage and Presidential Appeals. Additionally Level 2 Technical Support also had a separate division for “High Care” customers, and eventually Premium Technical Support would join the team. The hierarchy of people that the customer will ever deal with is only two tiers. You call in and talk to a Level 2 agent, however if there is a requirement you may eventually speak to a Level 3 and if you are really persistent you may get the privilege of speaking to an actual supervisor.
7. The Supervisor You’re Talking To Is Not Actually A Supervisor
My first confession on the list is about the Escalations department, which never used to exist. When the center first opened and a customer would demand to talk to a supervisor, they would actually end up talking to a supervisor. This created problems however ranging from supervisors who would dodge taking calls from customers to supervisors who were overwhelmed with customers and could not do any of their actual work. The solution was to create a department of agents to handle the issue, and this is not all bad. One of the major problems when supervisors would take over calls is that almost none of the supervisors had any technical knowledge and were virtually unable to assist the customer in any way unless the customer was only looking to vent about their experience or in some cases give kudos to outstanding service. There are approximately 10-15 “supervisors” for each center to handle the escalation calls now. Each of these agents has their own direct phone number which they can give out to the customer. There is a standard external number that the customer must call, then they are prompted for a password (4-6 digits long and changes monthly) then they are asked to enter the extension of the supervisor, or they may press 0 to get the first available supervisor. When the team first started they were allowed to a lot to help the customer, sadly their privilege to help with stuck orders or technicians who didn’t show up were eventually removed. Things may change in the future but unfortunately the supervisors are bound to the same support boundaries as the normal Level 2 Technical Support Agents, and in most cases are unable to assist the customer any further.
6. The Metrics That Rule Our Lives
- Handle Time (15 min): During an 8 hour shift, the agent must achieve an average handle time of 15 minutes. This timer starts from the time the agent hears a beep in their headphone to notify them that the call has started to the time they set themselves as ready to take another call. When I worked there we had a lot of calls where the customer simply got to the wrong department so this was normally an easy metric to meet.
- Hold Time (2-3 min): If for any time the agent puts you on hold, they are supposed to only leave you on hold for no longer than 2 minutes (it used to be 3 min). After that time they are supposed to pick up the phone again and refresh you as to what is going on. Also a note here is the customer is supposed to put you on hold and not simply mute their phone. This was a common tactic used by agents to dodge the hold timer. If you’re speaking to an agent and they put you on hold and you hear silence and no music. They likely have you on mute and not hold, and additionally they can hear everything your saying at that time, when you’re on hold they cannot hear you.
- Quality (88%): Every Agent is supposed to be graded approximately 2x a week on their calls. This is the metric that most agents hate the most and I will touch more on this later.
- A repair ticket that was dispatched out to the customers location was closed with the notes left “Technician had a gun pulled on him area is unsafe closing ticket”
- 1-888-427-1405 (Business Customers Only) – This is the phone number that we would use to call internal departments. The only real difference from this number and the one provided to the customer is instead of having to talk to the IVR and have it ultimately mess up where you want to go, you are given simple number prompts for where you want to go.
o 1 – Technical Support
o 2 – Billing
o 3 – Used to be sales
o 4- Cancellations/Retention - The most angry and vulgar customers are the least likely to get helped. When dealing with customer support please try to explain your frustration in a civilized manner, and be persistent if you need to. Just remember swearing and insulting us only gets you put on the back burner.
- Technical Support is open 24/7/365, and they are the only department that is.
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5. In order to meet their 15 min handle time, agents have simply transferred the customer back into the queue to talk to another agent and tried to make it look like it was a phone problem.
Agents have just hung up on customer/disconnected their phone, or told the customer that they need to go to another department and then transfer the customer there. It is sad that this happens but unfortunately if you cannot meet your metrics then you will do this.
4. Customer Service Is More Important Than Technical Ability
I was told by someone in management that the mentality was it was far easier to train someone in technical support than customer service. Now my personal view on this is that it is just cheaper/easier for them to hire anyone off the street and give them a month of training on how to follow a script to fix a customer’s problem than hire people with actual technical background. The problem this creates is a barrage of customers whom are fed up with the lack of technical knowledge the support staff has. Verizon did however introduce a solution to this problem; Premium Technical Support.
3. “Premium” Technical Support Means They Had 1 More Week Of Training
Now first off I want to say, Premium Technical Support is an awesome service in the fact that they are not under the same pressure as the normal Level 2 Agents. They do have more technical ability then the level 2 agents; however there are no real requirement for certification to get the position and the training is only a week above the normal technical support.
2. “Quality,” The Department Everyone Hates
The sad fact is, even if you go above and beyond, assist the customer in every way and have an amazing rapport with the customer you can still utterly fail your quality which means you can in turn lose your job if you keep failing. Some of the fun tidbits from quality include the agent must say the customer’s name three times throughout the call. They must review what they have done with the customer, use the “outstanding” verbiage, brand Verizon and they can also ding you for little things like saying “tech” instead of “technical” here. This sadly is where a vast amount of talented technical support agents were lost. They worked great with customers, got issues solved but didn’t do the little things and it ultimately ended their careers working for Verizon.
1. We Must Implant The Word Outstanding In Customer Brain’s To Score Higher On Satisfaction Surveys
This is something I always found hilarious, and I am not even entirely sure if they still do it, but agents are required to mention at the end of the call something along the lines of “I hope I’ve provided you with outstanding service today”, the stress always being on the word Outstanding. Now why is this you ask? Well Verizon contracts out a company to call back customers who have recently called into Technical Support and perform a survey about the service they received. The customer is supposed to rate the service from “poor” to “outstanding”. So basically they want to embed that word in your mind so that you rate them higher.
Tips/Funny/Random Thoughts:
This is all my personal opinion on my time I spent at Verizon and I hope that it has given you some insight as to what it is like to be on the other side of the phone.
-Anonymous”
(Photo: Getty)
When will companies realize that putting ‘metrics’ on their support department is an utter waste of time and ultimately damaging to their consumer relationships? I don’t care if your boss is looking over your shoulder saying you’ve been on the phone for 15 minutes if a FiOS installation resulted in my home blowing up.
–I so agree with this. Metrics are evil–they are hell for the agents and does not help in supporting issues. It can actually ruin a company’s otherwise good reputation because the agent has to hit his metrics but fail to support the customer.
@SVreader: Was that a store owned by the place that owns Victoria’s Secret? I quit buying my favorite perfume because of those questions. NOTHING is worth it. I realized it was the company. What kind of moron doesn’t know that you lose more than you gain that way. Just called to cancel my Verizon DSL since I am moving–it’s two months before my contract is up but I said I would rather pay the contract out that the ETF becasie I had such horrible service–that I would rather give free internet to who moves in. Then I told the guy (who was nice–prob. b/c I pushed CANCEL and not tech support) that he should read Consumerist today. He said, “really? That’s awesome.”
Oh–and as I was doing all this? My DSL is not connecting to the server. AGAIN. I did tell the guy to please put in my file that I would never EVER use Verizon DSL again.
On the otherside of the coin, I once had a great call-back from customer service. A few years ago, I bought a computer router on sale. A coupla months later, although it worked fine 95% of the time, it wouldn’t work with one particular piece of MS software. not a huge deal, but it made me curious why, so I emailed the company. About a day later, I get a call at 8:00 p.m. from their technical support staff. He spent an hour on the phone with me, even tried a remote fix through my computer to solve the problem.
Although he never did solve it (not from lack of trying), he was friendly, courteous, and get this, he called from their head office in Singapore! I’m in Canada.
Didn’t have the heart to tell him that I payed a total of $1.00 (plus tax) for the router (purchase price of $30.99 with a $30 mail-in rebate).
@homerjay:
Amen.
ya know, I used to do sales support for Directv. It always amazed me the people that would get mad at installers for not showing up, and then, the next call I got would be from an installer saying that the customer whose house he had just been at had taken a swing at him with a baseball bat, or taken his ladder away and trapped him on the roof because the building they lived at couldn’t get service due to trees. It’s bad on both sides. There are customers out there that will do anything and say anything to get what they want; and there are csrs that will do anything and say anything they can to get you off the phone. my advice, if you don’t get what you want the first time, call back. if that doesn’t work, escalate. if THAT doesn’t work, log onto the Consumerist and get an email for the dreaded EECB. there are ways to get what you need done, but yelling and screaming wont solve anything, and taking a bat to someone’s head will get you jail, every time.
Wow…that DSL tech support chick can service my lines any day!
“Agents have just hung up on customer/disconnected their phone, or told the customer that they need to go to another department and then transfer the customer there.”
Mike Daisey, author of “Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon Com” admitted to getting his average handle time down by simply hanging up on people. Unfortunately he miscalculated one period and got his handle time down to twenty seconds.
I didn’t read any of the article, I just want to operator number of the girl in the photo. I’ll be more than happy to spend my day on support.
I used to work for Verizon Wireless at a outsource company (WDSGLobal). I did support for ‘Wireless data devices’. Things like Treo’s (I would not give a Treo to my worst enemy), Blackberries, and cell modems a.k.a ‘air cards’
1) The first we knew of a new phone release was when we started getting calls on it. No training, no advance notice, nada.
2) We did not have the actual phones to look at. Nearly all the phones have differant menus/buttons. All we had to work from were screen shots from older models. Which of course had differant menus
3) Our training for the Vcast service was watching the online advertisement video (about 90 sec long) and looking a screen capture from that video. That was it. Go support it.
4) 3 outbound phone lines availible for outbound calls to differant deparments. No no, not 3 per agent, 3 total… for about 100 agents.
5) Read only database access. The Knowledge base (the instructions that the agents had to follow) required resetting functions in a computer program that we had no access to. We had to call a differant Verizon dept. to get someone that did have access to that system. See item 4. Most of the time I had better luck searching HowardForums and TreoAddicts than I did with our internal KB.
6) Scripting, Ever wonder why agents sound like idiots when opening/ending a call? There are call opening scripts and closing call scripts. We had to read them VERBATUM. We were written up for changing/missing even one word.
7) Ever wonder why there is ALWAYS a hold time? It’s because hold times aren’t allowed to drop to zero. If the hold time drops to zero, agents are pulled off the phone. This however; almost never happens because of agent turnover causing there to not be enough agents, thus 30+ min. hold times. Our company was penalized if the service level was too high.
8)Metrics. 15min average call? I would have given a testicle for 15 min A.C.T. Try 6, with 30 sec. after call time
9) Supervisors that will not take escalations no matter how much the customer screams obscenities at you.
10) General BS. Things like; not turning the Air conditioning during a heat wave and not allowing us to open the doors or turn on fans. It got up over 90 degrees in the office. Things like; writing employees up for obeying the State Patrol’s warning to stay home during a blizzard.
Things like; forcing people that are eating lunch/on break to go back on the phone. For this reason, I ALWAYS left the office to eat lunch.
The “outstanding” shtick was why I’ve decided to avoid buying from Verizon. I know it’s such a minor thing, but it really pisses me off.
Welcome to Macy’s 4 months ago. I think the same consultants got a hold of verizon. Macy’s eventually realized the OUSTANDING bs was not making customer’s happy and make people sound stupid.
Tech support is notoriously horrible, none of this is news to me. The only problem is that the Service-based companies like Verizon and Comcast etc. should really be more on the ball and not abuse their customer. Manufacturers on the other hand have more freedom to make their consumable product support less than shining.
Tech support will never get better guys. You as a consumer will pay for it if it does. I could write a novel about the industry’s gaping flaws and how the whole system could be completely steamlined. But this country only likes to look at the bottom line. Companies will say “how can I mak my wallet fat” And until this coutry can look beyond the dollar it will no doubt continue.
What can you do? READ THE FUCKING MANUAL.
“The most angry and vulgar customers are the least likely to get helped. When dealing with customer support please try to explain your frustration in a civilized manner, and be persistent if you need to. Just remember swearing and insulting us only gets you put on the back burner.”
I just wanted to add that this is so true. I, too, worked in a call center and always tried to do my job the best that I could even if it meant sacrificing my numbers. One time, someone threatened my life over the phone because he felt it my fault one of the companies that we partnered with wasn’t fixing their equipment. I had absolutely no control over anything and the issue was actually with the other company altogether. I don’t think any electronics are worth threatening a human life and it was very upsetting. I turned him in to the company that he worked for (and calling on behalf of) and he got fired. I don’t think that anyone working in customer service should have to take verbal abuse from their clientele. People working in all types of customer service should be treated with respect and just remember that they probably don’t get paid very well to get yelled at all the time.
Trust me, as a CSR for tech support,
If you treat me respectfully I am WILLING give up my outstanding review in order to make SURE your complaint is resolved. I amswer to a “higher power” than my supervisor and take pride in doing the best job I can with the limited tools I am provided. I take my job seriously & nothing makes my day more than making a frustrated person happy. ( I love passing calls to my supervisor so that you can tell him what a great job I did. )
If not, I’m not your therapist and frankly @ the rate of pay I’m making I can’t afford a therapist for all the agony uncivilized people heap upon us.
Besides, didn’t your Momma ever teach you common courtesy ?
Well… here I am. Spent a few days out of commission working on a project of my own so I can finally begin the process of working less hours per week. So, on to the good stuff. A blow by blow account of each point, made by an agent who is (hopefully) still working a a tech support agent
7. “The Supervisor You’re Talking To Is Not Actually A Supervisor”. Yes, most definitely true. Current supervisors at my call center are just Level 3 agents who were transferred to the new agency
6. The Metrics that Rule our Lives
a)Handle Time: Current maximum Average Handling Time(AHT) is 16 minutes. Whenever an agent goes over than he gets chided constantly by his floor supervisor. Myself? I don’t care less for it. I got caught hanging up on people and was punished for it. So now I will be with a customer as long as it takes. My own personal record is four hours.
b)Hold Time: Current maximum holding time is 5 minutes at a time, but we’re supposed to refresh customers every 2-3 minutes
5. To meet Handling time…: Myself, I have an intense dislike for agents who transfer people without warning. It means I know have a potentially irate person on the other side of the line. On my own end, it is likely the agent did not save his own ticket right there and then, but will save it – usually – one or two hours later, after I have saved my own ticket. To the system it looks like the customer called back after we disconnected, and it affects my First Call Resolution (FCR) rate.
4. Customer Service Is More Important Than Technical Ability. Yes, most definitely true. Myself I’m way better at technical resolutions. Got a computer issue, whether it’s windows, mac or linux? I’ll help you out. Router issue? Bouncing back between Verizon DSL and your router manufacturer’s tech support? I’ll help you out. But you get helped MY WAY, and excuse me for interrupting but let’s get back to the point. If you want to complain you’re not talking to the right agent. This is a line I actually use, and use it often.
3. “Premium” Technical Support Means They Had 1 More Week Of Training. Also true, although we don’t have any of those agents at my own call center. If you get me *and* you’re nice to me – something I have emphazised before in my comments – I will help you out, regardless of the problem you have. Oh, I’m forgetting something here… IF YOU HAVE A MACINTOSH COMPUTER, PREMIUM TECHNICAL SUPPORT WILL *NOT* HELP YOU. They will transfer you to the main macintosh tech support queue.
2. “Quality,” The Department Everyone Hates. Yes, most definitely. Once, one of their kind told me it was because of people like me our call center wasn’t in first place of the standings. You see, when a call center is on the top three of rankings management gets a nice fat CASH bonus. The people in Quality Assurance get their bonus regardless of what happens. Me? If the QA guy says I messed up on something during a call, I get the shaft.
1. We Must Implant The Word Outstanding In Customer Brain’s To Score Higher On Satisfaction Surveys. The specific verbiage goes something like “On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 the high score, how would you rate my own personal customer service to you”. Then the customer is supposed to rate it. Now, if someone hangs up before I can ask it, I get screwed. If I don’t ask it, I get screwed. If the customer bases the rating on the resolution of the call rather than my “customer service”, I get screwed, specially if the issue wasn’t fixed. It is the single most hated part of the call for us agents.
Now, whoever sent this in saved me the work of thinking up what to send… but still, for me it’s important people know what’s going on. I’m somewhat doing this in spite because of office politics, since I got transferred to the morning shift and getting up at 5am to be at work at 6am is no fun for me. My supervisor dislikes me and would love to have me fired. I recently got monitored live by Verizon and then I was told I had been rude to the customer… but hey, if people call in just to have me listen to their own troubleshooting instead of performing the officially verizon-approved troubleshooting it’s fine by me. It’ll just make my AHT go up and up. Yes, I know you all hate troubleshooting, but If I don’t show we actually did it on my notes your ticket gets closed if it was escalated and I get the shaft.
I type this as I get ready to get up at 4am and be at work at 5am, since my country is an hour behind the US, after an unjustified two-day absence. I could use one of my sick days… but nah. I’ll just look at my supervisor in the eye and say MYOB when he asks why I was gone.
hmmm did you really work for verizon or do they outsource their level one and two tech support?
A lot of what you listed is exactly what I did at a outsource company, or you have someone from upper management from a outsource company.
Folks remember that Verizon is a volume based business so the 100 people they piss off today are replaced by the 100 people who just picked up their service.
“It is just cheaper/easier for them to hire anyone off the street and give them a month of training”
What? We get one week and a 13 minute handle time.
@DrBologna: My poor, dear, deluded DrBologna. The reason that we tech support agents say things like “being polite helps” is for your benefit, not ours. It really makes very little difference to our day whether you scream at us or not. Sure, it might make our call time longer, but on the other hand it gives us valid reasons to hang up on you or hand you off to someone else so we don’t have to listen to you any more. When we say “It’s a good idea to be polite” we’re saying it as a public service. Firstly, because very often if you come on arrogantly, sure that you know everything, or angry at Verizon and wanting to take it out on an individual who has nothing to do with why you’re angry, you have to wait longer to get their problem fixed, simply because it takes 10 or 20 minutes for you to blow of steam, and then 5min to fix the problem. Secondly, because we feel very unmotivated to go above and beyond to help you. I have contacts in other departments, but I am not going to use them for you if you are a dick. Thirdly, if you think you DO know everything, then when you ask you to do something basic (like plug it in), you will refuse, and if after 45 minutes it turns out that all you had to do was plug it in, then you’re going to feel very foolish (YES, this happens. More frequently than you would imagine). Fourthly, there’s nothing stopping me from just hanging up the phone on you and blaming it on a phone error. Nothing. I’m not saying I do this (I have a foolish desire to help people, even when they make it difficult to help them), I’m just saying it happens.
Being polite is reciprocated by politeness. Being an ass will be reciprocated in turn. True story: Had a customer who had internet service, it was working fine, the only issue was streaming video on one particular site. I assured her that if that was the only site that was having problems, then it was most likely a problem with that site. She called me an idiot and asked for my supervisor. I complied, the supervisor (yes, an actual supervisor) tried to walk through step by step to troubleshoot the problem. She ended up calling the sup a moron because the sup didn’t put “www” at the beginning of a URL that she was reading off to her, then she hung up the phone. Supervisor’s response was to sit at her computer and reboot the cx’s data circuit every few minutes. Is it right? No. Does it happen? Yes.
Simply put: Hey, might be good if you were nice to people that you require help from.
I used to work in IT for a competitor of the local phone company called a CLEC. The basic premise was that we could offer better service for less (figure that one out economics majors).
Anyway, Our company ran a lot like how described here, it all started out well and good and we had all kinds of queues and systems for dealing with customers in a kind friendly way. It is difficult to offer this kind of service. You have to have some sort of metric to measure people and reward good agents and work with bad ones. The handle time was used as well as quality reviews.
Since my group wrote and managed the software for the phone system and customer service system we called whenever they suspected people of dumping etc. One tactic used was to have agents call directly into the queue from common phones or cell phones to pad down times. Another popular one was dumping. We tracked down and fired an agent from our highest level support group, and highest paid, for dumping calls down a level.
Anyway the company soon discovered you can’t offer high customer service AND low prices and since no one wants to pay higher prices for better service they had to lower service.
By the way CLECs still tend to offer better service on average than the incumbent carrier (ILEC) like AT&T or Quest or whomever is left. If you are a business customer, residential customers don’t make enough for companies to care about, and you want better service google up a CLEC in your area. I guarantee there probably is one and they are just itching to get your business.
Do expect to have more problems with conversions, however, as CLECs have to depend on the ILEC to make the final connection and since the ILECs are loosing business they make it as difficult as possible to make the move.
What can you do? READ THE FUCKING MANUAL.
–Again, true. Many irate callers can save themselves the trouble if they only bother to read the manual. Then again, many would be out of a job if people learned about that. ^_^
Holy cow… yeah, I did this myself for a very little while… a new company was opening up that would be servicing other companies, such as dell. They trained us an hour away, promising the whole time that a place in town would be built… months later, it still hadn’t been and I was getting home some days at 5am. The metric were strict, and if you were late returning to your phone (from a break) by literally any time at all, you were splattered for it…
I had been on CQ for a while… our equivalent of the ‘imaginary supervisor’ … we’d take call from other techs for their questions as well as escalations. It was by far a better position to be in than on the floor as a regular tech. Well, one day I was delayed getting back from a short break by a manager… and then was chided by my direct manager for being late (albeit, only by a bit.) The net effect would be that I’d be taken off CQ for no less than a month. So basically…I told her ‘What I’ll do is go get something for supper… and when I get back, I’ll let you know if I even work here anymore.’ I hit the local taco bell, took about 45 minutes to myself, went back and laid it on her that I’d had it. She asked if it was because I had a problem with her (which I didn’t, she was like the only nice person in the whole place, but had the misfortunate of having to be my supervisor that day.)
As far as I am concerned, no amount of pay is worth the abuse we techs had to take in that kind of job…
Is anyone really so naive as to think you’re going to get any sort of technical expertise from someone who is paid $8 an hour? If they had any real technical knowledge, they wouldn’t be working in a call center.
I’ve been a CSR for 10 years, and everything in this article is true. But in addition, what needs to be said here is that customers need to take some responsibility for themselves. When the company messes up, that’s one thing, but 90% of a tech support agent’s calls are about stupid questions that the customer could have answered themselves with a 5 minute search on Google. So when instead of taking charge of the problem and trying to learn how to fix it themselves, these customers get lazy and want someone else to fix it over and over, it’s not hard to see why so many tech agents are frustrated all the time.
Don’t be an idiot. If you have a problem, spend 5 minutes and try to fix it yourself, BEFORE you call tech support. If you have no intention of following the advice of the tech support agent, or if you’re already convinced you know more than they do about the problem, THEN DON’T CALL. I can’t begin to count how many times someone has called me with a problem only to refuse to take any of the steps I asked them to follow.
Frankly I think if you can’t figure out how to use a piece of technology, you should not expect someone else to figure it out for you. License the internet, and license computers, so that Billy-Bob won’t ever have to worry about whether he can check his email, and neither will I.
Is any of the above news to anyone? This is pretty standard customer service in most companies. And there are always way to work around the metrics required by micromanagement. The reality is, this is the most cost effective way for businesses to handle customer service issues. And they’ll likely be outsourcing in the future to India if not already, so be prepared for language issues and these jobs to move to other countries soon.
Bottom line is, many customers want service the company is unwilling to provide. The nicest way possible to tell the customer no is send them in circles until they give up. Try going to most larger company websites to find their customer service telephone number. They’ve likely buried it on a backpage, or require you contact them via e-mail first, just to get to speak to someone. Fair? Maybe not, but effective? Yes.
As a former customer service supervisor I can relate. The loudmouth angry customer that yells will get the least help. CSR’s put up with a lot of the same crap over and over again daily. Yes, they are getting paid to deal with it….but you know what?…its not worth getting yelled at for something out of your control. Throwing a temper tantrum isn’t going to help you get anything from someone that has heard it all. You surely will catch more flys with honey. A lot of the time my deciding factor on whether to go “above and beyond” for someone depended on how they treated my rep. If you were cool headed and polite, I’d help you to the extent of my ability. You gotta remember that the rep is just someone trying to pay the bills just like you. They are not there to be a punching bag. Just explain your problem, what you want done, and be professional about it and you’ll get your way 80% of the time.
@Hambriq
I’m not entirely sure why you feel entitled to “leverage” in dealing with Verizon’s customer service. The confessions post was interesting, illuminating, and provided not one, but two very helpful tips that certainly better equip you as a consumer:
1. Don’t buy Verizon phones or service if you don’t want to deal with these particular tricks. Research alternate phone companies and see if you can find out if things are any different with them. Voting with your wallet against poor management of the customer service department is consumer power at its best.
2. Be polite and avoid the angry, abusive designation that makes you least likely to be helped, as per the post.
If you heed these two suggestions, and have a legitimate need, you should have no trouble dealing with customer service. It’s when you’re asking for something you don’t deserve that you need tricks and “leverage,” and if you’re into asking for what you have no legitimate reason to demand, I suggest you leverage your phone back into the receive and re-examine your priorities.
So, is this Convergys in Toledo, Ohio? I worked for them for a few months when they were doing support for AT&T@home. This was a fairly terrible call center – ruthless in how they treated their employees. That said, I was ridiculously overqualified for the job and I think by the time I left was like the top employee or something like that.
The bar was really, really low, however. Basically if you showed up consistently and followed the rules you pretty much had it nailed.
I was a Verizon DSL Tech Support rep for the short-lived Residential Chronic Care. Basically, if you called more than 3 times in 24 hours, you were routed to us. The only difference between our support boundaries, metrics, training, etc, and the normal support group was that our talk time was allowed to be 17 minutes instead of just 15. This department, of course, no longer exists, because in reality we ended up with talk times more like 30 minutes since we got all the irate and frustrated people who needed to vent and scream and moan for 15 minutes before starting to solve their problem, and that was unacceptable to management.
I went out of my way to help every customer, not just those who were nice to me, because frankly, most customers weren’t. Customers used to ask for my direct extension, which I would have gladly given them if I’d had one. After a few months, though, even though I am technically knowledgeable and I like to help people, and I’m single and didn’t really mind the pay so much, I got tired of having to fight for my job due to how screwed up your metrics get when you actually help people.
One thing I brought away from this experience, however, is the Residential number to get the button-push prompts instead of that evil IVR system. That number is 866-268-4630. Press 1 for Tech Support, 2 for Billing, 3 for Orders, and 4 for the Retention department. We weren’t supposed to give this number out to customers, but I gave it out all the time anyway to anyone who complained about the IVR.
For the people who are not aware and think this is just Verizon, let me give you a run down of a few companies that outsource their billing, sales, technical support, etc. Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon, Sprint, Best Buy, AT&T, Cingular, and USPS. Almost every company you can think of outsources their phone support to another company and it is the client that says what location (New York, India, etc.) they want for their outsource phone support.
You can find people with actual technical knowledge that work at these outsource locations, it’s just their numbers will be low. You will find people there from all levels of education even people with a master degree.
If you call in and be polite, you can get the best results. If however the agent you are speaking to is just a complete and total idiot, then your best bet is to hang up and call back and hope to get someone who not only is nice, but has a brain.
I do work at a call center and have worked there for years. I have worked on different accounts (different main clients) and had to relearn my job and metrics a number of times. I know there are idiot agents and if I am trying to help a customer and the agent I need to transfer to is an idiot, I will place the customer back on hold and keeping hanging up on agents until I find one with a brain. However if the customer just wants to keep ranting, and throw all logic out the window, and I need to transfer them to another department, then that customer will get transferred to the first agent I get. If the customer is unhappy, he/she can call back in and try the whole process again.
This is so true! I also worked as a level 2 agent for Verizon technical support and i feel the same way as you do…
How about the part about where you’re trained to never even begin to entertain the possibility that a problem is on Verizon’s end? I have to spend a week being told to turn my modem off and turn it back on, and then Verizon insists on sending out a tech to turn my modem off and turn it back on, when the circumstances clearly prove that there’s some sort of Verizon hardware problem.
@BillWalsh: Am slowly divesting myself from all Verizon products due to terrible service. For DSL, I spent two days trying to get them to send a technician to repair a line that I visually inspected and saw was worn through.
I and a friend waited home all day (I skipped work) for a technician only to be told that night that the ticket had been closed because I hadn’t been home for the technician.
Not wanting to play the game anymore, I now use a cable modem and look forward to the day in February when my wireless contract ends and I can become completely Verizon free.
If they paid half as much attention to their customer service as they paid to advertising, they would have a company worth patronizing. They do not.
My roommate and I moved last July and have had nothing but trouble from Verizon since. I have spent hours on the phone with them, sent letters, even gone to the stores in person. What I’ve learned is that there are actually three Verizons and none of them communicate with the other ones. (Home phone, DSL and Wireless). Even though I closed my account in November they have continue to take money from my account. When I call I get transferred, transferred, transferred and eventually disconnected. I don’t think Verizon even knows what the words “customer support” mean.
luckybob343
In response to luckybob343, here are the answers to your questions:
1:32 PM on Wed Mar 12 2008
1. Why does my DSL service just go out at random times?
Because there are many conditions which could affect the DSL signal. DSL is, by far, one of the most unreliable internet connections. Any type of electromagnetic interference, even cell phones, could cause your dsl to lose its connection (sync). If you are continuing to have this problem, have your ISP lower the speed on the line to the next lower speed “package” I assure you that it will create a more stable connection. Most of the time providers will have lower packages that have the same Upload Speed, so you wouldn’t be able to tell a huge difference anyway. And to respond to those that will say “Well, if I pay for 3mbps, then I expect to get it!” Well, there is more to it than that. In order to have a dsl connection, at all, you must be within 18k from the Central Office in your area. On top of that, you have to take into consideration of the line conditions, the number of other subscribers in that area, and sometimes even weather conditions.
2. When my neighbors and I are all without service, why am I never told there’s an outage when I call?
For the company I work for it is not considered an “outage” until there are 101 customers affected. It sucks, but it the honest truth.
3. Why do I have to reset my modem once a month to keep a connection for more than 15 seconds?
This is just bull crap. You should never have to reset your modem, unless you have a strange power outage and you can’t connect. Then, possibly, you may have to reset your modem. If you are still having problems, most likely the modem has gone downhill and needs to be replaced.
4. Why am I grilled about whether or not I’m sharing my connection regardless of what I’m calling for?
If you call in regarding intermittent connectivity issues, or slow speeds, this will be the first thing that is asked. If you share your internet connection with a number of other users (which is why it’s important to secure your wireless network) then you are sharing the total bandwith. For example, if you have a 3mbps connection, with 3 computers, then if you are all 3 online at the same time then there is a BIG chance you will only be getting 1mbps per computer. It’s all relative to the number of people on the local network. That’s why they will have you isolate to one computer. Most ISPs will NOT troubleshoot your local network, mainly because there are too many things that could go wrong.
I hope this information is helpful. I do work for a MAJOR DSL ISP. I work in the Executive Escalations Department (Yes, there is such a thing there). We have all been trained to handle advanced tech support. My background does include writing training material, as well. So, I do have some credibility.
Anyway, if anyone has any other questions, please feel free to email me, as I dont get on here often… (my username at gmail.com)
Thanks!
Neo
I worked previously for the technical support department of Verizon for more than a year and I had fun reading all of the comments and also the main article.
Honestly speaking not all companies are perfect, that’s why there is the technical support department. BUT (as my friend has bluntly put it) WE ARE NOT GODS, we cannot solve everything within a snap of a finger. More often than not, we are also crossing our fingers at the other end, wishing that your service would start working after step one.
IT’S HARD TO TALK CONTINUOUSLY 8 HOURS A DAY, 5 DAYS (sometimes 6) DAYS A WEEK. If you are stressed out, what do you think we feel? We also get tired, frusrated, annoyed AND angry; especially if the previous call made before yours was more than an hour, how do you think we would feel? We don’t even have the benefit of a taking a breather in between calls because it would be taken against our AHT (average handling time).
However, we DO love helping our customers but we can only do so much. Troubleshooting NEEDS cooperation and every customer must understand that. If you could think of it this way:
1. why do you think you are calling? Because your service is down and you don’t know what to do.
2. if you know what to do, would you be calling us? No.
3. and who knows more about the service than you? A technical support representative.
4. Therefore, JUST cooperate because you NEED us for the information on HOW to resolve your problem and we NEED you to do those steps so that you’ll be happy again and stick with our company.
Plain and simple.
oh nice… this is all true..and same with my department, im Dan from Verizon HSI technical support (home/residential).
all the things you said are true and same with my department except for one.
“7. The Supervisor You’re Talking To Is Not Actually A Supervisor”
well in my department, our supervisors are really knowledgable and they can even be the one troubleshoot with the customer if needed. Why so? because all of our supervisors in my department were all former technical support representative too…
other than that… all same and true
I just found this article and as a CAE for Comcast in Tech support I must say that these are all spot on. One thing that bares mentioning as well is if you are running residential service and we have to send out a technician mentioning that you are running a business out of your home will not get you a technician any faster. We have business class service for people who are running a business. Our business class customer pay a premium to have a technician out within 4 hours.