Anytoodles, someone else has sent the phone numbers to us again. He reveals how they fell into the "wrong" (we, the customers) hands in the first place.

Brett says, "I was just going though the things on my desktop and found a spreadsheet that might interest you... The guy who installed my cable logged in to get the number and firefox dumped the file on my desktop."

Call us shenanigans, but just don't call us late to dinner.

We really like tip #53. Works great, provided you have a place of employ to bike to.

But why bother begging for Level 3 from the laminated manual guy, when you've got the direct phone number?

We've got the numbers for every state serviced, inside.

We suggest saving the picture to your computer in case of emergency (nothing like the key being locked in the safe)...

UPDATE: Some of these phone numbers are out of service or only go to level 2. We're sorry if this hurts your feelings. We provided the document "as is."

Download as an excel sheet.

Back in 2003, Kurt Walker was an Associate General Manager in the Oklahoma call center. His nickname, "The Hatchet," derived from the "gleam in his eyes and a smile on his face" when motivating the Saves Coaches to fire employees.

One saves coach, Dan Critchfield, sent around a mass email to his higherups, declaiming, "I have grown weary of Kurt telling...on an almost daily basis, in our Team huddles...About how much "fun it was" to fire certain people." Of Kurt, Dan said:

"My true impression is that of a sociopath with no conscience."

After an email was sent around encouraging saves coaches to up their numbers, Kurt sent his own to hammer in the message. While his took a strong tone, with lines like, "10 calls a day will keep the unemployment office at bay" and "Do these things mean anything to you?" he seemed to feel he was looking out for his worker's best interests. "You may not agree with me right now, but I am going to force you to make money," Kurt wrote.

After his email didn't go over well, Kurt arranged an emergency team potluck. One that was meticulously organized

There were to be two green veggies, two side dishes, two salads and three deserts. No more, no less. Everything was micromanaged to the last asparagus.

The sender of this email, who we previously interviewed, doesn't know what happened to Dan. "I am sure he was fired," he says. "That is what we refer to as "Final Flame Email". These were popular...their last way to stab at the company they had come to hate."

Presented in its epic entirety after the jump...

Red arrows point to the juicy bits.

Subject: Legal Complaint Date: 7/27/2006 7:21 PM

Please call me promptly. You have proprietary and copyrighted document on your sight (url at bottom below) that belongs to us, Cingular Wireless. We want it removed from your site.
Thank you.
...cingular-distills-customer-value-into-thermometer-form-188379.php

Glenn Blumstein
Chief Counsel - IP & Network
Cingular Wireless
425-[redacted]

Notice how site is misspelled at first. Note too, the curious interplay between first person singular and plural. All your document are belong to me.

We'll be keeping the hot property up until our legal team tells us otherwise.

We are Unicron, eater of worlds. Your attacks only make us stronger!

They want us to take down their internal documents we posted. The items contain information about how they use a customer's "long term value" to decide if and what discounts to offer them if they try to cancel service.

Get 'em while you still can, folks.

Knew all those anti-Cingular posts would come to trouble.

With a capital T. And that stands for telephony!

"An AOL representative declined to say whether the manual was legitimate or comment on the matter."

We know it's cross-eyed and with facial features askew, but gawd, that's sooo cold. How could they disown their offspring so out of hand?That manual is going to have difficulty with commitment when it grows up.

"AOL Customer Service Manual Posted To Web?" [Cnet]

"Why are we changing the way we handle LTV1 customers?

To contribute to our Revenue goal, we are no longer going to save LTV 1 customers."

If you're costing Cingular more money than they make off your account and want to try to game the CSRs into discounts, you may be interested in what's posted after the jump. It's a series of potential things you might say and what the CSRs are supposed to say back to you...

You can also download the whole thing as a text file here.

Related: Cingular Distills Customer Value Into Thermometer Form

But wait, how does a lowly Cingular rep determine how profitable you are as a customer? Luckily, there's a handy box on the operator's screen showing a computerized calculation.

If you threaten to leave Cingular for a wireless provider that doesn't suck, the degree to which they try to lure you back into the fold will depend on how green your mercury is.

The full three page job aid for Cingular reps, after the jump...

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Related: How Cingular Avoids Giving Discounts to Worthless Customers

Read our critique of the contents here.

Thank you, disaffected former AOL retainer.

After the jump, a few select preview pages...

A shot from the flowchart.

Related:

• AOL Retention Manual Revealed
• AOL Employees Slander Vincent Ferrari On Company Time
• BREAKING: Spitzer To Talk To AOL, Again
• AOL Updates Retention "Offer Matrix"
• AOL Internal Memos, After Vinny's Call
• We Interview Vincent Ferrari, AOL Canceller
• Dead Defeat AOL
• AOL Canceler on Today Show
• AOL Wants to Sell "Internet" to the Dead
• Consumerist on CNBC
• AOL Apologizes For Infamous Cancel Call
• The Best Thing We Have Ever Posted: Reader Tries To Cancel AOL
• AOL Officially Sucks More Than Anything Else

A plain manila envelope arrived on our desk this week. Inside was the eighty-one paged "Enhanced Sales Training for AOL Retention Consultants" manual. Upon opening, the flowchart, "Guide to a World-Class Retention Call," fell out.

It's amazing that the story has come this far, that Vincent could record his attempt to cancel AOL, that recording would shoot to national TV, and now, a mole has sent us incriminating company documents.

One thing quickly becomes evident after reading the pages of tips and tactics. Callers are viewed not as customers, but prospects. Under the heading, "Think of Cancellation Calls as Sales Leads," the manual reads...

If you stop and think about it, every Member that calls in to cancel their account is a hot lead. Most other sales jobs require you to create your own leads, but in the Retention Queue the leads come to you! Be eager to take more calls, get more leads and close more sales. More leads means more selling opportunities for you and cost savings for AOL.

In a public statement, AOL's Nicholas Graham claimed that John, "violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care - chief among them being respect for the member, and swiftly honoring their requests." If this is true, then why is there such a complex system designed to thwart those very requests? Brevity thrives on simplicity.

To reel you back in, AOL has a six stage system:

1. Greet and Verify
2. Discovery
3. Tailored Value
4. Right Offer
5. Resolve Concerns
6. Motivate to Activate

In Vincent's call, John never got past step 2. He got stuck in "Discovery" where he used "digging" to try to get more information about Vincent. John's goal was to use this intel to build an argument for staying with AOL, and deliver what the manual calls the "tailored value." A bit of an ill-fitting suit, if there ever was one, since in his inquest, John never found out that Vincent was an IT professional.

Digging involves asking the lead questions that build a portrait of the prospect's wants, interests and needs. AOL cheerfully terms these, "WINS." From page 4-20 of the "Best Practices" section:

With respect to Vincent's computer expertise, John's attempts at digging play like a study in comedy.

VINCENT: I don't need it, I don't want it, I don't use it.
JOHN: So when you use this, is that for business or school?
VINCENT: I don't want the AOL account, can we please just cancel it?
JOHN: On June 2nd, I see 72 hours of usage...

Some sales cannot be made. There is a certain point after which you're just wasting your time. Past that, you risk enraging the customer. Then there's the point where the customer tapes the conversation and humiliates you in the national media.

"This call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes," goes both ways.

John had access to a program, "Merlin," apparently so-called for its ability to turn piss into champagne. If Vincent was more pliable, John could have used it. By clicking various responses a lead makes, the behavior matrix suggests phrases for the salesperson to utter and guide customers back to AOL's fetid bosom.

The soul of Merlin is the Member Profile Guide. It boasts four tabs, "Know," "Listen," "Feel," and "How you want them to feel." Apparently, "Manipulate" was too blunt. Each tab provides different stratagems tailored to the specific customer on the line. For instance, the "Know" tab, "identifies the Member attribute and the 'role' we should play for the member." For example, if a new member has a low amount of usage, Merlin suggests taking on the guise of a "helpful guide."

Alternatively, selecting the Feel tab gives users, "an idea of the emotions the member might be feeling and how we might appropriately respond to those feelings...in bullet point form."

The manual is full of more creepy delights, including:

• On "overcoming objections" i.e. customer's desire to not connect to watered-down version of the internet, the manual advises to, "allow your callers to talk comfortably about their concerns." By doing this you can literally, "watch their concerns and resistance drop."

• As we all know and love, the best way to "keep it real" is corporate policy mandating naturalness. That's why AOL developed, "Keep It Real"...a set of principles that will drive a world-class Member experience..."

• Then there's also this doozy from black-is-white land: "The reason that many Members are going to high speed is, because the actual internet connection is much more stable....we now have the perfect solution...a free modem." Ah yes, the hot-rodding superpower of 24kbps.

• Jason Watkins, an AOL Customer Care Consultant quoted in the manual says it best, "Consumers believe everything is a commodity, i.e. where can I buy the service for the least cost. My objective as a salesperson is to prove otherwise."

An AOL retention consultant's job is to trick consumers into being stupid.

It's hard to keep track of the array of tools at their AOL call center employee's disposal. There's "Member Connect," "The Discovery Wheel," "eSource," "ASQ," "CSS," "FBB's," "WINs," and "Drill Down Questions." Operators get advice and coaching from their team leaders and fellow employees. With over 160,000 calls a day, the sales force continually hones its craft.

To AOL's credit, John seems to have missed the section that advised to, "Never get angry with the Member...Don't criticize the Member by saying things like "you don't have to be so difficult with me" or "you're impossible to deal with." Maybe that's because most of the manual is devoted to overcoming customer's objections and selling them on AOL's awesomeness.

"Traditionally, when companies have profitable but shrinking businesses, like AOL's access service, they try to milk as much money as they can from them without investing new cash.," reported the New York Times on July 10th. The article hinged around CEO John Miller's proposal in two weeks time before his Time Warner overlords for a bold revamp of AOL's services. Included in the proposition are said to be plans to eliminate retention consultants entirely.

Instead of investing in a system that people actually wanted to use, AOL created a system for duping customers into not exercising their right to leave for cheaper, higher-quality services. Behind the rhetoric of "Member Services" and "World Class Value" are suits that see their members as spreadsheet numbers. The suits sleep soundly as long as one column is kept high and the other low.

UPDATE: Full copy of the AOL manual here.

Readers, please Digg this story.

• AOL Employees Slander Vincent Ferrari On Company Time
• BREAKING: Spitzer To Talk To AOL, Again
• AOL Updates Retention "Offer Matrix"
• AOL Internal Memos, After Vinny's Call
• We Interview Vincent Ferrari, AOL Canceller
• Dead Defeat AOL
• AOL Canceler on Today Show
• AOL Wants to Sell "Internet" to the Dead
• Consumerist on CNBC
• AOL Apologizes For Infamous Cancel Call
• The Best Thing We Have Ever Posted: Reader Tries To Cancel AOL
• AOL Officially Sucks More Than Anything Else

We ask for an extension.

Besides, who releases gangbusters stuff on a Friday? One's attention is drawn much more quickly to midget Michael Jackson and two-faced kittens.

However, we will disclose that since Vincent's big web debut, he's caught a lot of nasty comments on his blog. Some of the comments resolve to AOL and Netscape (owned by AOL) ip addresses. Netscape and AOL employees took time out of their day to slur Vincent, on company time.

Does the professionalism ever stop?

Read their remarks, after the jump...

New comment on your post #2548 "Utterly Aggravating"
Author : matt gabels (IP: 207.200.116.72 , cache-ntc-ab08.proxy.aol.com)
E-mail : waitingroom3223@hotmail.com
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=207.200.116.72
Comment:

you people have got to be kidding me? I'll repeat it....you've got to be kidding right? SO WHAT if you can't cancel your AOL account online. BOO HOO!!!! Fact of the matter is...due to security issues on line, it IS a privacy issue, would you want some hacker stealing your password and shutting your account down? what the hell do you people mean that it's not a privacy issue?? This is getting to be regoddamneddiculous! You can't cancel ANY account online! You can't cancel your cable, your phone, cellular or home, credit cards, bank accounts, hell you can't even cancel your trash service online.

Since we're on the topic of how "difficult" it is to cancel an AOL account, let's take a few moments to analyze that call....1st,Did Vincent's account get cancelled? yes, how long did it take? 5 minutes. Big deal. How many pitches were made during that call? NONE. Where is this harassment and horror story that this poor defenseless excuse for a human? He wasn't pleasant and everyone knows it.

Because Mr. "I wanted to expose the Horror Stories was oh so plesant on the phone" our friend Jon had to tell him to stop talking and running him over so he could do what Mr. I wanted to expose the horror stories and have my 15 minutes of fame wanted, without even making an attempt to get vincents business.

Had Mr. I'm so starved for attention I need to be a jerk and show the world that I can be a jerk to people and then play the victim had he answered the questions and said no to the 3 pitches, the call would have taken tops 2 and a half to 3 minutes. Instead he antagonizes the CSR and ends up on the news. What a joke!!!! You're a laughing stock within AOL dude, that's hysterical Ironic thing is, his "dad" is ALWAYS logged on as popsferrari, which the genious Mr. I want my 15 minutes of fame gave out on his website.

Keep usin' it, those ads that keep AIM free keep my stock from dipping!

New comment on your post #2511 "Open Call for AOL Retention Specialists or Employees"
Author : anonymous (IP: 207.200.116.72 , cache-ntc-ab08.proxy.aol.com)
E-mail : dygital@gmail.com
URI : http://www.google.com
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=207.200.116.72
Comment:

First off we all sign a NON DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT. Not only do we (as aol employees) agree to it, and are held accountable for the damages incurred, but if I (or anyone) was to send you confidential documents substantiating your biased point... both you AND the person releasing information are held accountable, financially.

Sure I know you want to prove a point, getting people to break their NDA's is another. I'll share this bit - its common knowledge EVERY retention business has quotas. Duh.

Lighten up a bit, stop being such a prick because you chose to repeatedly say "cancel the account" repeatedly, and you saw the rep was being an asshole too. You earned your 15 min of fame, on who's watch - your
employers?

I however do commend you for shining light on an issue - and changes have been made... but seriously - dont risk other workers their jobs just so you can end out on top. Cancelling my aol account wasn't that hard as you had
it, or others mentioned herein.

Contrast this with Nicholas Graham's assertion that cancellation requests are processed quickly...

What exactly do we gotta love? Find out, after the jump...

Leaks.

That's right, we have a copy of the AOL Retention Consultant manual. We've also got the cheat sheet flowchart. It's really interesting to follow along and see what parts of Vincent's phone call jibe with what the employees are instructed to do.

And then also, how it differs.

We can't wait to bust out our mad compare and contrast seventh grade essay skills. Salivating, really. We need to find a bib.

More to come, soon, after we're done savoring. There's the savory, the sweet, and then, the snark. Oh yes, there will be snark. The book will bleed snark. And then the snark will bleed. And then the blood will cry. And then the tears, they will explode, scattering acid into every pore.