Customer service

[Elchanfle]

Judging strictly by customer service quality, any Verizon customer should hope that nothing ever goes wrong, because when it does, having to interact with customer service will be a frustrating experience. It may take several hours in a day.  Like it did for us today. 

A utility contractor working in our neighborhood knocked on my door to inform us that his crew had accidentally snapped a Fios data line. The contractor said Verizon had been informed. So I proceeded to double-check with the AI chatbot in the My Verizon app, to verify that a crew was on the way to fix the problem. 

The chatbot conducted routine account verification, remote testing of the data line, and checked for outages in our area. Everything showed up as normal in the Verizon system, despite the actual outage. 

I then asked for a live agent to join the chat and explained the situation. The agent proceeded to repeat the same steps the chatbot had already gone through. After that, the agent concluded it was someone else’s responsibility and transferred me to another department. The agent in that department asked me to explain the situation, yet again. I told the agent to review the previous chat and said he/she would do that. After long periods of inactivity, and roughly an hour interacting with the chat, I told the agent I had to leave to pick up my daughter from school an ended the chat. 

Later, I called Verizon and managed to get a live agent on the line. She verified my account and proceeded to ask me the same questions the chatbot had already asked. I explained that I had already done that and that the problem was not in my home. She asked me to go outside to see if the WiFi worked there. I told her that was unnecessary because we knew the source of the problem and just need someone to come here and fix it. 

Like the chatbot, she proceeded to transfer me to another agent. That agent, in turn, asked me to explain the situation — again! The agent eventually tracked down the ticket and said the earliest a crew could show up was in 48 hours. I requested sooner — I work from home, my wife also does on weekends, and my daughter planned to finish college applications this weekend. Hence the need for a quicker repair. She offered to put me in touch with her supervisor, Heidi. 

After a good 20 minutes on hold, Heidi got on the line. She acknowledged my frustration with the process and said she had already sent an email to dispatch to see about sending someone here tomorrow morning. Though she couldn’t guarantee it. She then said she would call me in the morning to give me an update. We’ll see if that happens. 

Clearly, this is a company with very serious internal communication deficiencies in its customer service department. It wastes valuable customer time, not to mention company time. 

I’ve been a Verizon customer (Fios and six mobile phone lines) for 20 or so years and customer service never fails to disappoint. Thinking of taking my business elsewhere. It’s not worth buying stock in this company, if its future success depends on growing its customer base. If this is the average experience for anyone facing a problem, customer satisfaction won’t be the driving force of this company’s future growth. 

[Kh_Samyak]

Hi Elchanfle,

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