A Communication Company that Lost the Ability to Communicate

When a life-changing event occurs - like the USA’s Olympic hockey team’s Miracle on Ice- many people remember where they were or what they were doing. I was on the couch when I lost my Fios. It was a Sunday morning (10:02 am to be exact) July 3^rd and I was flipping back and forth between watching the Tour de France team time trial (my favorite stage) and the final of Wimbledon between Nadel and Djokovic (also a favorite sporting event).  

While I was enjoying the tour, my neighbor was in his backyard sinking a shovel into my Fios fiber optic cable, cutting the line. His single move was a triple punch; he took out my TV, landline and the Internet (I also happened to be finalizing the details for our vacation the following week). 

Following the disruption, I immediately checked all the known causes and determined it was outside of the house and outside of my expertise.  Verizon said that because of the holiday, the soonest they could send out a Tech person would be Tuesday, July 5^th.  It’s now August 1^st and I’m still dealing with this issue.  I tried hard not to write this post, but the temporary cable that is still in my backyard is a constant reminder of how this “communications company” has lost the ability to communicate with it’s customers. 

Without boring you with the detail of this mess, what I learned is that the company originally built on providing phone service has forgotten how to use the phone.

• Service Tech reps no longer talk with customers - Instead reps send you a text message when they are on the way or when they missed you. And timing of those texts is also not in sync.  Our rep told us that he was at our house at 9:06 am. However, my wife got a text message at 10:20 am saying that our service was scheduled between 8-12 pm. 
• Customer service cannot talk to the Tech reps – The people scheduling your service cannot directly talk with the reps. We waited for the service tech to engage us in their version of an instant messaging. 
• Customers cannot talk to the dispatcher or the Tech rep – After the rep said he came back in the afternoon and no one was home (that is if you don’t count me staring out the window waiting for him), I was desperate to hunt him down, thinking that he was going to the wrong address. 
• One division cannot talk to another – After I called back to reschedule the third time, my call was accidently routed to Verizon Wireless.  The rep told me he could not route my call back to Verizon Fios because “we’re another company.”  
• Contractors cannot talk to the service department – The tech rep placed a temporary cable through my neighbor’s backyard to restore our service, telling us a contractor would come to sink the line.  The contractor did sink the line, however, he left the temporary line in my backyard (partially chewed up by my 9 month old puppy and the lawn mover). 

In my opinion, the reason for the communication loss is directly related to efficiency and scale.  Verizon has now grown so large that it no longer has to care.  Similar to Sprint in the golden days of wireless, it has momentum on the front end (acquisition) and is trying to make the backend (service) as efficient as possible to bring down the cost to service those customers.  

We were one of the first neighborhoods in the country to receive the Fios service.  Direct mail promoted the service and sales reps went door-to-door signing up customers if they didn’t already get you via telesales.  Cost was not an issue and customer service would do anything to make customers happy while it worked out the bugs in its game-changing product.  

But today, Verizon, like Sprint at its peak (which just recorded it’s 16^th consecutive quarter of losing more customers than it has acquired), appears to be driving as much cost out of operations as possible by placing efficiency ahead of effectiveness.  

I can attest to the fact that using text, IM and other non-personal communication vehicles may be efficient, but certainly not effective.  Customers feel the pain and companies have no way to sense it because they have removed the person.

This quest for scalable efficiency also relates to the way technology is configured.  For example, during this ordeal my DVR cable box went out.  I called the service department to report the cable box and to request (again) that they send someone out to remove the cable from my backyard.  The box arrived a few days later, however, the technician did not.

When I called Verizon to find out what happened, they said that they could only enter one trouble ticket per call.  This is another area where efficiency breaks down.  Complex problems with multiple steps do not easily follow a service process designed for speed.  Reps have to work with customers to solve problems and many times it involves multiple steps.  If reps are compensated for how many calls they take, talk time (as little as possible with customers), and one call resolution, reps will pass on anything they view as time consuming. 

The lesson I learned is that bigger is not necessarily better.  I have 3 wireless phones, Internet, TV and a landline with Verizon.  It’s inconvenient and would be somewhat painful for me to switch (and for some services I’m contractually obligated to pay fees if I cancel). All this gives Verizon leverage.  While I enjoy paying one bill, I don’t like being treated as a number.   

Just as Sprint learned the painful lesson of being too big to care, so will Verizon.  And I look forward to that day, but until then, Verizon get your damn cable out of my backyard.