#customerservice

I love it. Saw this on another board for PWC layoffs. (Price Waterhouse..one of the big 4 accountiing firms) I Googled this:
Client Demands and PwC's Response
Demand for Discounts: As PwC has publicly touted its significant AI investments and the resulting efficiency gains (e.g., in audit and tax processes), clients have started requesting price cuts. Clients argue they are entitled to a portion of the benefits when AI tools complete work faster.

Cut pay plans and increase quotas. What kind of talent do you retain? What kind of environment do you foster? You wind up with reps stuffing sales with undiscussed line items. Risking getting fired so they don’t get fired. Makes sense and sounds sustainable!

I’m in customer care and eligible for retirement with tenure and age. I’m wondering if HR would allow me to retire with severance instead of going through the layoff?

Over a couple years ago, Verizon leadership sent 3500 Verizon employees to HCL. HCL has let go 99% of them. Customers are leaving because they don’t want to deal with India, or the incompetence of HCL. I hope Gina, Kyle and the rest of the complacent leadership gets booted. I know they will cut more of the business unit. To best of luck to those have been through a lot since MCI.

What do you honestly spend more time doing every day, trying to sell anything or fixing the same simple problems for seniors over and over again? At some point it becomes pretty clear what the store has actually turned into, and that makes the whole closure feel less like a surprise and more like an overdue decision. We've basically ended up acting like a walk in help desk for the senior crowd instead of an actual retail location, and once that becomes the main part of the job, the writing’s already on the wall.

The current implementation of internal account indicators—often referred to as "banners" or "flags" for priority opportunities—is fundamentally distorting our approach to customer engagement and compromising the integrity of our sales data.

The core issue is that management directives are prioritizing the achievement of a high banner "close rate" metric over serving the complete needs of the customer.

Metric Manipulation Over Sales Integrity:
The mandate to achieve a positive close rate on these specific accounts results in behavior that is detrimental to both the customer and the business's long-term health:

Avoidance of Service:
Employees are being instructed to actively avoid accessing accounts with a high-priority banner if the customer's immediate need is not a confirmed purchase (e.g., they need a simple phone activation, a non-committal upgrade quote, or troubleshooting). This is a direct abandonment of the core principle that customers are the lifeblood of our operation.

Skewed Performance Data:
This avoidance strategy does not reflect an increase in sales; it merely creates an artificially inflated "close rate." If an account with a high-value opportunity is never opened, the company still fails to capture the potential revenue. The resulting data gives a misleading picture of our sales effectiveness, suggesting we are performing better on these opportunities than we actually are. This is not salesmanship; it is data manipulation.

Unrealistic Expectations and Pressure:
The immense pressure placed on front-line staff stems directly from unrealistic expectations set by executive leadership, who demand near-perfect closure on every flagged opportunity.

This lack of realism ignores the fundamental reality of the sales process, which inherently includes customer deliberation, declines, and service-only interactions.

Furthermore, this intense focus and pressure are applied despite the fact that successfully closing a high-priority banner sale does not typically result in increased commission or compensation compared to a standard transaction. This disconnect forces employees to endure significant stress without adequate incentive.

The Call for Change!!
The mandate to avoid customers based on a potential sales banner is a betrayal of the stated core values of the organization, particularly integrity. True success is measured by serving every customer need honestly and driving organic sales, not by fabricating positive performance metrics through systemic avoidance and data manipulation. This practice must be immediately reviewed and reformed to align our operational goals with genuine customer care and ethical sales practices.

The lack of knowledge, along with long calls to address a simple task, of the CS reps at Humana now is unbelievable. Humana has really messed up by outsourcing those jobs, cause we used to have really great CS reps.

If this is true, the impact could bring the whole company down. You can't just cut 15,000 people and hope the ship does not eventually sink....just sayin...

Fiserv stock is now under 60. With the terrible customer service and outdated technology offerings they offer that’s still too high. The fall of Fiserv should studied.

A simple order is seriously taking 30min and they still mess it up. I don't recognize any of the usual representatives lately either, which is unfortunate because they actually did their job right and did it well.

RR5 desks being uprooted in our department. Nice cubes being removed in favor of call center style desks sandwiched together with no privacy to speak to customers and clients alike. Floor will resemble a boiler room environment over the next month. I guess we are looking at the Sears customer support model from 1988?

MISS THE DAYS WHERE WE USED TO BE ABLE TO CALL THEIR HELPDESK AND GET SOME HELP. HASNT BEEN THE SAME AND JUST GETS WORSE. LONG WAIT, WE DONT GET A CALL BACK OR THEY TELL US TO CALL OUR IT AND OUR IT TELLS US TO CALL SHARP. OUR DRS AND STAFF ARE BEYOND FRUSTRATED! I HAVE EMPLOYEES WAITING AROUND FOR ACCOUNTS. HAVE TO WORK EXTRA HOURS TO CATCH UP. AND HERE I AM ON THIS WEBSITE SO I HAVE AN IDEA ON WHAT TO EXPECT. DO BETTER WE’RE YOUR CUSTOMERS TOO!

Look at what we have been doing for the last 3-5 years, outsourcing CSRs, taking away abilities from the retail POS, adding fees, reducing and removing discounts, wasting billions on useless spectrum while cutting off and failing to maintain what is actually used, and then listening to higher ups and C suite employees whine and blame us for poor numbers. The actions that have been taken would make no sense to someone in middle school, yet were taken by millionaires. This is criminally stupid, almost makes you question if they are a deliberate attempt to devalue the company for a future sale.

And what is being done to fix it? More fees and BYOD plus? We lost subscribers again on the consumer side last quarter while literally giving lines out for free with free or heavily discounted upgrades. Who thinks this is working? People being payed millions to make your life more difficult, your quotas higher, and your future uncertain.

The obvious fix would be to stop sc--wing customers with fees and trash customer service and stop giving shady reps easy to hide ways to add lines, but who wants to hear that? Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, but no, lets just cut and outsource more, but we will spend on AI that customers and reps very vocally dislike.

Spend money on US customer service reps and the network and stop sc--wing the customers, all of the money they have saved with these cuts is being lost by the droves of customers leaving for Tmobile, and common sense and a little money would stop that and reverse a good bit of it.

Hopefully the new CEO doesn’t F this trainwreck up any further, maybe he isn’t at his knees in front of Larry Fink like Hans was. Maybe Dan will read this, one of the HR spies in here should put this on his desk.

How long does Verizon let you keep the 50% employee discount after leaving? I upgraded my phone earlier this year, so I’d still owe on that, but I’m trying to figure out how long the discount stays before I lose it. Any former employees know how it works?

Verizon better lower our quotas or pay me extra bc I am not wasting my time on nonsense and spending hours on fixing account issues, billing, resets, etc on the phone since now we are mandated to take calls

It's not my problem you incompetent folks at BR chose to eliminate competent CS reps and send everything to India

I get paid to sell. Watch if this happens all the top sellers will bolt just like when Verizon went to team commission.

You reap what you sow.

call center reps got Dcris back and the fraud has already started placing new orders for upgrades new orders for name changes and new orders that customers didnt even know they were getting. no oversite at all and the managers are promoting it watch as numbers go up for things reps should not get paid on

Rumors are swirling about the pending layoffs in store. I'm hoping that the cuts will not involve the customer service areas of our organization. If anything, we should be cutting the fat at the top. How many Market Presidents are there in the retail channel and what exact value do they bring? Our guy comes to Wisconsin, makes a big deal of his dinner plans and that's about all. As I said before - too much fat at the top.

When is Wayfair going to learn that you get why you pay for. We need to stop with all these oversea agents. They either don’t have enough training, don’t care, etc. The majority don’t help the callers and just make matters worse.

While the new leadership is focused on cutting, Customer service needs to be addressed as the top priority:

https://www.reddit.com/r/verizon/comments/1oqujew/in_case_anyone_dealing_with_verizon_support_right/

This is just one example. I had a family member have the same issues this week, and cancel Verizon service.

A few things the leadership has to get right:

• Customer Service #1
• Ease of doing business with VZ, including intra-VZ customers/services
• Ki-l money losing businesses
• Collapse the org chart, and maximize resources in the process.
• Give employees a reason to be proud and generally happy. I dont think one discount perk will fix that. But, employees have to feel valued!
• Performance Culture, we expect excellence from employees

Layoffs will happen, but it can't be the headline of the business. or the #1 priority.

It seems the directive is to charge people for phone cleanings and password resets? Anyone else being pushed to fudge these numbers? The OST definitely has nothing in it about either of these things. Any clarification would be great.

Anyone here anything on Case Management / Customer Champion Team? Will there be any RIFs for them?

Outsource Scammer: “I have a sale for you, they want everything.”

Me: “Great, thank you.”

Customer: “Hi, the previous representative told me I would receive $2,000 in credit and one year of free service.”

There is NOTHING honest about them.

The Indian accent is undoubtedly the most annoying accent in the world, Verizon needs to ax the entire cs reps based in India and move it elsewhere I know it's pennies on the dollar but imagine Verizon customers hearing that accent when they are already pi---d off

Spoke to a customer today who has had a support ticket opened for months now... support and our product development have basically told him that they don't have the time to address his issue. Meanwhile the issue is a known problem which is effecting multiple customers. Cant share much more but all I can say is how do you expect to market and sale a product if we cant even support it ourselves?

Last week, a person wearing an AT&T uniform came to my door to promote a home plan.
After confirming he was authorized, I signed a contract for nine lines. That evening, when I received the electronic contract by email, I discovered numerous fraudulent activities.

The salesperson promised the following:
A total of $305 per month for nine lines, fixed for 36 months, free upgrades to the latest phones for all lines, and multiple stackable promotional credits.

In reality:

1.  The salesperson illegally added teacher and device discounts to each line. These discounts cannot actually pass identity verification later, which would cause a significant increase in the plan’s total cost.
2.  The salesperson claimed that any phone could be traded in for free toward a new one. In fact, devices valued under $230 are essentially worthless and have no trade-in value; any damage further reduces the value drastically. As a result, users’ old phones are taken for $0 trade-in value, while they must pay full price for the new devices.
3.  The salesperson promised multiple credits that AT&T does not officially offer, such as phone number transfer credits, loyal customer credits, and trade-in bonus credits. None of these appeared in the actual contract.
4.  The contract contains four different signatures, but I only signed one. The rest were forged by the salesperson, including the most important Right to Cancel Disclosure.
5.  The salesperson intentionally concealed the true billing details, preventing customers from noticing the real cause of price increases. They claimed that starting from the third month, the monthly fee would become cheaper and stable — which turned out to be completely false.

Overall scam logic:
The scheme works by using fake discounts to offer an unrealistically low plan price, enticing customers to trade in as many devices as possible, forging signatures to hide key contract terms, and then delaying communication until after the 3-day cancellation period and AT&T’s 14-day return policy expire. By the time the inflated bills arrive, the customer has already suffered irreversible financial losses.

It seems with all the changes and weather and the hurricane affecting JSL Multi contact is dead why? Frontline seems busy but no transfers? Any insight?

Tu-d Party Delivery postponed delivery of a washer and to the customer’s third floor apartment, because they need “four people”. These are the same people that the left said “ will do the work that we don’t want to do.” In house delivery would never have done this, whether it was front load appliances or not. These people that deliver are lazy, apathetic pieces of sh-t, and Lowes lets them get away with it, just so they don’t have to pay a decent wage and benefits to real Lowe’s delivery associates.

I’m guessing the VEC isn’t the answer to everything then. HCL appears to have been a disastrous strategic move, or at least very poorly executed. It just feels like that whole area needs to be completely changed around so it finally puts the customer first. I’m hoping for more investment and better leadership

When are they going to update the phone system?it’s nearly impossible for customers to get the right department

When are they going to update the phone systems? Seems like the worst phone system for customers in the history of business

I do not work for this company but I just closed my account after the awful service this bank keeps giving me. I also posted a very honest review on yelp. Good riddance Wells Fargo!

In every company that I have ever worked for, my focus has always been advocating for the customer, whether that be in new product development, maintenance of existing products, resolving issues that are encountered, or being available when the customer needed help.

I have had the pleasure/joy over my career of having worked at companies that had this same value set. It was vital that the customer knew that he could trust us to do him right

While at F5, I continued the value set of advocating for the customer, however I soon learned that this was not the value set of F5. I continually encountered strong resistance. Premature release of software, software that was buggy and customer sub cases that were ignored to name a few.

Since my RIF, I have interviewed with many companies and to date haven’t found one that places the customer first. It’s about stock price and revenue. And after F5, I choose not to work in that type of environment again.

I witnessed a sale yesterday where the individual selling never even printed a quote for the customer. Instead they built up an entire quote on tablet and told them about the mandatory pro setup charge and how we would wave it for them. However they never even helped set the phone up for the customer nor did they print a paper receipt afterwards. This type of unethical sales is not what I thought Verizon was all about. If you can't sell by showing the customer everything then you're not selling, you're scamming

Why they give me only 2 weeks?

I put on my resume that I’m management material. How long before I apply for greatnes?

I heard the office was a hoe down show down ya feel. When we going back?

Several C-levels called out by name on LinkedIN for bad customer service.
Not the first time.
WE know that they never cared about employees, even less than customers.
Difference is, you can't fire customers. But THEY can fire YOU and claim FRAUD.
Sooo, WHICH C-level will put his tool belt on, and fix this thing, because they know everything better than anyone else?
Oooor, ANSWER the PHONE (gasp) in a call center that has yet another WHINING customer on the phone?
Ooor, claim 'isolated incident' caused by disgruntled ex-employees?
Ooor, [Insert spin here].
Let the screaming (or laughs) begin..

FIS LOST A WHOLE DEPARTMENT BECAUSE OF HOW BADLY CS WAS LED. The client wants to do it themselves again. THIS IS CRAZY! The investors can feel the cost cutting as well when interacting with this company, the cs line must be awesome xD

Have you ever actually tried to solve a real issue as a customer through AI? It’s ten times worse than dealing with the worst, least-trained human rep. Lately, companies have been using AI mostly as a convenient excuse to cut staff and replace them with cheap offshore labor. It’s more about offshoring than real automation. We’re nowhere near the point where AI can handle large-scale customer service effectively.

What is the latest with APLA and when will it disband?
I'm really concerned about CS and the role they will hold when this change takes effect?
Asking for a friend.
Thanks