My Supervisor just said that teams are going to be at a 20 to 1 ratio starting in March. Also, that the base pay increase will be lower than the normal 2 to 3% for performing as well.
Is this company just taking advantage of us by giving us less support and letting inflation destroy our financial lives?
That's usually when I break out the Spanish.
It’s embarrassing when you greet a customer and the first thing is them mentioning how they “can’t understand someone on the phone because they speak another language”. Like how do you respond to that when you know damn well what they’re talking about.
Anyone have any best practices?
5dvl- I could care less how anyone feeds their family.
10 years working in stores gives a person the experience necessary to operate a store. 100 years in the stores wouldn't begin to equip someone with the optics and/or perspective necessary to see what needs to be done globally.
If you wish to gain that experience, work your way up the ladder. Until then, know that you're probably going to look foolish when you spout off about extremely localized views.
This is actually a good decision. Sups in call centers have meetings all day and our actual support comes from the coordinators. Now they just need to get rid of the useless lead sup/senior manager and/or combine them to make everything leaner.
As far as all the Slammers on here, if you ding dongs actually knew how to use click to call you wouldn’t have problems. More than half of you still call activations for billing issues/tech support.
@4ypy+1krqPKxj Whether you spend 10-years in retail or 3 years as a SVP, the job is the same - make customers (internal and/or external) happy. Shame on you for making fun of how people put bread on their table!
Baaa ...I'll keep collecting my $100,000 plus a year to manage a store, laughing all the way to the bank!!!
B-a! 10 yrs in the stores!?!? Even if you're managing it, that is so weak! I'm embarrassed to say I've been here 3 years. What happened? Did you pi-s someone off or something? I'd be looking outside the company long before that. Or, have you been? I don't know which is worse... Being so lazy that you're not looking for all those yrs. Desperately applying everywhere for 10 yrs with no results. Or, any combination inbetween.
3xyo+1krqPKxj, you my friend are obviously living on denial Island, I agree with previous poster, I've been with the company for over 10 yrs, in stores, and the customer service we now have is atrocious, I can talk to 4 people and get 4 different answers, most always they are wrong, I also agree that customers are coming into stores and complaining about how bad our customer service has become, or they are sent into our store to do things that a store cannot do because obviously the care reps don't know what's going on. This is not an anomaly, it happens daily, and if you ask most all reps and management in a store they will agree. As for baby boomers, lol, we have just as many 20 and 30 somethings that come in with the same issues as the older people, and I don't think it's fair for you to say someone is a bigot because they are making a complaint, I don't care if you're white ,green or purple, if you're not doing your job, you're not doing your job, and it's making everyone else's job harder. And I don't care if you work from home or report to a call center, you still need to know how to do your job. If you look anywhere on line, people are constantly complaining about not only our network but how horrid our customer service has become.
I am sorry if I'm a little vague... Obviously I have to honor my non-disclosure agreement. However, my position is one that requires me to see and analyze the data relevant to managing customer contacts. @2ftk is absolutely correct. We are preparing for a day when contact with a rep of any sort will be rare. No longer servicing baby boomers will be a big step in that direction. In the meantime we have IT working on making self serve more capable. We now have certain problems that are detected and resolved without the customer even noticing! There is a massive effort concerning contact volume reduction.
@3pev, Individual experiences are anecdotal and not valid for making business decisions. This is why corporations spend billions on collecting data and ensuring its accuracy. I assure you experiences like you describe are rare in the grand scheme of things. I suspect you may just be having bad luck. Or, you may be focusing on only the bad experiences. Those are the ones that tend to stick with us. Alternatively, it is apparent that you harbor some bigotry. Maybe something in the way you interact with foreigners (consciously or unconsciously) is instigating the problem on a consistent basis.
In regards to your customers complaining... you work in customer service. If things are going swimmingly customers don't seek you out. You only see them when they're having trouble. I think, again, we are looking at perception bias as the data doesn't reveal this on a large scale.
FYI... just because you don't report to a building doesn't mean you're not still part of a call center. We still organize by various groups for a variety of reasons. We still refer to one level of those groups as call centers.
The fact that this has to be explained to you tells me that you're pretty low on the totem pole if you work for us at all.
Yea, when I as an employee have to call in, talk to 6 people that know NOTHING and just get transferred back and forth for an hour that saves tons of money. When we have to issue credits because the care reps that have no idea what is going on are so d-mb that they note accounts with wrong info , that saves money, when customers come into a store with printed out chats from our awesome chat reps ( outsourced of course, basically same people that are in care ) saying they are getting bogo on 2 upgrades, or they are promised $800 for a trade in that is only $100 per the promo sheet ( you know, the one that's printed out or easily accessible on a computer to anyone that works for the company) how is that saving money. There are times it takes hours to finally get someone that can fix an issue that should take 5 minutes, but our "SUPPORT" people know less than the people that are supporting. It a frickin joke. Go on line or come stand in a store and listen to the customers complain about how bad our customer service is compared to how it used to be, we literally have people cancelling their service because of issues with customer service.
Saw this post and I have to laugh. Obviously this person is either a bot or has no clue about Customer Service or Verizon in general. Everyone knows we don't even have call centers anymore. Haha, clown post.
"Statistically, boomers are the vast majority of customers calling in." - No they're not, this isn't even close to being true.
"Everyone else prefers self serv if it's possible. If not, chat is the go to." - People call in for things that can't be self serve, also Chat is part of Customer Service.
"There are less and less boomers every day. It won't be long before they're all gone. This means there are less and less customers to support the cost of the call centers." - The fact that you don't know that Verizon sold off all of their call centers years ago and there are none discredits any knowledge you have about Verizon.
"Which means we have to find ways to make call centers profitable." - There are no call centers.
"Expensive US reps are not the way to do that. In terms of rep performance, the offshore reps are on par with US based." - No basis for this.
"In any case, offshore reps, on average, cost less than 10% of an average US rep. Offshore reps would have to consistently generate over 10 calls to resolve issues before they equal the cost of US reps. The offshore reps are doing far better than that." - It's not the number of calls someone generates. It's the amount of big sc--w ups it causes. How many customers they lose the company.
Statistically, boomers are the vast majority of customers calling in. Everyone else prefers self serv if it's possible. If not, chat is the go to.There are less and less boomers every day. It won't be long before they're all gone. This means there are less and less customers to support the cost of the call centers. Which means we have to find ways to make call centers profitable. Expensive US reps are not the way to do that.
In terms of rep performance, the offshore reps are on par with US based. In any case, offshore reps, on average, cost less than 10% of an average US rep. Offshore reps would have to consistently generate over 10 calls to resolve issues before they equal the cost of US reps. The offshore reps are doing far better than that.
Foreign customer service causes more problems than the savings on wages. They also turn the US customer base away from wanting to do business with Verizon. It shows what cheapskates the big wigs are who would rather pay employees garbage wages than to get some quality back into the business.
Reminder that Verizon is still making billions in profit, but act like increasing wages will crash the company.
It's not so much the language of these outsourced folks that bothers me. I mean, English is their second language. Everyone here have a second language? Doubt it. No, my problem is the more glaring one, and that's these folks have no real idea what the he-l they are talking about and it's maddening that I call into a support team that has absolutely ZERO idea how to support me. It's asinine. I mean why even hire anyone? You outsource to save money, but they suck so now you just played yourself, paying people that can't even help. Genius. And these decision makers all sit at home making big bucks not giving a real sh-t about anyone in the field. Nice job. Bravo
It has absolutely nothing to do with the nationality of our ceo. It's basic business. There's less and less demand for phone based service and us based reps are expensive. The demand doesn't justify the cost. It's only getting worse as time goes on.
I wonder what the ratio of outsourced CS to United States based is. What's the point for US based CS at this point. I can't even remember the last time I had someone from this country on the phone. Anti American as all he-l but I suppose that's what you get when you hire someone who is not American to be CEO. Looks like Q1 will just be more of the same.
Those 20 reps probably can't communicate with the customer like the reps in the stores. Maybe that's what they want... With View Together being a thing its much easier to not give customers credits when they have seen the impacts to their bill. Great job Verizon, you have learned how to pass it back to the customer and to the employees all in one foul swoop. And you say you care about your customer's and employee's...
I got a care rep located in Romania the other day
Just heard yesterday that Telesales is even being outsourced .When did this start? Wow !
@OP+1krqPKxj Only until 2024 when Care gets completely outsourced. Next year will be tough - more work, less resources …. its not just VZ!