A discussion about the Telecommunication Industry

Talking to any huge company, such as the phone company, cable company, the electric company, or the water company, is enough to drive most customer to utter despair.  Long waits for customer service representatives, that are over worked and not nearly as knowledgeable and as they should be, is the norm and forget about trying to get to a supervisor.  Well, Verizon is trying to change that by assigning a personal account management or “PAM” to it’s FiOS customers, at least in a test market in Florida.  The PAMs will be contractors hire be Verizon to shift much of the customer service load off of their call centers.  The PAMs will put in 12 hour days and will be assigned around 800 accounts each.  They will carry a Blackberry, so their accounts should be able to reach them easily.  The interesting thing will be that PAMs will get a base salary and bonuses based on customer satisfaction and presumably retention.  I would assume the bonuses will make the PAMs go the extra mile to keep their accounts happy.  I have FiOS and the service is great, but dealing with customer care has not always been a good experience.  Hopefully, the PAM trial will go well and Verizon will expand the program to all FiOS customers.