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(17 days ago - 6 Comments) 10:30AM on Jul 10th 2007 by beanspants As a former Customer service representative of 2 of the top 5 companies listed as low ranked in customer service (AOLTW and Comcast) and with several friends who work for AT T (BellSouth) I believe your article has missed the point as to why the customer satisfaction rating is so low. Please allow me to add some insights. To begin with AOLTW has closed most U.

S. call centers so therefore when you call you get a foreigner (India, Mexico, South Africa, Israel, Phillipines). While this saves the greedy corporate monster millions in salary it pisses off customers.

While I was customer service team leader I can’t count the number of escalated calls I took from customers who were calling ONLY to complain about having to talk to a foreigner. Then when they filled out customer service satisfaction surveys they graded negatively not based on the product or the service but based only on the fact that they don’t want to speak to foreigners (especially on a product aptly named AMERICA Online). While TWX stock continues to stagnate the head honchos are making millions and taking lavish “business trips” that cost millions more annually.

Meanwhile they’ve laid off thousands of U.S. workers who currently and will continue to spread bad juju about any TWX products.

Other than the occasional Warner Brothers or New Line Cinema movies I’ve also washed my hands completely of TWX and its products and so has most of my extended family. The problem with Comcast is that each division of Comcast is run by a General Manager who has the ability to do just about anything they want. So what you get is an inconsistency that crosses all state lines.

If I get a great deal from Comcast it won’t do me any good to tell my family members because that deal is only for my area. They even run national commercials that don’t apply to everyone. The worst part is that they pay on the low end of average for call center employees.

Of course all employees know this from the start and those that don’t soon find that they can make more money doing the same job in other call centers. Bottom line? High turnover rate which means that when you call Comcast the chance of speaking to someone who has been around awhile is slim and the chance of speaking to someone 2 weeks to 2 months out of training is good.

Also, those that choose to stay working at Comcast for whatever reason (lazy, loyalty, anal retentive, doesn’t like change, finally got their 8 to 5 Monday thru Friday) stay with a bad attitude because they’ve seen their peers and friends leave to do the same job somewhere else for more money. While I don’t work there and never have I have many friends and previous coworkers who currently work there or who have already worked there and quit. This is probably one the best paying call center jobs in our fair city (Jacksonville,FL) .

But like all things you have to take the bad with the good. In order to make the best money you have to work a split shift 9 to 1, 3 hours off , 4 to 8). Sounds easy but it turns your days in 12 hour days.

Also, they don’t run a 24 hour customer service center so your first 2 hours of the day is spent dealing with highly irate people who have had a problem unresolved for the last 12 hours, which sets the tone for the rest of your day. Also, there is very little (if any) time between calls so you go right from one angry person to another never really getting a chance to clear your head. It would seem to most people that that is what call center people get paid to do.

True in theory but in reality nobody can take being beat up call after call without it affecting them in some way. Of course the penalty for logging off your telephone after a call to collect your thoughts is termination. So what is a person to do?

The only thing they can do. Give mediocre service, make promises that won’t be kept, try not to engage the irate customers too much and find any reason to disconnect the call, at the same time try to engage friendly customers as long as possible so you receive fewer calls and avoid the hassles. The long and short of it all is that call center workers take the verbal beatings from the customers every day while sticking to rigid rules set up by corporate pigs who have never spoken to a customer in their life.

All the rules, ideas, and company policy come from the big wigs. They often ask for ideas from employees but it is usually only lip service. Until a vice president of something makes the suggestion it has no wheels.

Then when the VP suggests it all of a sudden it’s a great idea and everyone is behind it. Of course if the idea fails the VP leaves “to spend more time with their family” while cashing out hundreds of thousands in stock options. Meanwhile all the “yes men” who backed him up act like they knew all along that it was a doomed project and gladly accept their promotions and lateral transfers to fill the void created by the sudden departure of the VP of something.

Back in the trenches the call center employees trudge along and wait for the new policies of the next VP of something to come down the pipe. As far as companies that use foreign call centers. Well, just so you know.

America and Americans hate talking to foreigners for customer service. If you think your saving money by using cheap overseas labor you’re wrong. Most Americans know that corporations are making big money at the top but the little guy makes enough to get buy (maybe).

Every time they speak to a foreigner, in the back of their mind they’re thinking how much they can’t stand the person they’re talking to (although it’s not a personal attack) so sub-consciously it’s already a bad customer experience. When asked how their customer service experience was they will automatically respond that it was negative no matter how it was. Lastly, consumer advocates like Clark Howard or Ralph Nader always advise people to ask for a manager to get their way.

Unfortunately, that trick has been run aground and because of people like that, little by little, managers are desensitized as well which means that even legitimate concerns get lumped together with all the others. I can tell you as a customer service manager that people who refuse to speak to a customer service representative and demand to speak to a manager are the most likely to get nothing. Also everyone in the call center works off rules that are put in place 1000 miles away so it’s not as if anyone in the call center can change the rules ( including the General Manager).

In most places phone reps are not even given a phone number to a corporate office anywhere. Customers are advised to visit the company website to send complaints to corporate. If the customers were as adamant about tracking down a corporate number and “speaking to the president” as they were about squeezing a $30 credit out of a customer service rep they could solve everyones problems in a few short months.

Believe me, if corporate honchos had to listen to customer complaints for a week they would find a way to resolve their concerns. Until then it is what it is and will not change. Corporate boards will go through phases where they invest heavily in customer service to build goodwill and expand product lines.

But when times are hard call centers are the first in the budget cuts. What’s worse is that that simple logic is understood by even the dumbest call center employee so we all know that our jobs aren’t safe. Also, companies don’t really want long term employees in a call center, they become too expensive.

For example, I will use my current salary of $40,000 annually. If I stay at my position for 20 years and earn 3.5% a year raise then I would be making $70,000 annually in 20 years.

That’s just too much to pay a call center supervisor. That goes for every employee in a call center. The longer the stay the more they make.

The more likely to become a victim of downsizing. Or as one of my fellow supervisors in my current work place. He worked 10 years for Prudential and was “downsized”.

Why? It was cheaper to pay him $20,000 severance and a year of medical benefits to walk away than to keep on the payroll at 50k a year and giving him raises for the next 20 years (including that 401k match). In the end they would have been paying 80k a year for a job that a new college grad would do for 38k.

Fair? You be the judge. Posted at 10:49AM on Jul 10th 2007 by Bobby E This is why Sprint won't catch up with the other providers.

The others are not quite this bad, but they have problems too. Companies don't seem to be able to simply appreciate the business that their customers give them. They instead seem to feel that it is their God given right to have that business regardless what they do.

I have been an uninterrupted customer of Bellsouth Mobility/Cingular/AT T for 25 years. I didn't have a choice when I first got service from them because they were the only provider in my area. I have always bought my own phone outright.

I've never seen or received a single perk from my years of business with them. I had an old technology TDMA phone that was serving me well and for this 'sin' I was penalized by an additional $5 service charge per month which really left a bad impression on me. When I did change phones, I was assisted by the rudest customer service rep at the AT T store that I have ever come into contact with in my lifetime.

That brings me to another thing about AT T, they literally take people off the street and give them unlimited and unfiltered access to personal information about customers. Why does a customer rep who is fixing my voice mail, selling me a battery, or changing my service plan need to see my SSN or any of my personal information? No wonder ID theft is so easy!

Why do I stay with them? They still have the best coverage in my area and most of the people I know use this carrier. If there was a better alternative, I would switch in a minute.

The only thing I can say for sure is that Sprint is off my list of choices.