Alan Zendell's Blog: It's About Time - Posts Tagged "customer-service"

For this to be meaningful, I have to start a few years back - thus, I'll post it in parts.

Verizon FIOS (their internet fiber optic service) offers each customer 10 megabytes of free web space to create a personal or business website. As a writer, I needed one to showcase my work, so I eagerly dove in.

Users could either work through Verizon's templates or create their own HTML code and use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) software to upload and manage their sites themselves if they wished. FTP simply allows you to add, change, or delete files on someone's server if you have permission to access it.

There was one catch, but in my opinion it was a fair price to pay. The free web space was a perk Verizon offered its customers, but anyone who used it was pretty much on his or her own. They provided no tech support and virtually no documentation. But it was free and we all knew that going in.

All was well until Verizon took one of the corporate actions that infuriates customers and causes the company to have such an abysmal reputation for customer service. (Just check any of the frequent national surveys if you don't believe me.)

As of January 2011 they prohibited FTP file transfers. The decision itself was defensible in that allowing every customer direct access to their servers left them at risk for nasty things like virus uploads. I wasn't too happy but I accepted that as a necessity, like paying taxes.

What I couldn't accept was the arbitrary way the action was taken, basically leaving most customers in the lurch with no warning. They did send warning emails (once) but made no attempt to assure that they went to active accounts. So if a customer wasn't using his or her Verizon email address (most don't) the warning was never seen.

The effect: customers like me were left with web pages in need of updating with no way to do it. Under the new rules we couldn't add, change, or delete anything. Worse, I couldn't even take the site down. I would have to completely rebuild my website using Verizon's web tools, but I couldn't even begin while the old site was up. And Verizon's attitude was, "Sorry, but we told you we weren't providing support for this tool." Seriously?

Stay tuned for Part 2. It gets better.

Assuming you've read Part 1 --- I contacted Verizon tech support and pointed out that they'd taken away my ability to delete my website. They would have to delete it for me, since there was no other way. That gave me my first indication that there was a problem with Verizon's internal organization.

Personal webspace was managed by a mysterious group called the Operations Support Center, or OSC. The name doesn't sound very mysterious, but they are completely insulated from and invisible to tech support. They refuse to engage with customers and won't even speak directly to other components within Verizon.

It went like this: I called tech support, sat through their interminable hold queue, verified who I was four different ways, and told them what I needed. What I got back was the phone equivalent of a blank stare. It wasn't the fault of the tech support person, who sounded truly distressed at not being able to help me, but Personal Web Space wasn't on his radar because Verizon set it up that way. After a long consultation with the ubiquitous supervisor, they determined that they needed to contact OSC. I thought I sensed an ominous tone - apparently contact with OSC is something they shrink from.

OSC won't interact with anyone by phone - they had to use a chat window. It's bizarre. I'm dictating the request to my tech support person while he's typing in his chat window and reading responses back to me, and he's becoming more irritated every second because of the attitude he's receiving from OSC, and I, the poor innocent customer, have to watch this ugly sausage being made.

Finally, my request was acted on, and the website I'd spent countless hours on was taken down. This occurred in August, 2011, and I spent about a week rebuilding my site with Verizon's online tools. The tools aren't terrible, but anyone who builds websites will tell you the things he or she hates most are:

- tools that don't always do what they're supposed to do;
- tools that come with no documentation; and
- feeling limited by someone else's idea of what a web design should look like.

Given all that, I got my website working, though it would have been easier at each step to build it myself, and it would have looked better. Then, last week, I noticed that my allotted space was nearly full. That didn't make sense, because my new web site had to require a lot less storage than the old one. The old one was very heavy on graphics which took up a lot of space. The new one had hardly any graphics and fewer pages.

Verizon's site builder includes a link that lets the user see a list of files stored in his space. When I studied the list I found that all the supporting files for the old site were still there eating my allocation. Our not-so-friendly friends at OSC hadn't deleted my old website at all. They'd simply made it inaccessible.

I wanted my space back, though I knew that meant dealing with OSC and Verizon's crazy process again. Thus began the horror show that I'll describe in Part 3.

First, I want to be clear that throughout the entire ordeal, every single person I spoke with at Verizon engaged with me and really seemed to care that we resolve things in a way that satisfied me. Whatever went wrong wasn't their fault.

Last week I called Verizon tech support and asked to have the files that should have been removed last summer finally deleted. No, I'm not that naive. We did the chat window thing again with OSC, the tech support person relaying my request and reading their responses. We were very clear that under no conditions were my current website files to be touched. And I was assured that a transcript of the chat with OSC would be stored in their computer.

I offered to provide them with a list of the files to be deleted, but they declined, saying they knew what needed to be removed. The next day I received a phone message telling me my files had been deleted. I went online to check that my space had been restored and discovered that it been restored 100% - they'd erased my entire space including my current website.

I was annoyed but not concerned because I knew they could restore my site. A company like Verizon couldn't stay in business without a world class backup system. But there's usually a limited window for file recovery, and the clock was ticking. About three hours had elapsed since the deletion when I called tech support for help. I waited 45 minutes in their hold queue until the system cut me off. That happened three more times wasting a total of three more hours.

Now it's the next morning, 15 hours since my files were deleted. Back in the hold queue, brief this time. Tech support has to follow a script, so it took a while to explain my problem. We played the chat screen game with OSC again and were told that the files weren't recoverable. I knew that was a lie, and tech support relayed that for me. Then OSC said they can't delete individual files - it's all or nothing, so they deleted everything. WITHOUT ANY ATTEMPT TO VERIFY THAT THAT WAS OKAY WITH ME!

In fairly short order, the OSC chatter told tech support it was their problem and ended the chat. I went through the same routine with the tech support supervisor who was amazed that she received exactly the same treatment when she asked OSC for an explanation. All that took three more hours and we hadn't accomplished anything. OSC acted as if it was insulated from everyone else and would not accept responsibility for what they'd done. The tech support people had done everything possible for me and been rebuffed.

The only way to resolve this was to get high enough in Verizon's management to find someone who could tell OSC to restore my files before they were permanently lost. I called tech support again and said I wanted to go higher up the chain. The entire record of the earlier three hours was on their screens.

But I learned that tech support isn't allowed to elevate complaints above the first line supervisor level. That's why they were stuck. I also spent another three hours replaying what had happened earlier with a new support person and a new supervisor. The replay was identical in every way.

More than twenty hours had passed since my files were deleted. I was probably safe for a week, but I wasn't about to waste another hour. Late in the afternoon, I looked up Verizon's Executive Offices in New York, and found a phone number on their website. I called, and a man answered. He asked how he could help me and I told him a 5-min version of the story. I said I wanted my website restored and we all knew there was no reason OSC couldn't do it.

He listened and then another man got on the line. We talked for 15 minutes, much of which was him asking questions that convinced me he was taking it seriously. I stressed the ticking clock and he said I'd hear from someone tomorrow. Okay. I couldn't have asked for more. I believed him.

The next morning my website was restored, and I received three different phone calls, from the man who said he'd get back to me, and from both the last tech support person who'd helped me and his supervisor. I'm really impressed by their response. It was perfect.

As a postscript, I was able to ascertain that it definitely was the action of the Executive Office that forced OSC to move. I like that. Every large organization has problems, but they don't all take responsibility for the harm they do and then fix it.

A second postscript: I still don't have my space back. OSC is still claiming that deleting files is all or nothing. Does anyone out there believe that?