Just about anything a Verizon customer service rep can do, a Verizon customer can do, so why not eliminate the middleman? With major enhancements to its self-service capabilities, that’s just what the carrier hopes its customers do.
Verizon talked up its expanded and enhanced self-service tools for wireline residential customers this week, saying it enabled customers to do everything from shopping for bundles of services to paying bills to fixing problems with TV and Internet services around the clock.
“A lot of this has been in formation for a while, but together it achieving its basic thrust which is business competitiveness,” said James Smith, director of media relations at Verizon.
It also is aimed at reversing the slump in FiOS subscriptions last quarter and helping to maintain healthy loyalty and churn numbers, which Smith said get reported as results as the company becomes a more marketing-tuned organization.
“The energy around this is very big. The FiOS footprint keeps growing, but new subscriptions did slip last quarter so maybe we have to do more to make sure people can engage with us the way they want to,” Smith said.
The online and voice-activated tools are designed to put customers in direct control of their specific service needs, especially the growing number using self-service tools already for paying bills and making purchases online.
“People are already hitting the radio buttons to make things happen, so we wanted to make self-service worthy of our customer engagements,” Smith said.
Verizon now has the support section of its “Webby Award-winning” customer service Web site, its online ordering, FiOS Interactive Media Guide, In-Home Agent software and voice-activated IVR making up its self-service thrust.
With test features inherent on the FiOS set top box, subscribers can do just about anything a CSR can do, from polling their link to resetting the box to self-diagnostics. “So why should you have to call to ask someone to do what you would do yourself [if you could],” Smith said.
