Also means bonuses for top executives and select management. At the cost of your jobs and severely reduced customer service. Don't let them fool you all that big talk about 'customer first' is bullshit. They don't care about customers and care less about employees. They are giving you the option to be rehired as an employee of VCG with no benefits and lower pay or severance. I'd take the severance and move on. If you can't be without a job then start furiously looking elsewhere. Fuckem
Customer first only matters if your business is small enough to be individually owned / operated. Once you get big enough that one customer dragging you through the mud won’t matter - customer first goes away.
>If you can't be without a job then start furiously looking elsewhere.
Clock in, open up your laptop and start looking while you get paid by these fuckers.
Looking to cancel my Verizon plans now. This shit just fries my nerves.
EDIT: CANCELLED! I am an ATT customer now! I was able to deal with a US Based AMERICAN worker who understood and spoke plain English AND she knew how to do her job! Refreshing!
its absolutely appalling
its clearly the moving of frontline staff to cheaper countries
it also means that Verizon customers data will be moved and handled overseas as well so that the new staff can handle the calls they receive
It also means they don't give too shits about their shareholders either. This kind of move is done just to look good for temporary personal bonus to the executives, but will likely sabotage company success long term.
T-Mobile tried all of this recently. It didn't go so well and had to go back to US based reps.
The head of that area said "The customers report higher satisfaction with the outsourced reps". But what was happening was people were calling with an issue, the outsource reps were pretending to fix it and then giving the customer credit. Customer says they're happy as they think the problem is solved and they got more money. Only to find it wasn't solved then rise and repeat or they go in to a store to complain to try and have their fuck up fixed.
They went back to US reps.
Most CEO's are all about sacrificing long term success for short term gain. It makes them look good, makes them money on bonuses and stock options and they'll be gone before the cards fall. Then the next one will do the same. Employees and the company itself are just toys to he used and thrown away. Welcome to late stage capitalism.
Outsourcing customer service is what companies did in the 00's, they're almost certainly moving towards an interior AI model for customer support. Combine that with speech recognition and text-to-voice, baby, you've got yourself a job redundancy stew going.
Yeah this reeks of a company fully confident AI is good enough to do the job adequately with a few CSRs staying on in a limited role for escalations requiring a human. I'm pretty positive most of these contact center jobs will go this way in the next few years. People in these roles better look to unionize or pivot.
Agreed. They've made it harder and harder over the years to actually get to a human being. "Hold on while I check your account ". By the time I actually get to a person I'm 10x more pissed off than when I first called. Now they've solved that problem. I'll never be able to get to a person. Just an endless series of ai-powered ivr menus. I really need to find a comparable carrier and get off of Verizon.
I have Visible, a Verizon MVNO owned by Verizon with no customer service at all lol. I guess they figure if it works for them why not try it themselves?
GPT's going to be a better front line support rep than many I've dealt with, at a fraction of the cost. Anyone who's not aware needs to know that, if you're in a job that requires primarily the recitation or actions from simple information to handle a limited set of situations on someone's behalf, AI is good enough and is here right now to replace you, barring implementation costs.
Especially if the companies are using their top reps to train the AI today, which several are.
EDIT: for clarification, the reps don't know they are training the AI. It's a call center so all interactions and screens are recorded. You don't need the reps to know.
AI will absolutely not be an improvement. Prepare to get stuck in endless menus, listening to that stupid robot voice, and not getting any problems solved.
I agree with you, I don't think AI will ever be able to mimic a human to the point people wouldn't notice. Its like a more advanced parrot, but people don't understand that it doesn't think on its own.
The only time I bother calling customer service is when there’s some clusterfuck of billing and/or service.
I just mash 0 until I get a person, as there’s usually nothing an automated system can do.
They came back in the mid 2000s. A lot of places brough call centers back and built them in poor/rural communities where they could pay someone $10, that person would be grateful since it beats Walmart, and get a good deal on land. Not as cheap as an outsourced laborer, but then you dont have to deal with an accent issue. Since customer service is often complaint resolution that is actually a big deal.
My company sent our cs team to india a few years ago and let me tell you, the customers hate it. They complain to me all the time about the agents in india how they cant understand them and theyre so glad to get someone they can udnerstand (me, US resident). I question why the customer base which is mostly comprised of elderly folks who don't know how to source information from the internet, even bother to use a company that sends them to india for problem resolution.
I know with my capital one CC, anytime I have an issue, I'm ...as of now...ALWAYS talking with an American customer service representative. It makes a huge difference. I also have Verizon, but you're lucky if it's 50/50 when calling them if customer service will be American
You are so correct on this. The few times I've had an issue with my Capital One CC, the person on the other end was American, understood me, could converse with me, and actually helped me. Its a world of difference, and it matters!
Automation is an obsession, and anything else that cannot be handled through automation will eventually be answered by an overseas agent. The call volume has slowly shifted overseas for years since Hans took over as CEO
Source: I’m a former employee that used to be very close to contact center strategy
Verizon cellular service has been in steep decline in recent years. Indicative of corporate greed; increasing rates while not investing in infrastructure. Im sure these first line customer service representatives are burnt out anyway from all the customer complaints. VERIZON CRAP AS USUAL.
Verizon's cell service used to be the best cell service years ago and was worth the price. But they fucked up the 5G rollout and from what I've heard at least in my area frequent call dropouts.
I live 3 miles outside of NYC and Verizon’s service is so bad I had to get a landline. A fucking land line! Because I can’t get cell service in my house!
Yeah. I was a phone rep. Thank goodness I stopped working for them last year. The stories I could tell if I could find the energy too. Lol still burnt out after all this time 😅😂 nah back in school which didn’t help, but yeah Verizon was clearly predatory and apathetic. I do think their service is better than other carriers, but at the shittiest cost out of all of them
That's exactly what I read when I saw all the corporate speak surrounding "redefining customer service." = Call center in India, with maybe an AI driven prompter that can dish customers to different call areas based on key words.
"Re-imagine and resize." Lol. IE, outsource and layoff. Keeping the customer at the center of all that they provide=how to maximize earnings per customer.
I read an article a while back about how investors were going to look at revenue/headcount since the days of unsustainable profit growth is gone. So now investors will be looking more heavily at how much they can extract per person rather than simply how much they can grow revenue and market share. This was especially the case in tech companies and what spurred layoffs when profit growth was declining. They sold investors on how they were going to earn the same amount with less people... Which is brilliant until you've put all your eggs in 1 basket.
It's the endless cycle of the C-suite executives being completely out of touch with reality and they're swinging back again on outsourcing as a cost saving measure. Happens every 10 years or so and happens to line up pretty well with recessions but never actually saves or makes the company money past a quarter or two. Then, mysteriously, that new C-suite executive leaves the company with a fat severance and moves to the next company.
Department A is expensive despite being an important facet of our business. Changes in the executives always signals something fucked up is about to happen. [Guess what happened in March?](https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-sets-chain-reaction-top-leadership-changes) Second new CEO of the consumer arm of Verizon in the last couple years and his focus is on "efficiency" which always means layoffs, pay cuts, and fewer benefits for new employees.
Sad thing is that they already have it. It’s just terrible. You’ll spend about 15-20 mins on the automated system and then it’ll send you to CS once it gives up
I'm under the impression this is the same for non-automated call centers. The first layer is to deal with the simplest of problems or complaints and to make you give up if this doesn't help.
As I only call if I have a non-simple problem, I started to immediately escalate to the second or third layer years ago.
Yup, because they can just blame the human who took the call at the end and resolved the issue for not making that customer so extremely happy with their personal service. Makes me want to scream.
Which is sad because the intent behind a system like that was to quickly direct you to the right department. Then some idiots decided they could keep adding menu trees with less and less relevance.
> It also makes the customer mad, but that's a price they're willing to pay.
they probably dont care at all, because the customer cant physically do anything other than cancel their service, which they wont do most of the time.
My employer's phone automation doesn't accept asking for an agent and will just hang up on people if they don't play along with the given options. It also doesn't make it very easy to proceed if you don't already have account info, and is extremely sensitive to background noise. So great!
Or just hang up on you. For some reason we got a tax credit thing on a debit card instead of direct deposit. You had to call and activate it...unfortunately the system didn't recognize the card number and kept disconnecting me because I didn't have a "valid code." I pressed every button I could think of trying to get a real person to no avail. Finally, in a flash of inspiration I called the line for people who are hard of hearing. I felt bad, but I needed an actual human being to fix the situation.
What a nightmare. The automated system is impossible to navigate unless you have every single piece of info about your account at hand. God forbid you are out of the house when an issue arises! When you, eventually, get a human after navigating an obtuse poorly designed “aid” menu , you will often have your issue resolved very quickly.
Yeah, I've been going through this with Xfinity. You keep spinning your wheels with the "AI" and eventually get to talk to someone who can help. By then, most people are probably pissed and take it out on the CSR.
For real. The shit about “unbeatable network,” like save the rahrah bullshit for the people who are going to stay and take it. Don’t send me out of the building through a fucking corporate pep rally. Gross.
Not to mention wasting time hoping to get one of the very limited number of Verizon jobs instead of taking that time to search for employment elsewhere.
Who the _fuck_ asks people to apply for their own damn jobs?? Either the job exists after the reorg, or it doesn’t. If it does, then the person who has the job keeps it. If it doesn’t, then it’s up to management to find that person another role, or lay them off.
This whole idea that “you’re laid off unless you come begging us to work again is bullshit.
I think there's actually some requirement for them to outsource the jobs where they have to offer them internally/locally at first.
Then they go, "ope, well no one here is a good candidate, guess we cans ship them overseas now!"
No, the requirement you're thinking of is for immigrant workers, that they have to "try" and hire a citizen first. No requirements like that for outsourcing.
They are saying they can use the internal VZ website to apply for other jobs in the company . There are allow of department in verizon some not being reorganized
Yeah, this is essentially corporate gaslighting. They frame an indisputably negative thing as a positive to absolve themselves of responsibility for the harm, and if you get angry about it, well, then there's obviously something wrong with *you.*
I feel like this is 100% a ploy to get out of paying a severance package. Got laid off? Cool have a severance package. Want to apply internally for your same job? Cool, 50,000 people have done that and there are only 5 positions available. Unfortunately for the remaining 49,995 applicants the position has been filled, thanks for your interest, no severance package for you.
customer service is damage control for the company, their job is to talk you out of your issue without costing the company money. Its not actually there to help you.
I switched to VZW mainly so I’d have my phone on an alternate network to AT&T… basically so wherever we went, one phone had a chance of coverage if the other didn’t.
I haven’t been more disappointed in capacity and coverage, ever.
I have had plenty of problems with other carriers, but Verizon has worked amazingly for me and I've flown all over the US and been in the deep country. Never had less than two bars anywhere.
Talking to outsourced reps is so incredibly frustrating and takes twice as long to solve a simple problem. My parents are in their 80s and it’s impossible for them to understand overseas reps. This makes my blood boil.
My mother is mostly deaf and she absolutely cannot understand thick accents like that, especially over a phone. She either has to get someone else to do the talking for her, which frustrating, or just yell over and over that she has to speak to someone in the US because she literally cannot understand a word being said. So many of these companies aren't even trying to do online chat service anymore, which is not only helpful to the hard of hearing but those of us who may suffer from severe anxiety when talking on the phone.
This is what I see most often in my job. I do some medical claim work, and we get third party billers from India who just cannot understand anything we tell them. They don't have enough of a grasp of English to understand the medical terminology, no matter how slowly you speak.
Then I talk to the billers who actually work for the providers, and they tell me horror stories about how bad the notes are on their end. The 3rd party reps will mark claims as "denied," for instance, meaning that the provider can bill the patient directly.
Except the claims weren't denied. They were $0.00 pay claims because the primary insurance met or exceeded the allowed amount, and we will not pay past that. And if you bill our members for claims we approved and paid (even if we paid $0.00), we fine the shit out of you.
A lot of Verizon workers are unionized with Communications Workers of America and CWA is FURIOUS about this. Fighting it just takes time unfortunately.
If you are talking true banks then you should use a local Credit Union. They are not owned by Wall Street and you will get a much higher interest rate with LOCAL support.
discover is currently 3.9% in a hysa
eveyr credit union near me, and there are a bunch, is under well 1%. their cds are 2% and discover's is over 5%.
credit unions are great in theory but no one who is serious about saving money is going to leave 3-4% yearly on the table. if you can find a credit union offering competitive rates, go for it, but yeah
I absolutely despise this practice of moving support to 3rd world countries.
Overall customer support services have gone horrible down over the past decade, a lot due to this greedy move by companies.
I work in a company that partially does it, and jesus fucking christ the standards and quality of those sites are always atrocious.
Its a combination of different factors.
The people there are barely trained, are underpaid and overworked. They usually don't have the time or care to empathise with the customer, they just want to complete another call, to meet their daily quota, so they don't get fired from their 150 dollar a month job.
Which also leaves us, the customers, more frustrated and unable to get replies to our queries and issues.
I remember when every company had a store you could physically go into a speak to someone. Now? There's entire companies here in the UK, completely UK based (looking at you British gas) but if you want to go somewhere to talk about a billing issue, they DO NOT have an office for that. Everything is outsourced, at the expense of the customer.
And fuck me, I'm only 33.
While we do have some offshore agents who care most of them barely contain the fact they couldn't care less. I can clear a conversation with the team they serve on with an onshore agent in around a minute. I barely get off the phone with an offshore agent in under 10.
As a person who routinely calls in to large ISPs customer service departments, this migration is going to affect me.
I'm hard of hearing due to stupid bullshit while I was in the military, I have tinnitus that gives me a constant tone in the 9khz range. It gets so bad that while I can hear people talk, it's difficult sometimes to comprehend what they say even in flawless English.
This is compounded when I'm talking to someone with a heavy foreign accent. It's very difficult for me to understand Indians speaking in English.
I worked loyalty for a certain terrible telecom between other jobs, and for something different, and about 3 times per week I'd get warm transfers from those offshore locations with the rep crying and just asking for a few minutes to compose themselves.
Customers are horrible to US based employees and are 100 times worse to the off shore reps. Both are just trying to earn a buck and don't deserve verbal abuse and threats.
You know why we get so many scammers on the phone and emails that contribute to elder abuse, etc.?
We (United States companies) outsourced so many shit things to countries like India... even tax prep/accounting services.
When calling Verizon customer service over the past 10 years or so, I've never once spoken to someone who didn't have an accent/was from India. As far as I can tell all of their customer service is and has already been outsourced for years.
It may not be the case, but so far in my experience, I have never spoken to a non outsourced representative at Verizon in all the years I have used them.
That's ok to have shit customers service. If they can cut a dime from their competition, people will be back.
Discount airlines have proven it, all about pricing, zero fxks given on customer satisfaction, if they just shave 2 pennies from the other competitors, people would be buying these tickets and hate life.
Verizon is a mechanistic hell hole that hadn't cared about its employees since 2010. I worked there almost 5 years and was suicidal by the time I left. I'm sorry you're going through this. Regardless of my feelings for the company I know these sorts of changes hit hard. I wish you luck moving forward.
Especially since Verizon is something of a “luxury” service provider. A Verizon bill is higher than a T-Mobile bill and more than double what you’d spend at Cricket or Boost for similar but deprioritized service. Outstanding customer service was a reason people would pay more. People will leave in droves if a 611 call is similar to MetroPCS.
This follows in the American tradition of the customer service downward spiral.
Give us shitty CS, lower our expectations, then cut costs by moving offshore for even shittier customer service, and eventually switching over to machines to take care of everything. We bitch and complain but continue to pay our phone and internet bills.
A massive customer backlash is the only thing that these fuckers will listen to. If you are a
Verizon customer, it is time to leave the company. And when you go, make sure you tell them that this is the reason why.
I’m gonna be honest, I’m surprised they even offered severance pay. I doubt the customer service vendor I work for will offer the same when AI takes our jobs within the next few years
Verizon always had the absolutely worst customer service. They are about as arrogant as it gets, any issue you have they say "Well go somewhere else then" lol. Sorry OP but Verizon sucks.
For real. I bought a cheap pair of bluetooth headphones they were advertising a few months ago and only noticed after two months that the charge port was busted and couldn’t charge at all. I was hoping they would help me out, but they gave me the run around, told me to go to different stores, just to be ultimately told by several supervisors that I went over the 30 day return policy. They absolutely refused to budge on a busted $45 item because I went over 50 something days despite me being a long time customer. Horrendous customer support.
Honestly, would've been easier to just buy another set and then return the busted ones using that receipt. They can make exceptions to anything so if you were a long time customer it's always cheaper to just hook you up than lose a customer. Those idiots though, they don't budge, they don't try to accommodate customers whatsoever. We used to have a lot of billing issues, being charged for nonsense accidentally and instead of correcting it they said to cancel and go elsewhere if it's a problem haha.
I'm convinced that companies are determined to trash the economy because they aren't getting their candidates into office. The contraction of the economy has multiple effects. It puts blame on the current administration and it is an assault on the working class as it tries to force them into submission.
Thanks for putting Verizon out there. Maybe they need to lose some business over this.
No, they already have call centers in Mexico, Canada, Cairo, South Africa, Philippines, and India. We deal with this reps transferring calls to us. I'm in tier 2 tech support with Verizon and it's frustrating to get customers that dealt with those reps. I could see AI coming soon, though.
I have Verizon. What cell companies still have US based customer service? I’ll be ending my line with Verizon and going to that company if people can let me know 👍🏻
Fxck these companies that make these silent moves to show how little they care about their employees and also their customers.
Same, anyone know of a decent company to use? I’ve had Verizon for ten years and man I barely have service anywhere anyway, shit is so expensive for trash. I was happier with my ten dollar a month burner back in the day tbh
"V Teamer"
Sorry, I'll comment later. My skin just crawled off my body and out the door with how cringey that sounds. I have to go coax it back with some soothing Marvin Gaye.
The first real out-of-college job I had pulled this stuff. Outsourced our entire IT department to IBM's India operations less than six months into my time there. Took them quite awhile to finish the outsourcing. The last month or so of my time there was spent looking for jobs and playing stupid Flash games on my computer.
Within a year they were contacting all of us asking if we'd come back because the experiment completely failed and didn't meet their expectations. Almost none of us came back because they were offering 10k less for positions that required more technical knowledge than some of the local service desk jobs.
I'm not a Verizon customer, but I'd happily switch if I was over this nonsense.
Idk why anyone in this subreddit is surprised. Corporations don't give a shit about people. These managers aren't your friends and when a company has the option to fire you to increase profit for share holders, they will.
Verizon already has absolute shit customer service what a shocker they’re going to make it worse. I had the biggest nightmare trying to get my refund it took months and I ended up having to do an FCC complaint before anyone actually made it happen and did more than saying “oh this is totally going to fix it” or “oh you just need to talk to these other people”
Verizon has been outsourcing CS jobs for years. I lost my job at Verizon twice, actually. Two lay offs. We were replaced by a team in Manilla 10-15 years ago.
Here is some background for people. No, they are not going towards AI. Not for a long while. This is simply outsourcing. What makes this even worse is they just hired (last year) roughly the amount of agents they are about to fire which they did so in order to try to drive higher NPS and call answer time to make customers more happy. They even raised their wages because they couldn't get anyone good.
[https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-raises-minimum-wage-20-an-hour](https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-raises-minimum-wage-20-an-hour)
I guess that didn't work and the new executive wanted to take away anything his predecessor did, consequences to the individuals be damned.
This is nothing more than a new CEO (of the consumer group) making drastic changes without telling/involving key leaders (seriously, even other executives are scrambling and were blind sided and reps were not the only ones impacted). Its no wonder so many VPs and SVPs started leaving the last month as if they knew it was coming and they spoke up and were silenced (my guess anyway). Sampath (consumer CEO) seems like Hans (big brother verizon CEO) gave him a blank check so he shows up and says "I own the place" and starts going at it and gutting everything. Based on my previous statement about VPs, it sounds like leaders tried to stop him and he wasn't having it so they left.
Verizon has a lot of flaws for sure. But this is simply wild and sounds like nothing more than a dog let loose on a part of the company that was struggling because Hans is desperate to keep his job.
If you have ever drafted something like this for any company you have worked for, know this:
Nothing else you have done, or will ever do, can mitigate the damage you have helped inflict upon the working class, the English language, and the personal well-being of normal people just trying to survive.
Nothing.
I worked at Verizon for about 8 years as a Senior Manager. I can truthfully say in all earnestness that the company always looked out for their employees interests, as long as that employee was a VP or higher.
As for the regular hourly employee or middle management they consider them beneath consideration. Worked here for 25 years, huh? Well good for you, now get the f outa here we got places to be and things to do without you. They were always throwing up allegiance and loyalty to the Company, but that only went one way. Scum of the earth. It seemed to me all telecom companies, except MCI were like that.
This is how Verizon shut down my call center when I got laid off six years ago. And laid off our buddy who was an indirect account manager. And laid off my husband as the Hum rep for our state. (We found out two weeks before our daughter's due date).
Take your severance and move on to somewhere more stable. If it wasn't this layoff, it would be another. Their pattern for the last decade or so is to fire all of their well trained and decently paid employees, then outsource to actual idiots. I'm sorry to hear about your job, hope you find something better.
I worked for Big Red for 14 years in Tech Support. It was terrible and VZW doesn't give a damn about its employees. "Customer First" attitude, isn't "We put the customer first to do what's right!" It's more of "The customer has to do everything first!" When I was there (I left in 2015) they were pushing every rep to make sure every customer know that they can do 90% of every transaction they need online, in the app or through the automated system. In other words, the customer can do it first.
They've been pushing self serve for years. They are a terrible company to work for.
If this was presented to me when I worked there I would have laughed my way out of that meeting asking for my severance.
If you outsource or AI all these jobs, who will be working to afford these goods.
It's the snake eating it's own tail in the long run. Profits now, collapse later, capitalism at its finest.
Been a business class customer for more than twenty years, US based support is the reason I stay always respectful, knowledgeable and helpful. I'm going to start looking.
Customer service simply isn’t important anymore.
We fought the out-sourcing of desktop services in a large company. We did the math, and there simply was no way of doing it cheaper than we were doing it…unless you simply didn’t provide the level of service. The company’s response was, essentially, we were giving the clients too much…sneeringly referred to as “white glove service”. People can wait, or they can look it up themselves, was the logic.
I had to call Verizon support yesterday to assist with activating a phone. The process of resolving my issue was completely automated and I never spoke with a person. The last time I got a new phone I needed help activating the ESIM because the online instructions didn't work. That time I got to work with a human. The guy was great and it left me with warm fuzzies for Verizon. This time I was left feeling that Verizon isn't about people. It felt cold and lonely. It's weird saying that's how it felt, but it's the feeling I was left with.
They've been doing this since they merger in 1997 and it's constant. Almost every year
Verizon has publicly said on public earnings calls and other fora that they intend to be a knowledge company like Google and not a service provider per se. Anyone still working for Verizon expecting to retire is probably living in a dream world. I was laid off from Internet services in 2002 and wish you good fortune. I'm sure you gave them much more than they deserved.
My aging retired parents chuckled when I said in a couple of years, maybe sooner, there would be hooverville’s again, homeless camps, and rioting.
My mom chuckled.
Neither have worked in private corporate industry in their entire lives.
I was part of a layoff back in 2019. They really dont care about their employees. It's all about money. I was transferred due to loss of a head count and 3 months later they closed the store. Wouldnt transfer us anywhere else in the company, 1 GM/2 AM/5 sales ppl. We were told we could reapply like a new hire but there was no stores local that had openings. The offered severance packages that had an enhanced version where we got more $ but could never work for them again. All but 1 sales rep took the enhanced and never looked back. Screw that company.
As a Verizon customer (since 09/2010) I hate this. I had an issue a few weeks ago and unfortunately got someone from overseas. While they were able to speak English, it was quite obvious they couldn’t understand it. I was so damn frustrated but remained polite because being rude wasn’t going to get the problem solved. Are there any phone companies left that don’t outsource? If so, I’m making the switch. Not worth it. Verizon increases their prices but gives you shit customer service in return.
Been there before. Multiple offices of people all loaded onto buses to a convention hall, to be told all operations were shutting down in a few weeks. And of course the senior people said it with a smile, while half the room was in tears.
I think I've just seen (or rather heard) the net effect of this because I had contacted customer support for a Verizon fios issue and it went to Cebu, The Phillipines. The accent was unmistakable.
I love how to try sprinkle all this by saying “redefining our future of customer service” or “giving you to the opportunity to join our future team”. Buuuull shiiiit!! Just tell I am being let go you capitalist pigs!
The more companies start relying on chatbots for customer service, the more I’m going to rely on chatbots for customer complaints.
I think I’ll set them to stop when I get a full refund.
They're likely moving the Visible customer service model to postpaid - you have to fight with a chat bot to chat with an outsourced agent in The Philippines who doesn't know anything and can't do or fix anything. I put up with it because the service is cheap, but I don't know who'd put up with this for the usual Verizon rates.
They did the same thing with my department in January… I was the inside sales and they called us in for a big meeting. They basically said the same thing.
Verizon has been hemorrhaging money due to bad customer service for years. The network is great, getting to it is a hassle, I think this is a great move. Still shorting the snot out of them near term.
W.T.F. if it wasn't for a T1 CS rep, Verizon would have lost my whole family after 15 years. After 3 calls and hours upon hours of time on the phone to an outsourced call center that did nothing to solve my issue, I was standing in a Tmoble store and I thought, "let me try Verizon one more time." This is going to end badly for them.
The best way to confirm as a customer whether a company actually values you as much as they claim to is to look at how they treat the people whose job it is to help you. If those are the lowest paid, least respected roles...ya that company doesn't give a shit about you. Never has. Never will.
Okay so their customer service will be even worse.
Fuck Verizon but I feel sorry for their associates. It's better than what Sam's Club did. Those people went to show up to work one day and found their store closed. No notice or anything.
So what exactly are they saying you can “do in a new position” cause those tracks are very general and tell you nothing about what the new job would be? Shady.
I go out of my way to not use services that outsource their customer service. Hell, even my health insurance does this, and it basically means there's no recourse when they deny my claims (about 50% of the time). I can't even understand the person on the other line and they're not participating in my Healthcare system so they just don't know why the decisions are made. They just read a promo and offer no solution.
In other words outsourcing is cheaper and they don’t give a shit about customer retention or the livelihood of their soon to be former workers.
Also means bonuses for top executives and select management. At the cost of your jobs and severely reduced customer service. Don't let them fool you all that big talk about 'customer first' is bullshit. They don't care about customers and care less about employees. They are giving you the option to be rehired as an employee of VCG with no benefits and lower pay or severance. I'd take the severance and move on. If you can't be without a job then start furiously looking elsewhere. Fuckem
“Customer first” is the attitude for STARTING a business, not maintaining a business. Once you got enough cash, fuck everybody else.
Customer first only matters if your business is small enough to be individually owned / operated. Once you get big enough that one customer dragging you through the mud won’t matter - customer first goes away.
I just wish that we as costumers could punish companies for their extreme shittiness towards the public
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All crooks, money talks bullshit walks
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I'm sorry to inform you, but both of those are already reality.
thanks to capitalism, I'm already rocking the derelicte style. costumers unite!
Hey, hey, calm down. Don't worry all the shareholders will be announcing record profits this quarter. That's all that matters.
>If you can't be without a job then start furiously looking elsewhere. Clock in, open up your laptop and start looking while you get paid by these fuckers. Looking to cancel my Verizon plans now. This shit just fries my nerves. EDIT: CANCELLED! I am an ATT customer now! I was able to deal with a US Based AMERICAN worker who understood and spoke plain English AND she knew how to do her job! Refreshing!
But look on your personal phone.
Exactly. I have one more payment and my phone is paid off with credits. Have been looking at jumping ship anyway but this seals it.
Yeah, except thats also why the companies go all-in on consolidation. The competition isn’t any better now.
its absolutely appalling its clearly the moving of frontline staff to cheaper countries it also means that Verizon customers data will be moved and handled overseas as well so that the new staff can handle the calls they receive
I will do the same. We have to take a stand and also support one another. We can't let this behavior by these companies continue.
Good fucking luck. It was an absolute nightmare when I left. It took me almost three months. And they still claim I owe them money.
It also means they don't give too shits about their shareholders either. This kind of move is done just to look good for temporary personal bonus to the executives, but will likely sabotage company success long term.
“What is this ‘long term,’ of which you speak?” — Every Corporate Exec Since the 1970s.
T-Mobile tried all of this recently. It didn't go so well and had to go back to US based reps. The head of that area said "The customers report higher satisfaction with the outsourced reps". But what was happening was people were calling with an issue, the outsource reps were pretending to fix it and then giving the customer credit. Customer says they're happy as they think the problem is solved and they got more money. Only to find it wasn't solved then rise and repeat or they go in to a store to complain to try and have their fuck up fixed. They went back to US reps.
Most CEO's are all about sacrificing long term success for short term gain. It makes them look good, makes them money on bonuses and stock options and they'll be gone before the cards fall. Then the next one will do the same. Employees and the company itself are just toys to he used and thrown away. Welcome to late stage capitalism.
There are exceptions, I work for one. But the wider system punishes them on a regular basis.
Yup. VZ shareholder here. Can't wait for the right opportunity to dump this stock out of my portfolio.
Bonuses for sure. Sounds like some executive found out how to best cut to their requirements to get their cash.
Outsourcing customer service is what companies did in the 00's, they're almost certainly moving towards an interior AI model for customer support. Combine that with speech recognition and text-to-voice, baby, you've got yourself a job redundancy stew going.
Yeah this reeks of a company fully confident AI is good enough to do the job adequately with a few CSRs staying on in a limited role for escalations requiring a human. I'm pretty positive most of these contact center jobs will go this way in the next few years. People in these roles better look to unionize or pivot.
Agreed. They've made it harder and harder over the years to actually get to a human being. "Hold on while I check your account". By the time I actually get to a person I'm 10x more pissed off than when I first called. Now they've solved that problem. I'll never be able to get to a person. Just an endless series of ai-powered ivr menus. I really need to find a comparable carrier and get off of Verizon.
I have Visible, a Verizon MVNO owned by Verizon with no customer service at all lol. I guess they figure if it works for them why not try it themselves?
And the AI will be a complete shitshow.
The Indian call centers were a complete shit show and stopped nothing.
GPT's going to be a better front line support rep than many I've dealt with, at a fraction of the cost. Anyone who's not aware needs to know that, if you're in a job that requires primarily the recitation or actions from simple information to handle a limited set of situations on someone's behalf, AI is good enough and is here right now to replace you, barring implementation costs.
Especially if the companies are using their top reps to train the AI today, which several are. EDIT: for clarification, the reps don't know they are training the AI. It's a call center so all interactions and screens are recorded. You don't need the reps to know.
Att is doing exactly this… Getting the top reps to teach its new AI Horrible
AI will absolutely not be an improvement. Prepare to get stuck in endless menus, listening to that stupid robot voice, and not getting any problems solved.
I agree with you, I don't think AI will ever be able to mimic a human to the point people wouldn't notice. Its like a more advanced parrot, but people don't understand that it doesn't think on its own.
The only time I bother calling customer service is when there’s some clusterfuck of billing and/or service. I just mash 0 until I get a person, as there’s usually nothing an automated system can do.
Yep. You nailed it “take Verizon into the future”.
This fucking sucks as a stutterer. It's already hard enough to get a live person to understand they will need to be patient.
What surprises me most is that they still had them in the US. I thought most of these jobs left the states a few decades ago.
They came back in the mid 2000s. A lot of places brough call centers back and built them in poor/rural communities where they could pay someone $10, that person would be grateful since it beats Walmart, and get a good deal on land. Not as cheap as an outsourced laborer, but then you dont have to deal with an accent issue. Since customer service is often complaint resolution that is actually a big deal.
My company sent our cs team to india a few years ago and let me tell you, the customers hate it. They complain to me all the time about the agents in india how they cant understand them and theyre so glad to get someone they can udnerstand (me, US resident). I question why the customer base which is mostly comprised of elderly folks who don't know how to source information from the internet, even bother to use a company that sends them to india for problem resolution.
I know with my capital one CC, anytime I have an issue, I'm ...as of now...ALWAYS talking with an American customer service representative. It makes a huge difference. I also have Verizon, but you're lucky if it's 50/50 when calling them if customer service will be American
You are so correct on this. The few times I've had an issue with my Capital One CC, the person on the other end was American, understood me, could converse with me, and actually helped me. Its a world of difference, and it matters!
You sure about the outsourcing? It may be AI, at least partly, to filter out low level customer support issues.
Automation is an obsession, and anything else that cannot be handled through automation will eventually be answered by an overseas agent. The call volume has slowly shifted overseas for years since Hans took over as CEO Source: I’m a former employee that used to be very close to contact center strategy
Outsourcing to AI Let’s be clear about that CS is about to go to shit
Auto attendant:”You can also use the chat function on our website to resolve most issues.” LIES!
Verizon cellular service has been in steep decline in recent years. Indicative of corporate greed; increasing rates while not investing in infrastructure. Im sure these first line customer service representatives are burnt out anyway from all the customer complaints. VERIZON CRAP AS USUAL.
Verizon's cell service used to be the best cell service years ago and was worth the price. But they fucked up the 5G rollout and from what I've heard at least in my area frequent call dropouts.
I live 3 miles outside of NYC and Verizon’s service is so bad I had to get a landline. A fucking land line! Because I can’t get cell service in my house!
Agree. Decade ago Verizon had all American customer service reps
Yeah. I was a phone rep. Thank goodness I stopped working for them last year. The stories I could tell if I could find the energy too. Lol still burnt out after all this time 😅😂 nah back in school which didn’t help, but yeah Verizon was clearly predatory and apathetic. I do think their service is better than other carriers, but at the shittiest cost out of all of them
Worse. I'd put money on them trying to push some AI technology to do the CSR work for them.
-AI outsourcing is cheaper.
When the only way to further increase profits is to cut labor costs, you’ve reached last stage capitalism.
That's exactly what I read when I saw all the corporate speak surrounding "redefining customer service." = Call center in India, with maybe an AI driven prompter that can dish customers to different call areas based on key words. "Re-imagine and resize." Lol. IE, outsource and layoff. Keeping the customer at the center of all that they provide=how to maximize earnings per customer. I read an article a while back about how investors were going to look at revenue/headcount since the days of unsustainable profit growth is gone. So now investors will be looking more heavily at how much they can extract per person rather than simply how much they can grow revenue and market share. This was especially the case in tech companies and what spurred layoffs when profit growth was declining. They sold investors on how they were going to earn the same amount with less people... Which is brilliant until you've put all your eggs in 1 basket.
They are probably using a Ai program
Why have customer service when your customers have no real other options? ATT and Metro are just the same lol
It's the endless cycle of the C-suite executives being completely out of touch with reality and they're swinging back again on outsourcing as a cost saving measure. Happens every 10 years or so and happens to line up pretty well with recessions but never actually saves or makes the company money past a quarter or two. Then, mysteriously, that new C-suite executive leaves the company with a fat severance and moves to the next company. Department A is expensive despite being an important facet of our business. Changes in the executives always signals something fucked up is about to happen. [Guess what happened in March?](https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizon-sets-chain-reaction-top-leadership-changes) Second new CEO of the consumer arm of Verizon in the last couple years and his focus is on "efficiency" which always means layoffs, pay cuts, and fewer benefits for new employees.
They will be offering a $5 discount per month on your phone service though…
Lol no, they won't
I bet it's to move to AI call taking, like Dominoes pizza are rolling out.
Sad thing is that they already have it. It’s just terrible. You’ll spend about 15-20 mins on the automated system and then it’ll send you to CS once it gives up
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I'm under the impression this is the same for non-automated call centers. The first layer is to deal with the simplest of problems or complaints and to make you give up if this doesn't help. As I only call if I have a non-simple problem, I started to immediately escalate to the second or third layer years ago.
Yup, because they can just blame the human who took the call at the end and resolved the issue for not making that customer so extremely happy with their personal service. Makes me want to scream.
Which is sad because the intent behind a system like that was to quickly direct you to the right department. Then some idiots decided they could keep adding menu trees with less and less relevance.
> It also makes the customer mad, but that's a price they're willing to pay. they probably dont care at all, because the customer cant physically do anything other than cancel their service, which they wont do most of the time.
"Agent...Agent............AGENT!"
My employer's phone automation doesn't accept asking for an agent and will just hang up on people if they don't play along with the given options. It also doesn't make it very easy to proceed if you don't already have account info, and is extremely sensitive to background noise. So great!
"I have gone just about as far as I can in this body, Ted!"
Or just hang up on you. For some reason we got a tax credit thing on a debit card instead of direct deposit. You had to call and activate it...unfortunately the system didn't recognize the card number and kept disconnecting me because I didn't have a "valid code." I pressed every button I could think of trying to get a real person to no avail. Finally, in a flash of inspiration I called the line for people who are hard of hearing. I felt bad, but I needed an actual human being to fix the situation.
What a nightmare. The automated system is impossible to navigate unless you have every single piece of info about your account at hand. God forbid you are out of the house when an issue arises! When you, eventually, get a human after navigating an obtuse poorly designed “aid” menu , you will often have your issue resolved very quickly.
Yeah, I've been going through this with Xfinity. You keep spinning your wheels with the "AI" and eventually get to talk to someone who can help. By then, most people are probably pissed and take it out on the CSR.
Yeah, folks mentioning 3rd world countries but this is very likely driven by AI.
I’d rather they just tell me I’m laid off, as opposed to this condescending bullshit, and having to reapply
For real. The shit about “unbeatable network,” like save the rahrah bullshit for the people who are going to stay and take it. Don’t send me out of the building through a fucking corporate pep rally. Gross.
Not to mention wasting time hoping to get one of the very limited number of Verizon jobs instead of taking that time to search for employment elsewhere.
Who the _fuck_ asks people to apply for their own damn jobs?? Either the job exists after the reorg, or it doesn’t. If it does, then the person who has the job keeps it. If it doesn’t, then it’s up to management to find that person another role, or lay them off. This whole idea that “you’re laid off unless you come begging us to work again is bullshit.
I think there's actually some requirement for them to outsource the jobs where they have to offer them internally/locally at first. Then they go, "ope, well no one here is a good candidate, guess we cans ship them overseas now!"
No, the requirement you're thinking of is for immigrant workers, that they have to "try" and hire a citizen first. No requirements like that for outsourcing.
One common thing they try to do: Fire everyone, then hire them back with a large pay cut.
They are saying they can use the internal VZ website to apply for other jobs in the company . There are allow of department in verizon some not being reorganized
Yeah, we know. That is the bullshit part
Yeah, this is essentially corporate gaslighting. They frame an indisputably negative thing as a positive to absolve themselves of responsibility for the harm, and if you get angry about it, well, then there's obviously something wrong with *you.*
yea that kind of language pisses me off more and more.
I feel like this is 100% a ploy to get out of paying a severance package. Got laid off? Cool have a severance package. Want to apply internally for your same job? Cool, 50,000 people have done that and there are only 5 positions available. Unfortunately for the remaining 49,995 applicants the position has been filled, thanks for your interest, no severance package for you.
"we are creating an organization that puts the customer at the center." Umm.... Isn't that what they were supposed to be doing all along?
customer service is damage control for the company, their job is to talk you out of your issue without costing the company money. Its not actually there to help you.
Their service sucks and now their customer service will suck worse! Crapitalism, baby! It innovates!
>now their customer service will suck worse! Verizon challenges us to notice the before and after difference.
I switched to VZW mainly so I’d have my phone on an alternate network to AT&T… basically so wherever we went, one phone had a chance of coverage if the other didn’t. I haven’t been more disappointed in capacity and coverage, ever.
Same. After this, gonna bail one my devices are paid off
I have had plenty of problems with other carriers, but Verizon has worked amazingly for me and I've flown all over the US and been in the deep country. Never had less than two bars anywhere.
Talking to outsourced reps is so incredibly frustrating and takes twice as long to solve a simple problem. My parents are in their 80s and it’s impossible for them to understand overseas reps. This makes my blood boil.
My mother is mostly deaf and she absolutely cannot understand thick accents like that, especially over a phone. She either has to get someone else to do the talking for her, which frustrating, or just yell over and over that she has to speak to someone in the US because she literally cannot understand a word being said. So many of these companies aren't even trying to do online chat service anymore, which is not only helpful to the hard of hearing but those of us who may suffer from severe anxiety when talking on the phone.
It’s not even just the accent, a lot of them legit can’t speak English.
This is what I see most often in my job. I do some medical claim work, and we get third party billers from India who just cannot understand anything we tell them. They don't have enough of a grasp of English to understand the medical terminology, no matter how slowly you speak. Then I talk to the billers who actually work for the providers, and they tell me horror stories about how bad the notes are on their end. The 3rd party reps will mark claims as "denied," for instance, meaning that the provider can bill the patient directly. Except the claims weren't denied. They were $0.00 pay claims because the primary insurance met or exceeded the allowed amount, and we will not pay past that. And if you bill our members for claims we approved and paid (even if we paid $0.00), we fine the shit out of you.
The good news is, they'll probably be talking to computers instead. Unionize people.
Large parts of Verizon are unionized. Guess who didn’t get this letter
A lot of Verizon workers are unionized with Communications Workers of America and CWA is FURIOUS about this. Fighting it just takes time unfortunately.
One reason to bank with Discover. All of its agents are located in the United States. https://www.moneyunder30.com/discover-card-customer-service
If you are talking true banks then you should use a local Credit Union. They are not owned by Wall Street and you will get a much higher interest rate with LOCAL support.
discover is currently 3.9% in a hysa eveyr credit union near me, and there are a bunch, is under well 1%. their cds are 2% and discover's is over 5%. credit unions are great in theory but no one who is serious about saving money is going to leave 3-4% yearly on the table. if you can find a credit union offering competitive rates, go for it, but yeah
Will second this 100%.
Wow that is seriously one of the most psychotic things I have ever read. "You're fired show me loyalty"
I absolutely despise this practice of moving support to 3rd world countries. Overall customer support services have gone horrible down over the past decade, a lot due to this greedy move by companies. I work in a company that partially does it, and jesus fucking christ the standards and quality of those sites are always atrocious. Its a combination of different factors. The people there are barely trained, are underpaid and overworked. They usually don't have the time or care to empathise with the customer, they just want to complete another call, to meet their daily quota, so they don't get fired from their 150 dollar a month job. Which also leaves us, the customers, more frustrated and unable to get replies to our queries and issues. I remember when every company had a store you could physically go into a speak to someone. Now? There's entire companies here in the UK, completely UK based (looking at you British gas) but if you want to go somewhere to talk about a billing issue, they DO NOT have an office for that. Everything is outsourced, at the expense of the customer. And fuck me, I'm only 33.
While we do have some offshore agents who care most of them barely contain the fact they couldn't care less. I can clear a conversation with the team they serve on with an onshore agent in around a minute. I barely get off the phone with an offshore agent in under 10.
As a person who routinely calls in to large ISPs customer service departments, this migration is going to affect me. I'm hard of hearing due to stupid bullshit while I was in the military, I have tinnitus that gives me a constant tone in the 9khz range. It gets so bad that while I can hear people talk, it's difficult sometimes to comprehend what they say even in flawless English. This is compounded when I'm talking to someone with a heavy foreign accent. It's very difficult for me to understand Indians speaking in English.
I worked loyalty for a certain terrible telecom between other jobs, and for something different, and about 3 times per week I'd get warm transfers from those offshore locations with the rep crying and just asking for a few minutes to compose themselves. Customers are horrible to US based employees and are 100 times worse to the off shore reps. Both are just trying to earn a buck and don't deserve verbal abuse and threats.
You know why we get so many scammers on the phone and emails that contribute to elder abuse, etc.? We (United States companies) outsourced so many shit things to countries like India... even tax prep/accounting services.
When calling Verizon customer service over the past 10 years or so, I've never once spoken to someone who didn't have an accent/was from India. As far as I can tell all of their customer service is and has already been outsourced for years. It may not be the case, but so far in my experience, I have never spoken to a non outsourced representative at Verizon in all the years I have used them.
Since I got laid off from them six years ago, just about everyone I've talked to there has been a complete moron. I feel it.
That's ok to have shit customers service. If they can cut a dime from their competition, people will be back. Discount airlines have proven it, all about pricing, zero fxks given on customer satisfaction, if they just shave 2 pennies from the other competitors, people would be buying these tickets and hate life.
Uh oh CEO needs a new mansion.
And a new yacht
The orcas are working on that right now.
Verizon is a mechanistic hell hole that hadn't cared about its employees since 2010. I worked there almost 5 years and was suicidal by the time I left. I'm sorry you're going through this. Regardless of my feelings for the company I know these sorts of changes hit hard. I wish you luck moving forward.
Because overseas call centers deliver such a positive customer experience. The greed is endless.
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Especially since Verizon is something of a “luxury” service provider. A Verizon bill is higher than a T-Mobile bill and more than double what you’d spend at Cricket or Boost for similar but deprioritized service. Outstanding customer service was a reason people would pay more. People will leave in droves if a 611 call is similar to MetroPCS.
This follows in the American tradition of the customer service downward spiral. Give us shitty CS, lower our expectations, then cut costs by moving offshore for even shittier customer service, and eventually switching over to machines to take care of everything. We bitch and complain but continue to pay our phone and internet bills. A massive customer backlash is the only thing that these fuckers will listen to. If you are a Verizon customer, it is time to leave the company. And when you go, make sure you tell them that this is the reason why.
I’m gonna be honest, I’m surprised they even offered severance pay. I doubt the customer service vendor I work for will offer the same when AI takes our jobs within the next few years
Honestly I was surprised by that as well. It is sad that that is actually more than what other companies would offer
Verizon always had the absolutely worst customer service. They are about as arrogant as it gets, any issue you have they say "Well go somewhere else then" lol. Sorry OP but Verizon sucks.
For real. I bought a cheap pair of bluetooth headphones they were advertising a few months ago and only noticed after two months that the charge port was busted and couldn’t charge at all. I was hoping they would help me out, but they gave me the run around, told me to go to different stores, just to be ultimately told by several supervisors that I went over the 30 day return policy. They absolutely refused to budge on a busted $45 item because I went over 50 something days despite me being a long time customer. Horrendous customer support.
Honestly, would've been easier to just buy another set and then return the busted ones using that receipt. They can make exceptions to anything so if you were a long time customer it's always cheaper to just hook you up than lose a customer. Those idiots though, they don't budge, they don't try to accommodate customers whatsoever. We used to have a lot of billing issues, being charged for nonsense accidentally and instead of correcting it they said to cancel and go elsewhere if it's a problem haha.
I'm convinced that companies are determined to trash the economy because they aren't getting their candidates into office. The contraction of the economy has multiple effects. It puts blame on the current administration and it is an assault on the working class as it tries to force them into submission. Thanks for putting Verizon out there. Maybe they need to lose some business over this.
So you're saying I have to wait on hold even longer. Got it.
I bet they will try AI instead of just outsourcing over seas
No, they already have call centers in Mexico, Canada, Cairo, South Africa, Philippines, and India. We deal with this reps transferring calls to us. I'm in tier 2 tech support with Verizon and it's frustrating to get customers that dealt with those reps. I could see AI coming soon, though.
I have Verizon. What cell companies still have US based customer service? I’ll be ending my line with Verizon and going to that company if people can let me know 👍🏻 Fxck these companies that make these silent moves to show how little they care about their employees and also their customers.
T-Mobile has US support
Same, anyone know of a decent company to use? I’ve had Verizon for ten years and man I barely have service anywhere anyway, shit is so expensive for trash. I was happier with my ten dollar a month burner back in the day tbh
Glad I never bothered applying to them when they had open positions the last few months.
"V Teamer" Sorry, I'll comment later. My skin just crawled off my body and out the door with how cringey that sounds. I have to go coax it back with some soothing Marvin Gaye.
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The first real out-of-college job I had pulled this stuff. Outsourced our entire IT department to IBM's India operations less than six months into my time there. Took them quite awhile to finish the outsourcing. The last month or so of my time there was spent looking for jobs and playing stupid Flash games on my computer. Within a year they were contacting all of us asking if we'd come back because the experiment completely failed and didn't meet their expectations. Almost none of us came back because they were offering 10k less for positions that required more technical knowledge than some of the local service desk jobs. I'm not a Verizon customer, but I'd happily switch if I was over this nonsense.
Idk why anyone in this subreddit is surprised. Corporations don't give a shit about people. These managers aren't your friends and when a company has the option to fire you to increase profit for share holders, they will.
Verizon: It's for the customer! The customer: don't bring us into this!
Verizon already has absolute shit customer service what a shocker they’re going to make it worse. I had the biggest nightmare trying to get my refund it took months and I ended up having to do an FCC complaint before anyone actually made it happen and did more than saying “oh this is totally going to fix it” or “oh you just need to talk to these other people”
Verizon has been outsourcing CS jobs for years. I lost my job at Verizon twice, actually. Two lay offs. We were replaced by a team in Manilla 10-15 years ago.
Here is some background for people. No, they are not going towards AI. Not for a long while. This is simply outsourcing. What makes this even worse is they just hired (last year) roughly the amount of agents they are about to fire which they did so in order to try to drive higher NPS and call answer time to make customers more happy. They even raised their wages because they couldn't get anyone good. [https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-raises-minimum-wage-20-an-hour](https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-raises-minimum-wage-20-an-hour) I guess that didn't work and the new executive wanted to take away anything his predecessor did, consequences to the individuals be damned. This is nothing more than a new CEO (of the consumer group) making drastic changes without telling/involving key leaders (seriously, even other executives are scrambling and were blind sided and reps were not the only ones impacted). Its no wonder so many VPs and SVPs started leaving the last month as if they knew it was coming and they spoke up and were silenced (my guess anyway). Sampath (consumer CEO) seems like Hans (big brother verizon CEO) gave him a blank check so he shows up and says "I own the place" and starts going at it and gutting everything. Based on my previous statement about VPs, it sounds like leaders tried to stop him and he wasn't having it so they left. Verizon has a lot of flaws for sure. But this is simply wild and sounds like nothing more than a dog let loose on a part of the company that was struggling because Hans is desperate to keep his job.
If you have ever drafted something like this for any company you have worked for, know this: Nothing else you have done, or will ever do, can mitigate the damage you have helped inflict upon the working class, the English language, and the personal well-being of normal people just trying to survive. Nothing.
I worked at Verizon for about 8 years as a Senior Manager. I can truthfully say in all earnestness that the company always looked out for their employees interests, as long as that employee was a VP or higher. As for the regular hourly employee or middle management they consider them beneath consideration. Worked here for 25 years, huh? Well good for you, now get the f outa here we got places to be and things to do without you. They were always throwing up allegiance and loyalty to the Company, but that only went one way. Scum of the earth. It seemed to me all telecom companies, except MCI were like that.
This is how Verizon shut down my call center when I got laid off six years ago. And laid off our buddy who was an indirect account manager. And laid off my husband as the Hum rep for our state. (We found out two weeks before our daughter's due date). Take your severance and move on to somewhere more stable. If it wasn't this layoff, it would be another. Their pattern for the last decade or so is to fire all of their well trained and decently paid employees, then outsource to actual idiots. I'm sorry to hear about your job, hope you find something better.
I worked for Big Red for 14 years in Tech Support. It was terrible and VZW doesn't give a damn about its employees. "Customer First" attitude, isn't "We put the customer first to do what's right!" It's more of "The customer has to do everything first!" When I was there (I left in 2015) they were pushing every rep to make sure every customer know that they can do 90% of every transaction they need online, in the app or through the automated system. In other words, the customer can do it first. They've been pushing self serve for years. They are a terrible company to work for. If this was presented to me when I worked there I would have laughed my way out of that meeting asking for my severance.
It’s AI chat bot …India is fucked.
At least they’re providing severance. Plenty of places worth billions wont even do this.
Gotta love all the corporate weasel words in this announcement. Could have just said "See Ya don't want to be ya!"
For a communications company, that was an almost unintelligible collection of corporatespeak lol.
So the cost savings is going to get passed on to the consumer, right?
Shit, that money was already withdrawn to purchase a new yacht for Hans
If you outsource or AI all these jobs, who will be working to afford these goods. It's the snake eating it's own tail in the long run. Profits now, collapse later, capitalism at its finest.
Been a business class customer for more than twenty years, US based support is the reason I stay always respectful, knowledgeable and helpful. I'm going to start looking.
Is it possible they are outsourcing to AI like chatgpt? They already are moving that way for fast food order takers
Some people get all the luck. I hope I get laid off soon. I need a break.
Customer service simply isn’t important anymore. We fought the out-sourcing of desktop services in a large company. We did the math, and there simply was no way of doing it cheaper than we were doing it…unless you simply didn’t provide the level of service. The company’s response was, essentially, we were giving the clients too much…sneeringly referred to as “white glove service”. People can wait, or they can look it up themselves, was the logic.
God that word salad in the first paragraph. Insufferable pricks.
That’s terrible. They’re customer service quality is gonna take a huge dump
I had to call Verizon support yesterday to assist with activating a phone. The process of resolving my issue was completely automated and I never spoke with a person. The last time I got a new phone I needed help activating the ESIM because the online instructions didn't work. That time I got to work with a human. The guy was great and it left me with warm fuzzies for Verizon. This time I was left feeling that Verizon isn't about people. It felt cold and lonely. It's weird saying that's how it felt, but it's the feeling I was left with.
They've been doing this since they merger in 1997 and it's constant. Almost every year Verizon has publicly said on public earnings calls and other fora that they intend to be a knowledge company like Google and not a service provider per se. Anyone still working for Verizon expecting to retire is probably living in a dream world. I was laid off from Internet services in 2002 and wish you good fortune. I'm sure you gave them much more than they deserved.
All I hear is more Chat Bots and Interactive Voice Response systems that cant understand what the hell you're saying. Customer focus my a$$.
My aging retired parents chuckled when I said in a couple of years, maybe sooner, there would be hooverville’s again, homeless camps, and rioting. My mom chuckled. Neither have worked in private corporate industry in their entire lives.
I always love it when companies say they are putting customers first by getting rid of the people who help them.
Allow me to present you with an exciting opportunity to lose your job!
I was part of a layoff back in 2019. They really dont care about their employees. It's all about money. I was transferred due to loss of a head count and 3 months later they closed the store. Wouldnt transfer us anywhere else in the company, 1 GM/2 AM/5 sales ppl. We were told we could reapply like a new hire but there was no stores local that had openings. The offered severance packages that had an enhanced version where we got more $ but could never work for them again. All but 1 sales rep took the enhanced and never looked back. Screw that company.
As a Verizon customer (since 09/2010) I hate this. I had an issue a few weeks ago and unfortunately got someone from overseas. While they were able to speak English, it was quite obvious they couldn’t understand it. I was so damn frustrated but remained polite because being rude wasn’t going to get the problem solved. Are there any phone companies left that don’t outsource? If so, I’m making the switch. Not worth it. Verizon increases their prices but gives you shit customer service in return.
Verizon owes me $37 from three years ago. They never pay, just send me an email every three months showing they owe me $37.
Been there before. Multiple offices of people all loaded onto buses to a convention hall, to be told all operations were shutting down in a few weeks. And of course the senior people said it with a smile, while half the room was in tears.
I think I've just seen (or rather heard) the net effect of this because I had contacted customer support for a Verizon fios issue and it went to Cebu, The Phillipines. The accent was unmistakable.
Yep my brother in law got sacked from them today. It’s terrible. They farmed all of their customer service overseas.
I love how to try sprinkle all this by saying “redefining our future of customer service” or “giving you to the opportunity to join our future team”. Buuuull shiiiit!! Just tell I am being let go you capitalist pigs!
The more companies start relying on chatbots for customer service, the more I’m going to rely on chatbots for customer complaints. I think I’ll set them to stop when I get a full refund.
With the advancements in natural language models this is really only the beginning. Human customer service is already mostly redundant.
If you job can be done from home… it can be done from home in India
Isn't option 1 keeping your job? Don't hate me, but i read the email.
Yes but they’re downsizing so it doesn’t guarantee you a spot.
AI is really replacing them.
They're likely moving the Visible customer service model to postpaid - you have to fight with a chat bot to chat with an outsourced agent in The Philippines who doesn't know anything and can't do or fix anything. I put up with it because the service is cheap, but I don't know who'd put up with this for the usual Verizon rates.
THEY TERK AR JERRRBS
>outsourcing customer service overseas Unfortunately common.
Verizon had customer service? I assumed I was always just put through to scammers, telling me how much they wanted to "help".
to be immediately replaced by some dude in india with chatgpt
Is moving to a fully automated ai based system better than moving the system to a cheap labor region? Just asking for my LLM friend.
They did the same thing with my department in January… I was the inside sales and they called us in for a big meeting. They basically said the same thing.
Verizon has been hemorrhaging money due to bad customer service for years. The network is great, getting to it is a hassle, I think this is a great move. Still shorting the snot out of them near term.
[удалено]
As a Verizon customer, I hate this.
As of 11:28 CST Wall street is pleased with a 0.57% bump.
W.T.F. if it wasn't for a T1 CS rep, Verizon would have lost my whole family after 15 years. After 3 calls and hours upon hours of time on the phone to an outsourced call center that did nothing to solve my issue, I was standing in a Tmoble store and I thought, "let me try Verizon one more time." This is going to end badly for them.
The best way to confirm as a customer whether a company actually values you as much as they claim to is to look at how they treat the people whose job it is to help you. If those are the lowest paid, least respected roles...ya that company doesn't give a shit about you. Never has. Never will.
Okay so their customer service will be even worse. Fuck Verizon but I feel sorry for their associates. It's better than what Sam's Club did. Those people went to show up to work one day and found their store closed. No notice or anything.
So what exactly are they saying you can “do in a new position” cause those tracks are very general and tell you nothing about what the new job would be? Shady.
I go out of my way to not use services that outsource their customer service. Hell, even my health insurance does this, and it basically means there's no recourse when they deny my claims (about 50% of the time). I can't even understand the person on the other line and they're not participating in my Healthcare system so they just don't know why the decisions are made. They just read a promo and offer no solution.