Overview  |  Stressed  |  Exhausted  |  Exploited  |  Abandoned

STRESSED: CUSTOMER SERVICE AT VERIZON

“They listen in on the phone calls and they monitor us electronically. Every time they listen to a phone call, they have a checklist that’s around two hundred points long. And they will talk to you if you missed one. And then they always want to talk about ‘Well, if I did it, I would have done it differently.’ Is the problem resolved? I don’t care how you would have gotten to the resolution. I am not a Stepford. I have my own mind, I bring my different perspective to it. I resolve the issue, great, thanks, good-bye.’

The five hundred or so customer service representatives at Verizon’s Andover Call Center take calls from residential and commercial customers requesting changes in their telephone service. It is not easy work. Customer service representatives are “on line” — plugged into their headsets — much of the day, and are monitored frequently by their supervisors. They are under tremendous time pressure to solve customer problems quickly and to sell additional services — all while being tightly monitored.

“You've got to have tough skin. And you've got to learn, don’t take it personally. The customer ain't yelling at you, the customer’s yelling at the company. You just happen to be the point of contact. . . So if you can scream at me for five minutes, do it. And then we’ll go on and I’ll take care of whatever it is you need me to take care of.”

“I'm not one of those people who can sit there and force something down an eighty-year-old woman’s throat . . . I'm a service rep. . .I’m sorry, I'm going to do what you [the customer] want me to do, not what somebody else thinks I should be doing. . . . Sales is part of my job, absolutely, but not the primary function of my job. . . I'm a service rep. “