To: william.burgess@verizonwireless.com
Subject: Ms. Vitale's excellent responsiveness
Cc: krista.vitale@verizonwireless.com
Dear Mr. Burgess:
Ms. Krista Vitale has informed me that you are her supervisor. I wanted to
write to you to tell you of Ms. Vitale's performance above and beyond the call
of duty.
First of all, I have to tell you that ALL of my previous interactions with
Verizon Wireless customer support representatives have been uniformly terrible -
while every VW representative has been pleasant and SEEMINGLY helpful,
they have also been uniformly incompetent - screwing up EVERY account
change and/or addition that I've ever made. Every time I've made an addition or
change, I've had to call back multiple times to fix the problems caused by VW's
employees. I now dread calling VW support, because I KNOW that I will
have to call back multiple times to ensure that the right thing happens. I
charge $175/hr. for my consulting time - if I billed VW for all the time I've
had to spend fixing VW's problems, you'd be paying ME to use your phones. At
any rate, I have kept VW service because of the national coverage area, but if I
had to choose a wireless service based on employee competency, VW would be at
the bottom of the list. Below fast food restaurants.
Something not dissimilar occurred this time, as well. I modified my service and
ordered 2 new telephones. I was originally told that the phones were to be here
about 1.5 weeks ago. A week ago Sunday, I was called by customer service and
told that there had been a mixup - I corrected her misunderstanding, and she
informed me that the phones would be here by last Wednesday - Dec. 14th. Well,
the 14th came and went, so Sunday night, Dec. 18th, I called customer service
and was told that the phones had been "approved", but there was no shipping
info. The representative didn't know why, and attempted to transfer me to the
department that ships the phones, since they (in theory) could give me the
information I sought. After 1/2 hour on hold (how do you get away with that, I
wonder - you'd think that a telephone company would have an exquisite
understanding of the pain being on hold for 1/2 hour causes, wouldn't you?), Ms.
Vitale picked up the phone.
Although Ms. Vitale was not in the department responsible for shipping the
phones, she immediately took responsibility for finding out what was going on.
She sent an email to the originating service rep. who had originally taken my
order, and told me that I would be hearing back the next day, on Monday, the
19th. On Monday (yesterday), since she had not received a response to her
email, she took it upon herself to research the issue, found ANOTHER
problem with the order, FIXED it without involving me, left a voicemail
on my phone informing me of the issue, then called back later to inform me that
everything was set, and the phones would be shipped Monday. She then called
back an hour later with the FedEx tracking number, as well as the information
that the phones had been shipped next day air, no extra charge. They did, in
fact, arrive on Tuesday, as promised by Ms. Vitale.
This clearly is above and beyond the requirements of Ms. Vitale's job, whatever
they may be. She took responsibility for a customer's satisfaction, followed up
to ensure that the right things happened, and made sure that the customer (me)
was informed of what was going on. Give Ms. Vitale a raise, immediately - if
she's not making twice what any other customer service rep. is making, she's
underpaid.
Lastly, in the interest of substantially enhancing the customer service
capabilities of Verizon Wireless (if you have the authority to do so) I suggest
that you take all of your other customer service representatives out back and
beat them senseless, inform them that they MIGHT, with a great deal of
study, have the qualifications to say "would you like fries with that", then
fire them immediately - no severance period. Next, go out and hire 1/4 as many
service reps as you just fired, but ensure that they are as competent and
responsive as Ms. Vitale. You will save money, the service reps will make a
decent living, and your customers will finally get the service that they
deserve.
Thanks for listening. And if you feel like crediting my account (# 104152238)
the $50 that I'm paying for one of the telephones to make up for all the issues
and problems I've had in the past, you won't hear any complaints from me about
it.
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Last Updated: January 04, 2006