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Verizon Defends Customer Service

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By SURI SURINDER

Published: April 10, 2008

Any objective reading of Verizon's customer service performance reveals a solid record of customer service.

It is always a disappointment when we or any company doesn't do the job perfectly for a customer, and that does happen from time to time. But the record hardly warrants The Tampa Tribune's sweeping characterization in its April 6 editorial, "Poor Service Haunts Verizon's Rollout."

Consider these statistics for a moment:

•Verizon is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the Tampa Bay area to bring our customers a communications network unrivaled by any other in the country. No cable company has even attempted such a project.

• As a result, customers get the fastest available data speeds for Internet service and a superior TV picture quality and program choice - the first true alternatives to the dominant cable company.

•The city of Tampa has received just seven formal complaints since the first of the year on Verizon's FiOS service. For our principal competitor, the city received six.

•For the first quarter of 2008 we met 98 percent of our FiOS installation commitments and 95 percent of our FiOS repair commitments to our customers.

Verizon averages 1,900 customer transactions for Florida customers per day, or somewhere between 500,000 to 600,000 transactions per month. We send out well over 1 million bills to Florida customers every month.

We work hard to make sure every one of these customer transactions is handled properly and the bills are 100 percent accurate every time. Unfortunately, it doesn't always happen, so when there are problems we work to make things right.

It is refreshing to see our labor union recognize the importance of good service and aggressive sales in a competitive market. The union and management are in partnership to provide good service to all our customers. Indeed, our field technicians, service representatives with whom customers interact and other front-line employees are all union members.

In less than four years, Verizon has created competition in our region where there was minimal choice before, and has brought advanced technology to the Tampa Bay area that is the envy of our neighbors in Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami and elsewhere.

We are dedicated to providing the best product and the best service humanly possible. We also encourage our customers to contact us at either (813) 989-7582 or (877) 273-8077 if they have had any unresolved issues at all with Verizon's service.

Suri Surinder is senior vice president & general manager, Southeast, for Verizon.

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