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Personal Touch Fails At Verizon

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By RICHARD MULLINS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 27, 2008

TAMPA - Verizon Communications Inc. will end a pilot customer service program designed to give customers one person as a contact to help resolve billing or other issues, company officials confirmed Friday.

Verizon will let go about 300 contract workers called Personal Account Managers, or PAMs, and retain about 30 of them in-house as more traditional customer service representatives.

The PAMs program was an experiment that Verizon started in Brandon at a time when the company faced a growing flood of complaints about billing, promotional packages and other service glitches. The company had given all its customers refrigerator magnets with the name and cellular phone number of a single person at Verizon, their "PAM," who would be their advocate within Verizon to fix bills, add or remove features or otherwise help resolve a situation.

Verizon said that way, customers wouldn't be left on hold or sent through automated "phone trees," trying to find the right department. But the program didn't live up to the company's hopes, Verizon spokesman Bob Elek said.
PAMs were contract employees who worked at home. They never had authority to change a customer's bill themselves or do anything but call Verizon's in-house employees to request changes. PAMs were paid hourly in a job Verizon characterized as part-time work, though they were on duty six days a week, about 10 hours a day, a practice that has attracted at least one labor lawsuit in Tampa.

The 30 former PAMs will remain contract workers rather than full-time Verizon employees, Elek said.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at (813) 259-7919 or

rmullins@tampatrib.com.

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