An Outbreak of Caring

It's a problem the company hasn't been able to solve, even as it has hired hundreds of representatives in recent months. Since the company hired 400 employees in the division at its Fios service center in Freehold, N.J., the average time for customers on hold has been halved, to two minutes.

Employee Raoul Gravell recently received a call from a Fios customer whose Internet service was down after a power outage. Gravell rebooted the system through a few mouse clicks and key strokes.

Yet when a customer called from her daughter's cellphone to get her landline phone repaired, Gravell wasn't able to see a quick fix on his computer.

When he said he would have to transfer her to schedule a repair person, she pleaded: "Please, please don't go anywhere!" frustrated by a month of service problems.

Although she was a phone service customer, Verizon sees such subscribers as ones it hopes to grow into lifelong customers of other services.

"It's infinitely easier to grow relationships with customers we already have, so we want to make sure to care for them," Maguire said.

He has created a tiered system to handle the complexity of complaints. At its most basic level, call centers around the nation act like medical triage to handle routine service issues and minor problems. Complaints from "triple play" customers, who have Fios television, Internet and phone services, are sent to a special team of "personal account" handlers in Florida. The angriest customers and those who send e-mails and letters directly executives are handled by the "escalation team."

"What you don't want them to do," he said, "is leave or write up a blog or something."