Telecompetitor

Seems like the world just can’t get enough of Twitter. You know that’s the case when a baby bell like Qwest gets on board with it. They’ve launched Talk to Qwest, a Twitter powered customer service monitoring service. Other service providers have similar initiatives with Twitter, including Comcast. Customers can post Qwest customer service issues to Twitter, and Qwest customer service agents ...

FairPoint bought Verizon territories in Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire last year, greatly expanding the size and scope of their ILEC operations. They bought 1.5 million Verizon access lines for about $2.3 billion. Like most acquisitions of this size, some technical glitches are bound to happen. Unfortunately for FairPoint, their Verizon transaction was no different. They’ve had some pretty well publicized glitches, including multiple delays in the official cutover ...

Sprint announced the launch of Sprint Premier, a new customer loyalty program. The program will offer a series of ‘perks’ to existing customers. “We know that loyal customers are the most important ones to our business and we want to reward them for their choice in Sprint,” said Jeff Hallock, vice president for base management at Sprint in a company statement. Program perks include: Early Upgrades: Existing customers can get ...

Embarq announced that customers who call their customer service center during business hours will “now be greeted by a live person instead of the usual automated system most companies use today.” Hallelujah. While I applaud Embarq for making this move, the fact that they have to issue a press release to announce it is illustrative of the pitiful state of customer service in the overall telecom sector, ...

Verizon’s 3Q08 numbers reveal great progress for FiOS. They added 233K new FiOS TV customers and 225K new FiOS Internet customers, both of which fueled a 45% gain in broadband and video revenues over the previous year. Penetration rates are 19.7% for FiOS TV and 24.2 % for FiOS Internet – impressive numbers. The earnings release had all the typical fanfare and chest bumping rhetoric about how fantastic everything ...

Sprint’s new found focus on customer service is seeing some results. New research from Pali Research reveals dramatic improvement, including Sprint leaping from last to first place in customer care call response times. Sprint answered 91% of the calls into its call center within 30 seconds, improving from 68% in the previous year. The noticeable improvement also leads all their competitors, with Verizon having the closest ...

Embarq announced the launch of an Embarq YouTube channel, which will feature instructional videos for Embarq services. Embarq says the strategy will “bring customer service to the customer.” As of this posting, the Embarq channel had 17 instructional videos for things like Embarq email, the eGo phone, and several promotional videos about RescueIT, their residential tech support service. "The YouTube Channel is another ...