Executive Vice President & Chief Communications Officer, FRONTIER COMMUNIC PARENT INC
Frontier Communications VP addresses rocky Verizon transition
Rachel McGalian is Frontier's south region Vice President of Marketing. She admitted the switch has not gone smoothly. FOX 4 is ...
About Erin Kurtz
In September 2016, Erin Kurtz, then Frontier Communications' South Region Vice President of Marketing, addressed customer complaints following the company's transition from Verizon FiOS in Texas. Kurtz acknowledged the transition "has not gone as well as we had hoped" and apologized for customer frustrations, stating the company would proactively apply bill credits for service outages without requiring customers to take action. She described an action plan that included 11 technicians from Indiana, 65 additional contractors, and a focus on bringing call center operations back to US-based facilities. Kurtz stated that the company was "committed to earning their confidence and trust" and would address contract cancellation fees and other concerns on a case-by-case basis for customers wishing to cancel service. She attributed some challenges to the complexity of transferring "over 440 million data elements" and to weather conditions in Texas, while emphasizing that Frontier's priority was improving the customer experience.
Transcript (22 segments)
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Steve Noviello0:00
We are almost 8 weeks into the Verizon FiOS switch over to Frontier, and the complaints about outages continue. The company has announced a new action plan for Texas, but it seems to be of little help for the folks who are still without service. Consumer reporter Steve Noviello took your complaints to a Frontier spokesperson.
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Rachel McGowan0:18
Verizon's accounts are now Frontier Communications, and we are now left without internet or phone. So I've been trying to run a business for four days with no internet and phone connection. They will not schedule a technician; they keep telling me they will, and that technician never shows up.
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Steve Noviello0:38
Service outages, poor customer service, and wait times that are too long to count. The complaints still continue even after Frontier Communications released their new action plan for Texas customers. The company took over internet and television from Verizon FiOS accounts in our area more than a month ago. Rachel McGowan is Frontier's South Region Vice President of Marketing.
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Rachel McGowan0:58
We are flooded with complaints from folks. This has not gone well. It's not gone as well as we had hoped, Steve. But by no means is it what we planned for or what we wanted. We absolutely are focused, number one priority on our customers, and we have a complete action plan in place to help improve that customer experience.
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Steve Noviello1:17
We're going to get to the action plan in a minute because it was just released a couple of days ago. The number one question I get from our viewers is: why make the switch if you weren't ready?
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Rachel McGowan1:25
Well, we were ready. We were ready. But it is... if this is ready, it's not so good.
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Steve Noviello1:30
Well, we were prepared, but if you think about this, it's a large and complex transaction. We transferred over 440 million data elements, and on top of that, April was a tough weather month for all of us here in Texas, so that didn't help our challenges either. But we've made progress, and we're focused on improving that customer experience in the community every day.
You mentioned the action plan. Part of that is new technicians to the area. Tell me about that.
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Rachel McGowan2:00
That's correct. We are putting our customers number one priority. We have 450 technicians that are in the market today, former Verizon, that we've trained and are servicing our customers. We've also brought in 11 technicians from Indiana. Those folks are on the ground and will be with us through the end of the month.
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Steve Noviello2:21
We posted about that, and our viewers said that's like duct tape on the Titanic. 11 new technicians? I mean, we're getting hundreds of calls. I can't imagine how many you're getting.
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Rachel McGowan2:29
Well, 11 new technicians coming in on loan from Indiana. We also have 65 contractors that we've added to our force since the day of the transaction. Technicians have been trained, identified the solutions, and we are taking care of those in the communities.
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Steve Noviello2:46
No charges for times when service was out is part of the action plan. That's a bare minimum. I mean, to say to your folks, 'Hey, we're committed to customer service, and to show it, we're not going to charge you when we didn't do our job.' There's got to be something more.
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Rachel McGowan3:01
Well, we absolutely apologize for the frustrations that our customers are experiencing, absolutely. And we take every single one of their issues seriously. We are committed to and we will take care of any customer who has contacted us with a service outage. We will apply a bill credit; no action is necessary on their part. We'll do that proactively.
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Steve Noviello3:22
But what do you do above and beyond? I mean, we're getting calls from people who are business owners who can't report to work because they commute, from medical professionals who can't contact emergency services, people who have lost a lot of money because you didn't hold up your end of the bargain. And to say to these folks, 'Well, we're not going to charge you for our screw-up,' seems to be the bare minimum at best. Is there more relief for these people?
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Rachel McGowan3:44
Absolutely. We will take individual situations on a case-by-case basis. Every one of those situations is different, but we want to make sure that we deal with each one of those customer issues in relation to them specifically.
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Steve Noviello3:58
The other thing that you mentioned was we're going to improve our wait time when people call. We called this morning; 15 minutes it took us to get somebody this morning. We're five days into that action plan.
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Rachel McGowan4:06
That is absolutely unfortunate. That is not what we want our customer experience to be. Our focus is to place our first call response in our US-based call centers. We expected high call volumes, and so we identified third-party vendors to assist us with that. They're helping with that. Our goal is to continue to shorten those wait times and bring all of those calls back into our own call centers.
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Steve Noviello4:32
There seems to be a lot of 'it's not what we wanted, but it's what our customers are getting.' So what's the message for our viewers who are calling us and saying, 'I want out'?
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Rachel McGowan4:40
Yeah, so I think look, we can't go back, but we're going forward. And our focus going forward is to be focused on our number one priority, which is our customer. And we are making progress every day. I want our customers to understand that we are committed to earning their confidence and their trust, and we will continue to do that.
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Steve Noviello4:57
Any relief for folks who might want to say, 'You know what, I'm done. I want to cancel my service. I don't want to have to pay any sort of contract cancellation fee or anything.' Is that an option for consumers?
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Rachel McGowan5:05
We will absolutely address any one of those situations on a case-by-case basis. We understand the frustrations that our customers are experiencing, and we want to take care of every single one of them.
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Steve Noviello5:17
All right. You heard it from Frontier themselves. If you need special attention to your special situation, if you continue to have those outages and interruptions in services, the best thing to do is call the 800 number. That information is right now on our station website. Frontier is also responding to folks through social media.