The trouble with outsourcing your customer service (VERIZON) is that when a customer calls with a problem, even if the CSR (Customer Service Representative) speaks English, their accent leaves much to be desired. If I have to ask him to repeat himself more than once because his English is sub par or I can’t understand what he’s saying, then there’s a problem.The only highlight was when he slipped and told me that the tech would arrive August 4th. August? Ummm, no. I think I’ll take my business elsewhere if I have to wait eleven months for a fix.

Also, while I’m not a Nationalist by any stretch, I think if the majority of your customers are in the US, the majority of you jobs should be in the US. It’s not even a race thing; it’s just common sense. Cheaper or not, if your customers and your employees are separated by an ocean, how comfortable do you think your clients feel about getting their problem fixed when something goes wrong, and they have to call up someone they can barely understand. If I can’t understand your CSR, how certain am I that he understands me? Not at all.

Even their tech guys are outsourced to separate companies, albeit local. The guys that come to fix whatever problem you have aren’t even actually Verizon employees. They’re contracted through another company. Since I’ve also had the misfortune of calling their payment line upon occasion and gotten a Latino CSR, I’m reasonably certain that they outsource some of the CSR jobs to Mexico as well as India. So let’s just say that the chain of command between the techs, the CSRs, and the actual people in charge of Verizon is very convoluted indeed.

Anyway, in May when my contract is up and my modem is mine to keep even if I drop Verizon… let’s just say I’ll be in the market for a new internet provider and I’ll be asking pointed questions about the locality of their CSR jobs.