In the Matter of:				) 
							)
TELEPHONE CUSTOMER SERVICE FORUM	)
                                    )



















Pages:  1 through 112

Place:  Washington, D.C.

Date:   June 9, 2000

	Before the
	FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
	Washington, D.C.  20554


In the Matter of:		   ) 
				   )
TELEPHONE CUSTOMER SERVICE FORUM	   )
                                      )

				Commission Meeting Room
				Federal Communications
				Commission
				445 12th Street, S.W.
				Washington, D.C. 20554

						Friday,
						June 9, 2000

		The parties met, pursuant to the notice of the 

Commission, at 9:13 a.m.


		APPEARANCES:

		LORRAINE MILLER, Chief, Consumer Information
		Bureau (CIB), FCC
		WILLIAM KENNARD, Chairman, FCC

		ROGER GOLDBLATT, Director, Consumer Education
		Office, CIB
		TOM SHIRLEY, CIB
		KAY WALTERS, CIB
		WENDY CHAMBERS, CIB
		STEVE ALLBAKER, CIB
		BRENDA ALTHOFF, CIB

		APPEARANCES (Continued):

		NANCY BROCKWAY, Commissioner, New Hampshire
		Public Utilities Commission
		JIM HURT, Director, Consumers Utility Counsel,
		Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs, State of
		Georgia
		SHIRLEY ROOKER, President, Call for Action
		STEPHEN JONES, Director, Bureau Network
		Division, Better Business Bureau
		JEFF KRAMER, Legislative Representative, AARP
		LIZ CRENSHAW, Consumer Reporter, WRC-TV
		KAREN PELTZ-STRAUSS, Deputy Bureau Chief, CIB
		CHARLIE CRAWFORD, Executive Director, American
		Council of the Blind
		MATTIE ROBINSON, Senior Consumer
		CLAUDE STOUT, Executive Director,
		Telecommunications for the Deaf, Inc.
		GLORIA VERDUZCO, Hispanic Consumer
		LORRAINE MILLER
		JOHN GOODMAN, President, e-Satisfy

	P R O C E E D I N G S
	(9:13 a.m.)
		MS. MILLER:  Good morning.  Okay, Rich, you can 
sit down now.  Good morning and welcome.  Isn't it a 
beautiful morning outside?  We're just delighted to see each 
and every one of you this morning.
		Today our Customer Service Forum is a first for 
the Federal Communications Commission.  In a world where 
advanced telecommunications services, with broad band, high 
speed digital services, convergence and wireless 
technologies and networks are changing the way Americans 
actually do their business, we are, in a very real sense, 
having virtual reality and spawning new technologies and 
services and creating a smaller, a more linked worldwide 
community.
		Given that, the Consumer Information Bureau of the 
Federal Communications Commission is committed and hopes 
with this forum this morning that we want to take the -- ask 
the people who provide the services to our communities to 
take a moment and stop.  Let's evaluate the kind of service 
delivery we're giving and the effect that it has on the 
consuming public.
		All of us realize that the American public now has 
come to accept and expect good consumer service.  So today 
we hope to take a critical look together at what we're 
doing.  Let's highlight the positive and let's work together 
to come up with some solutions for the problems we uncover.
		It is always a pleasure for the Consumer 
Information Bureau to have the support and, more 
importantly, the presence of our chairman.  Ladies and 
gentlemen, William E. Kennard, the Chairman of the Federal 
Communications Commission.  Chairman Kennard.
		(Applause.)
		MR. KENNARD:  Thank you very much, Lorraine, and 
welcome, everyone, to the FCC.  I see a lot of familiar 
faces.  A lot of you have spent a lot of time here before, 
and it's good to see you.
		I woke up this morning and I thought that it was a 
very propitious day to have this forum, because I opened The 
Washington Post and on the front page is our own Roger 
Goldblatt, Director of Consumer Education at the FCC.  
(Applause.)  Where is he?  There he is.  I tell you, I was 
so pleased to see that, and I said, God, that guy is good.  
He got a plant on the front page of The Washington Post for 
this event.  The guy is good.
		(Laughter.)  
		MR. KENNARD:  That's right.  I don't think you 
need a press person.  Well, I think a lot of Roger's 
comments in here really sum it up and that is, there are a 
lot of angry consumers out there about customer service and 
misleading advertisements and whatnot.  And we wanted to 
convene this forum because I know many of you are from 
industry and from consumer advocacy groups and we're really 
serving the same customer base.  And we're all in this 
together.  I mean, that's what it's really all about.
		One of the things we're going to talk about here 
today is how oftentimes we're dealing with the very same 
consumers.  That is, they'll call a telephone carrier and 
the telephone carrier will just forward the call to the FCC. 
 And Lorraine and I were talking about this yesterday and 
how this is becoming quite a problem for us, because 
oftentimes, by the time that customer is referred to our 
assistance center here at the FCC, we've got one angry 
consumer.  And Lorraine and I were talking about how to deal 
with that, and I said, well, let's just have a button where 
we can send them right back.
		(Laughter.)
		MR. KENNARD:  But we can't do that.  But what we 
can do is we can work with all of you to improve the way all 
of us deal with consumers in this really rapidly changing 
environment.  What is happening in the world that we live in 
of telecommunications is that it's changing so incredibly 
fast and we're transitioning from an era of monopoly 
regulation to an era of competition.
		That's a huge challenge for those of us who care 
about consumer education, because that means that most 
consumers who were used to being protected by government in 
this area, where they had really one provider and that 
provider was highly regulated, now they're having to deal in 
a competitive environment, where they have to buy products 
and services from multiple providers.  They have to sort 
through all these confusing calling plans.  They are falling 
prey to aggressive marketing tactics, oftentimes deceptive 
marketing tactics.  And they're very vulnerable, because 
they're not used to buying telephone services in an area 
where they don't have lots of protection from federal and 
state regulators.
		Well, we know we can't go back.  We can't go back 
to the old monopoly environment, because ultimately, 
competition is good for consumers.  We want them to have 
these choices.  We want them to have lower rates and more 
innovation and all the good things that competition brings. 
 But we have to arm them with the tools to protect 
themselves, and basically, that's information.  And that's 
what our Consumer Information Bureau is all about.  It's 
arming consumers with the information they need to make 
informed choices in this competitive market place.
		I'm very, very proud that we've set up the 
Consumer Information Bureau under Lorraine's leadership.  
It's gotten off to a terrific start.  A couple of weeks ago, 
I participated in a management retreat.  All of Lorraine's 
senior managers got together.  They left the FCC for a day 
to talk about their plans for this Bureau.  And I tell you, 
there was a tremendous amount of excitement in that room 
around the creation of this Bureau and the new tasks that 
people have.
		But we can't be successful alone.  We need the 
help of industry and our colleagues at the state level and 
consumer advocacy groups on the outside to help us pull this 
off, and that's what this forum today is all about.  I'm 
sure it's going to be a successful forum and I'm looking 
forward to the feedback that we get from the forum.  And if 
you can't resolve this issue of, you know, consumer 
complaints coming to us from the carriers, Lorraine and I 
will sit down and think about that button again that we 
might have to implement for the FCC.
		Well, thank you all for being here and good luck 
today.
		(Applause.)
		(Whereupon a videotape was shown.)
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  A little dramatization of some 
calls that we get.  You might recognize some of the voices. 
 These are recreations of real calls that we got.  We didn't 
want to put real callers on the spot.
		One of the things we did during our last forum -- 
and it worked really well -- was explain how we come up with 
these ideas for forums, really, based on calls that we get 
at our consumer centers, both in Gettysburg and here in the 
Portals Building.  For this one particularly, we did a 
study, which is in your booklets, of a sampling of 1,000-
some-odd complaints that came in during the month of May.  
And we have what we call -- they're CAMS, Consumer Advocacy 
Mediation Specialists, sitting here, and they'll explain how 
we did the survey, how we came up with the results, and give 
you another feel for some of the calls that have come in.  
So I will start with Tom, Tom Shirley.
		MR. SHIRLEY:  Okay, thank you.  Am I on over here? 
 Oh, there I am.  Okay, plenty of feedback.  
		Okay, well, listen, thank you all very much for 
coming.  We really, really appreciate the chance to speak 
with you.  And we do want to speak with you.
		How many folks from the carriers are here this 
morning?  Can we see hands of carriers?  Okay, the reason I 
ask is because we're from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and we 
don't know even a lot of the agency folks here.  But thank 
you, carriers, very much, and everyone else, for coming.
		It's a great opportunity for us, this forum, for 
all of us to exchange some ideas and maybe make ourselves 
better able to provide the best customer service possible.  
I think if we're in the customer service business, we know 
that good customer service pays dividends in reduced 
complaints and follow-on benefits of reduced overhead, 
reduced costs.
		And by the way, your customers and our customers 
are the same.  Very often, they're the very, very same 
individuals who've called you and then call us.  We share 
those customers.  So what we want to do is to promote 
speaking in one voice to those customers.  We want to have 
you have the same information that we have, so that we can 
be level and even when speaking to our shared customers -- 
make that information the same.  And I'll be very frank with 
you.  We want to sell you our information.  We have it on a 
special low price of no dollars and zero cents.  Please let 
us share this information with you.
		We want to relate to you -- we have a little bit 
already -- some things that your customer and our customers 
that we share, that we're hearing.  And then we'd like to 
give you our version of that.  We'll do that when some of my 
other teammates here, Kay and Wendy and Brenda and Steve, 
speak to you.  I'm going to be very quick here. 
		And really, believe me, our purpose is not to beat 
you up.  We don't want to beat you carriers up.  We want to 
give you some feedback.  It's a little rough sometimes, it's 
a little outrageous, but please remember, we're just the 
messenger.  So don't shoot us quite today.
		Okay, I want to show you the tools that we use to 
talk to our customers.  Now, you saw on the video, those are 
our people talking to our customers and yours, and I want to 
show you very quickly the tool we use to get information 
from them and to provide information to them.  It includes 
their phone numbers, names, addresses, and e-mail addresses 
and fax numbers and that kind of thing.
		I'm on the video with my -- okay, here we go. 
Okay, well, there we are, the Federal Communications 
Commission Consumer Information Bureau.  There's our toll 
free number right there, (888) 225-5322.  That spells (888) 
CALL FCC on your keypad, on your phone keypad.  We have a 
TTY that's (888) 835-5322 or (888) TELL FCC.  Hang on here 
and I'll give you a little simulation of what we see when 
the customers call us.  Okay.  There that is again.
		The application software we use is called Expert 
Adviser.  It provides the means for our CAMS -- that's 
Consumer Advocacy and Mediation Specialist -- that's all of 
us -- to record the details of each call.  And I don't mean 
tape-record.  I mean to record in our computers, in our 
databases.  As you will see, it's a collection of windows 
and dialogue boxes.  We're going to look at it right now.
		When a call comes into our consumer center, if the 
caller does not have his or her caller ID blocked, we will 
automatically get the phone number right there, in the box 
right here, where you see the phone number.  We do have to 
ask them for their name.  Here the state is actually keyed 
to the area code, so that's provided to us right away.  
		And let us say that a caller calls.  We begin over 
here at level 1, sort of coarse-tuning.  And the first few 
words out of their mouth, we can tell whether they want to 
talk about -- whether they want to get FCC info or forms 
that we have for them, or whether they want to talk about 
their telephone, as they very often do.  In that case, we'll 
click on telephone over there and then we get a second level 
that provides various different topics under Telephone.  
		In this case, we've set up slamming.  And what 
we're able to provide to them are some actions they can take 
when they get slammed.  We give them some guidance on how to 
file a complaint.  We talk a little bit about sanctions that 
have been levied on slammers.
		Now, here is the information that we can provide 
to them.  We can mail it to them, fax it or e-mail it.  So 
this part right here, the name is populated from the earlier 
entries and the numbers.  So in this case, we're going to 
fax this to this person in this example.  Or if the person 
has an e-mail address, we can fill in their e-mail address 
right here and send it to them. 
		We also have an on-line complaint form that we can 
help them fill out as they speak to us or they can go onto 
our Web page and fill out the complaint form themselves.  
There's the other part of the complaint form.  It's 
populated with their phone number, address, name -- that 
kind of thing. 
		And then, in this case, you remember it was it was 
a slamming case so we've highlighted slamming right here.  
We have other things here too that we can highlight.  So 
onto the next step, and finally we'll come down here and 
submit the complaint.  And we get quite a lot of automated 
processing of a complaint that way.
		Now, those are the mechanics of how we take a 
call.  We want to tell you a little bit more about some of 
the content of the calls.  So Kay, can you give us your 
little bit of the program, please?  Thank you.
		MS. WALTERS:  Good morning, my name is Kay Walters 
and I have worked for the Gettysburg Consumer Center for 
four years.  I'd like to talk to you today about some of the 
calls that I have taken from telephone consumers, 
specifically calls from senior citizens.
		My first telephone consumer was a senior lady who 
called and was very, very upset and she was on the verge of 
tears.  She was very concerned about this new charge, the 
$1.04 from the local exchange carrier.  It's called the 
PIXIE charge -- Presubscribed Interexchange Carrier charge. 
 And that's in our Rule 69.153.  Basically it is, it says, 
if an end user customer does not have a presubscribed 
interexchange carrier, that is, a long-distance carrier, the 
local exchange carrier may collect the PIXIE directly from 
the end user.  And the FCC sets a cap of $1.04 on this 
charge.
		Now, she was on a fixed income of $450 and she 
said she just could not afford this extra charge.  She said 
she never accepted monetary help from the federal government 
or the government at all and didn't want to start, and at 
that point, she was just in tears.  
		The caller also stated that the local exchange 
carrier said the FCC mandates this charge and she had to 
call the FCC to take it off.  What I advised the caller was 
that the charge was not mandated.  I also advised her that 
nothing on her local phone bill is mandated by the FCC and 
that nothing on her bill goes to the federal government 
other than the federal excise tax, which is around 3 percent 
of her bill.  Otherwise, the phone company keeps the rest of 
the money for the upkeep, except maybe local taxes or state 
taxes.
		And I told her I was very sorry, but the FCC could 
not take that charge off her bill because we didn't put it 
on.  I sent her some information through the expert adviser 
that Tom told you about, on a Lifeline Program.  That's a 
program for people on fixed incomes.  They go through the 
local phone company to apply for that.  And I also sent her 
information about the $1.04, the access charge information.
		My suggestions for better customer service would 
be for the local exchange carrier to know their bills.  They 
should know exactly what each charge is for and be prepared 
to explain the charges.  If the local exchange carrier gives 
the correct information out the first time, they don't get 
that second call back after they've talked to the FCC and 
have learned the actual facts.  And always, when someone 
calls that's on a fixed income, it's a very good suggestion 
if they suggest the Lifeline Program, because usually the 
telephone customers, when they call us, are very surprised 
there is such a program out there.  Most important: empathy 
for distressed people.  I think we need to appreciate the 
situation they are in and try to find them a helping hand 
any way we can.
		My second telephone consumer was an older lady 
calling, sobbing so hard I couldn't even understand anything 
she was saying.  Finally I had to tell her to take a couple 
of deep breaths and try to calm down so I could understand. 
 Then she started telling me her story.
		She had charges on her bill for calls she didn't 
make.  They were Dial-A-Porn calls, a really high bill, and 
they just didn't have the money to pay for them, since they 
were on a fixed income, also.  She said the local exchange 
carrier said they just couldn't help her.  They only bill 
for other companies because the FCC mandates that they do 
this.  And they demanded payment or at least to set up a 
payment plan, or they would disconnect her phone.
		She said she was caring for her sick husband and 
needed the phones to call doctors and maybe even 911 and she 
couldn't have her phone disconnected.  She said the local 
exchange carrier also suggested that she call the long-
distance company that billed her.  She called the long-
distance company and they told her they wouldn't take the 
charges off because they knew the calls were made from her 
home.
		What I advised the caller was that she could ask 
the local exchange carrier to do a branch tap search to see 
if their line was tampered with.  Also ask the local 
exchange carrier if they could recourse the charges back to 
the long-distance carrier and ask the local exchange carrier 
to block 900 numbers.  I also advised that neither the long-
distance company nor the local exchange carrier could 
disconnect her for nonpayment of pay-per-call charges, and 
this is according to the Communications Act of 1993, Section 
228(c)(3).  And it states, "A common carrier shall not 
disconnect or interrupt a subscriber's local-exchange 
telephone service or long-distance telephone service because 
of nonpayment of charges for any pay-per-call service."  I 
also suggested the Lifeline Program to her and I sent her 
information on the Lifeline Program and consumer tips 
information.  The consumer tips information is a way to 
lower your long-distance bill.  I thought maybe it would be 
beneficial.
		I also advised her to call the Federal Trade 
Commission, gave her that toll free number, because the FTC 
takes information on problem informational calls.  My 
suggestion for better customer service is, the local 
exchange carrier should either tell why they bill for other 
companies or at least don't say the FCC mandates they bill 
for other companies.  The local exchange carrier could have 
suggested the branch tap search of her phone line, the 
blocking of 900 numbers, and taken an application for the 
Lifeline Program.  Additionally, empathy for people in 
distress.  Even though it might have been the 50th, 60th 
call, you've got to treat it as if it were the first call of 
the day.  
		I've brought information today if anybody cares 
for it, on the Lifeline -- not on the program, the Lifeline 
information and consumer information regarding tips for 
lowering your long-distance bill.  If anybody needs that, I 
have it here.  At this time, I'd like to turn to my 
colleague, Wendy, for more examples of calls.
		MS. CHAMBERS:  Good morning.  Can everyone hear me 
all right?  Okay, my name is Wendy Chambers and I work in 
the Gettysburg Consumer Center.  I've answered gazillions of 
calls regarding anything and everything.  I have talked to a 
lot of your telephone customers.  I've brought some examples 
of the kinds of calls that I have taken day after day for 
the last three years.  
		Inaccurate information.  We received a call from a 
consumer who had been referred to us by her long-distance 
telephone company.  This caller wanted an explanation of the 
federal, state and local surcharges on her bill.  She was 
told that only the FCC could explain this charge.  She was 
also told that the carrier generates her bill, sends it to 
the FCC, we put on the taxes and surcharges.  It then is 
returned to the carrier and then sent out to their 
customers.  And that explains a lot of the delays in the 
billing.  (Laughter.)
		We received a call from a consumer who had been 
referred to us by her local telephone company.  She wanted 
an explanation of the charges on her bill.  She was told all 
the charges on her bill are mandated by the FCC.  They 
indicated that the FCC slapped these charges on her bill and 
the FCC receives the money, and to call us to find out why 
we are charging her.
		I told her the FCC did not put these charges on 
her bill.  She was very angry and did not believe a word I 
said, because she said her bill indicated "FCC charge."  A 
few of us have half jokingly considered telling the callers 
to write two checks -- one to the FCC for these supposedly 
mandated charges (laughter), and one to the local phone 
company. 
		Another charge that is very misunderstood is the 
local number portability charge.  We have received tens of 
thousands of calls from consumers who have been referred by 
local telephone companies with either incorrect information 
or no information at all.  One lady told me her local 
carrier told her this charge is authorized by the FCC and it 
allows her to keep her phone number even if she moves from 
California to New York.  I told her, under Rule section 
52.33, that the local exchange carriers may recover their 
carrier-specific costs directly relating to providing long-
term number portability.  So carriers are allowed to recover 
the cost of providing portability.  They may; they are not 
required to do this.
		High expectations.  A call was referred to us by 
the local telephone company this time.  She wanted an 
explanation of the network access charge.  We weren't sure 
what she meant by that, but she indicated it was $3.50, 
which to us indicated, that was the federal subscriber line 
charge.  She was told this charge was imposed by the FCC and 
to call us to have it waived.  We told her, according to 
Rule section 69.152(a), a charge shall be assessed upon end 
users that subscribe to local exchange telephone service.  
However, under subparagraph m, it allows for charging less 
than the maximum, including 100 percent less or zero.
		Another caller we had was referred to us by her 
long-distance carrier.  She had one of those charges on her 
bill to Madagascar.  She told the phone company she did not 
make this call.  They said they could not help her.  
However, if she called the FCC, we could pull up her bill on 
our computer (laughter), we could tell her the phone number 
and the company that the number belonged to.  And they 
recommended that she call this number to have this charge 
removed from her bill.  We told her, of course, we couldn't 
pull up her account on our computers and she probably really 
didn't want to call Madagascar, because then another 
international call would appear on her bill.
		We had another call regarding the nonpresubscribed 
interexchange carrier charge, otherwise known as the PIXIE. 
 She was told the FCC makes the local company charge this 
fee, because she did not have a long-distance carrier.  She 
was told to call us to find out why she was being punished 
for not having a long-distance carrier and demand removal of 
this charge.
		I explained to her, according to the rule section 
that Kay indicated earlier, that -- you know, that rule 
section.  After that, she appreciated my explanation and 
told me she didn't like this charge but now understood why 
it was on her bill.  She wondered why the FCC allows 
companies to lie to their customers.
		Improper referrals.  We receive many, many calls 
from consumers who are very frustrated because they are sent 
from one company to another, from one agency to another.  We 
received a call from a snowbird who wanted to put his 
telephone on vacation status during the months he was out of 
state.  He had been doing this for the last eight years.  He 
was told this time that there were new FCC regulations that 
require him to call the FCC, that only we could put his 
phone on vacation service.
		And for my last example, a lady called regarding 
the federal, state and local taxes on her telephone bill. 
She had called her local phone company earlier and was 
quickly sent to the FCC.  I told her I could explain the 
federal excise tax.  However, I could not help her with her 
state and local taxes because they varied, depending on 
where she lives.  I suggested, why don't we do a conference 
call with the local telephone company.  So I got them on the 
line, identified myself as Wendy from the FCC, and I said I 
had one of their customers on the line who had called 
earlier about her local and state charges and was referred 
to us.  And the customer service representative said, oh, 
now, that should have never happened.  We could explain 
those taxes to her.
		This customer service representative was 
outstanding.  She explained each tax, the percentage, the 
address and a contact phone number where their customers 
could call for further information.  I thanked the customer 
service representative and when we get off the phone, the 
customer said to me, why didn't I receive this excellent 
customer service the first time I called?  Isn't it a shame 
to have to escalate to the FCC before good customer service 
was achieved?  It makes you wonder, doesn't it?  Thank you.
		Now I'd like to -- Steve is next.
		MR. ALLBAKER:  Good morning, my name is Steve 
Allbaker (phonetic), and I've answered these kind of calls 
for the last four and a half years.
		My first example is a gentleman who was totally 
confused about his phone service.  He has two phone lines in 
his home, both of which have the same preferred long-
distance carrier.  At least that's what he thought until he 
received his most recent bills.  Calls on his second line 
were now being billed by a carrier he neither chose or ever 
heard of.
		He did contact the company and asked them what 
they thought they were doing by billing him when he never 
authorized it?  And their reply was, the other phone company 
couldn't handle the calls, so they took over.  To this he 
replied, well, how come they're still handling those calls 
on my first line, and he wanted to know what was going on.  
Their reply to this question was that they were the same 
company and again stated that they were handling his calls 
because the other company couldn't.
		I asked him if he contacted his preferred carrier 
and he said he would, but the phone number on the top of 
both bills were the same number and he kept getting the same 
answer.  He also stated that the second company was billing 
him at the rate of one-minute call, 75 cents; four-minute 
call, 75 cents, while his preferred carrier was charging him 
10 cents a minute, which he was happy about.  He then asked 
me if this was a form of slamming, at which point I couldn't 
reply because I was confused about how this was being 
handled.  (Laughter.)  So I sent him information and advised 
him to file a complaint with us and we'd look into it and 
find out exactly what was going on.  
		My second example was a retired couple who were 
totally disgusted with the phone service.  They were 
contacted by a long-distance carrier about unlimited calls 
for a flat rate per month.  Since they live in Texas and 
have a son who is in his first year at West Point in New 
York, they figured it was a good deal.  So the caller took 
the information and did the verification and everything and 
told them that the service would be hooked up in 
approximately 10 days.
		After three weeks and still not being hooked up to 
this service, they contacted the company and requested that 
their order be canceled, since if the company wasn't 
reliable enough to hook them up one time, they couldn't be 
trusted to handle their calls.  So the representative at 
this time took their information and stated that he would 
have the order canceled.  They thought everything was fine 
until they received their first bill from this company for 
the monthly service charge.  At that point again, they 
contacted the company and asked them what was going on. 
		The representative did respond that, yes, they 
indeed were hooked up to their service.  At this point, they 
asked them, could you please have the service canceled?  And 
the representative stated that he would take this complaint 
and put this in for a disconnection, but they would probably 
be receiving another bill because it's in the next billing 
cycle.  So they then contacted their previous carrier and 
requested reconnection to them and also contacted their 
local phone company about verification for the reconnection, 
which was done on April 17.
		On May 1, they did pay the unwanted company's 
bill, but then on May 10, they received a nonpayment notice 
from this company, which stated that unless the bill was 
paid by May 16, they would be turned over to a collection 
agency.  So after all this frustrating information and 
everything, they keep calling back, they keep getting placed 
to another location, all around the U.S.  They never get to 
talk to the same individual.  And most recently what has  
happened is they're being transferred to an automated system 
which puts them into different locations and everything, and 
it helps them not at all because it always asks them for a 
PIN number, which they don't have because this company never 
actually was their company.
		And so far they've done this for eight times.  And 
the end result of this, they're now visiting their son in 
New York, because he's concerned about what this is doing to 
their health, because the husband has a heart condition and 
the wife does have seizures.  And I told them about the 
possibility that their payment and the nonpayment notice may 
have crossed in the mail, so that may take care of itself, 
but keep trying to resolve this with the company.
		But the thing of it is, the problem could have 
been eliminated right from the start if the first 
representative that took the cancellation notice would have 
advised them to contact their local phone company, that 
there may have been a request for a change in service.  And 
they could have put a PIC-freeze on at that time and that 
would have eliminated the whole problem from there on.
		And that's the end of my stories, and I'll give 
you to Brenda.
		MS. ALTHOFF:  Good morning.  I'm going to cover 
disclosing and disseminating correct information.  We 
received a call from a customer asking for a definition of 
the access and universal charges on their phone bill.  The 
phone company gave a definition that the charges were 
mandated by the FCC and given to the FCC to support their 
cost-of-living raises in January.  (Laughter.)  So I thought 
if this was the case, that now would be a good time to ask 
for the raise for next year.  (Laughter.)
		We received a call from a lady asking the phone 
company to explain a charge on her bill.  The representative 
stated, she could not help her.  She refused to give her 
name and would not transfer the lady to a supervisor.  The 
representative then put her on hold.  She was on hold for 
approximately 10 minutes and was finally connected to what 
she thought was another department.  This was actually a 
blind transfer, where she was then transferred to a 
pornographic number by the representative. 
		We had another customer tell us that his wait time 
to get into the service department of a major carrier to 
release his blocked line back to his preferred carrier was 
three hours.  He put the call on conference until he finally 
got through.
		My next caller was from a mother whose children 
were in college.  She set up a calling card so her children 
could keep in touch, and at that time, the rate was 25 cents 
per minute and she had the card for several years.  She 
recently received a phone bill amounting to $400.  She 
immediately got on the phone with the carrier and was told 
that she was put on a different calling plan and rate.  It 
was $1.25 each time she connected with the card and 97 cents 
per minute.
		She asked the representative why she was not 
informed of the increase and the representative told her 
that because her billing statement was from the local 
exchange carrier, that they, the long distance company, were 
unable to disclose rate information because of privacy.  The 
only privacy issues we are aware of are the customer 
proprietary network information, which was enacted under the 
Telecommunications Act, section 702, and state that,  
"Nothing in this section prohibits a telecommunications 
carrier from using, disclosing or permitting access to 
customer proprietary network information obtained from its 
customers, either directly or indirectly, through its agents 
to initiate, render, bill and collect for telecommunications 
services."  So the rate information may be disclosed.
		The last subject that I would like to cover is 
broken promises.  I received a call and this was my call 
last week from a man who was close to tears, and I don't 
know if you've ever taken a call where you've had a person 
that's so distraught, pleading for help.  He was a minority 
small businessman with seven children.  He opened a small 
automotive shop last September, and at that time, he set up 
two lines with his local exchange carrier.  One number had 
long-distance, the other did not.  The second line was for 
his fax and computer.
		His average long-distance amounted to $10, so in 
May of this year, he disconnected the long distance on his 
first line.  In April of this year, he received a long 
distance bill for the second line, which had his fax and 
computer, which had no long distance, totalling $2,700.  
Before this date, no long-distance charges were ever 
received.
		The next day, he placed a call to the long- 
distance company.  The representative told him that the 
second number was listed under a different name and 
different social security number and the representative 
would be sure to correct the name and social security number 
on this account.  The long-distance provider advised him to 
call his local exchange carrier, so a call was placed to the 
local exchange carrier the next day and the order was placed 
again to cancel all long-distance.
		A three-way conversation was placed by the local 
exchange carrier to settle this dispute.  The long-distance 
representative informed her supervisor and stated that the 
problem would be corrected.  She assured him that the 
problem would be corrected and if -- to call within 30 days 
if the problem did persist.  She gave him her name and phone 
number.
		At the end of April, he received a second bill, 
totaling $10,000.  The summary of charges presents him as 
placing calls throughout the United States, seven days a 
week, on a 24-hour basis.  He immediately tried to contact 
John or Jane Doe, the person who gave her name and number to 
him, and was told that no one with that name worked at that 
number.
		He talked with several supervisors and was then 
told the bill must be paid.  In May, he received a third 
bill, totaling $23,000.  This is a true case.  It's a real 
horror story.  The point here is that there were a lot of 
promises that were broken.  
		I'd now like to turn this over to Tom Shirley to 
add some closing remarks.
		MR. SHIRLEY:  Okay, I don't really have anything 
further, Roger, so go ahead, please.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Thanks.  Thank you all.  We're now 
going to have a panel -- you would think that we get all the 
complaints about customer service and telephone companies.  
Our next panel are other consumer groups or organizations 
and they're going to tell their experiences, as well.  So 
why doesn't the next group come up, please?  Have some 
coffee.
		By the way, if the FCC was really getting all that 
money, we'd probably have bagels at that table.  (Laughter.)
		Okay, I'm going to ask each person to introduce 
themselves and tell the organization they're from before 
they go into their little stories.  So why don't we start 
with Nancy Brockway?
		MS. BROCKWAY:  Good morning, my name is Nancy 
Brockway.  I'm a commissioner with the New Hampshire Public 
Utilities Commission and I don't have the same kind of 
specific anecdotes to relate, although I can tell you that 
from nine years working as a legal services attorney and 
nine or ten years -- eight years working as a staff member 
in various public utility commissions and now for a couple 
of years as a commissioner in New Hampshire, everything that 
we heard this morning are the same types of complaints that 
state commissions get.  And these are the types of problems 
that consumers face when they're trying to navigate their 
way through what is an increasingly complicated maze of 
regulations, numbers of companies they have to deal with, 
and changing situations.
		I want to start by applauding the Federal 
Communications Commission for their expanded response in 
recent years to consumer complaints.  I remember when I was 
a legal services attorney back along, we would try, as 
attorneys, to call the FCC and get help for our clients with 
an interstate bill and we couldn't get through as attorneys. 
 And there were very rigid requirements about filing 
complaints in writing.  You couldn't talk to anybody on the 
telephone.  It seemed as if it was extremely bureaucratic, 
and not intentionally, but effectively designed to keep 
anybody from bothering the FCC with their consumer 
complaints.  
		And so the states had an unfunded mandate, if you 
will, to clean up whatever messes there were.  But we didn't 
have the jurisdiction.  This is changing and it's changing 
rapidly and for the better.  These calling centers that the 
FCC has created and the increased cooperation between the 
federal government and state commissions to try to handle 
these problems is a very welcome sign.  And I think has 
already led to great improvements in the quality of 
governmental response to consumers' problems.
		I want to mention that the CIB, Consumer 
Information Bureau, of the FCC has been participating 
actively in the new Consumer Affairs Committee of the 
National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and 
we are grateful for this institutional cooperation.  We 
exchange ideas.  It has led, for example, to a recent 
delegation of authority by the Federal Communications 
Commission to the states to deal with slamming complaints.  
And slamming complaints have been among the most difficult 
for consumers to understand.
		I remember, again, when I was representing 
individual consumers that it was this business of being lied 
to or betrayed, more even than the money that was at stake, 
that motivated people to try to make their way through the 
bureaucracy to get justice.  As we move to a more 
competitive world, we get more and more of these types of 
problems, confusion, lack of understanding of how the new 
system works, and then the bad apple that spoils it for 
everybody.  
		Sometimes the bad apple is not just a little fly-
by-night.  Sometimes the bad apples are very large and well-
respected companies, and the irony is that as we're moving 
to a system where competition is supposed to police various 
aspects of the business and provide higher quality service 
and lower rates, we're ending up with state commissions and 
the FCC needing to do more enforcement and more consumer 
education and more complaint mediation.
		Jim Berg of the South Dakota Commission reported 
recently that they've had to triple the size of their 
customer assistance or consumer division because of the 
number of inquiries that they're getting.
		Another development I'd like to report on is that 
states are now cooperating amongst ourselves.  We recently 
had a problem with a major, very well respected utility and 
all the six New England states got together and we brought 
representatives of this telecom company in and sat them 
down, because we had compared notes and all of us were 
experiencing the same problems of that company's left hand 
not knowing what the right hand was doing and the customer 
falling between the cracks.  And the most difficult, 
terrible thing of all, of course, was that they didn't give 
us any respect.  It's one thing for them to "dis" the 
customer, but when they were "dissing" us, that really got 
us going.
		And I'm being facetious, but it indicates that 
there was no fear on the part of that company that any kind 
of disrespect that they were showing to the consumer or to 
us was going to come back to haunt them.  Well, we all got 
them together in one room together and at least for 
residential customers, the turn-around time on their 
internal dealings with complaints has dropped dramatically. 
 So this kind of cooperation across states, between the 
state and the federal government, is essential and it's very 
useful.
		I just want to end by saying that because the 
Federal Communications Commission is increasingly seeing the 
network as a seamless loop from the customer's premises 
through to whomever they call and back -- and in some ways 
that's justified, and in any event, in many cases, the 
Federal Communications Commission has been upheld in its 
assertion of this jurisdiction of seeing this as an 
interstate network -- well, with that assertion of 
jurisdiction over the rates comes the responsibility that 
the former panel has expressed of responding to consumers' 
complaints.  And we at the state level will continue to work 
very closely with the FCC to help them in their response and 
to receive help from them in dealing with customer 
complaints that come to us.  
		We see ourselves, despite the large number of 
complaints that go to the FCC, we see ourselves as a first 
line of defense for consumers and hope to continue this 
cooperative relationship that we have with the Federal 
Communications Commission and thank them for this forum.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Thanks, Nancy.  What we want to do 
is show that when we do things in Washington, there are 
other states, other areas of the country, that hear the same 
thing.  We want to bring them in, because a lot of our 
consumer problems are obviously shared by all over.
		The next person, Jim Hurt, from Georgia.
		MR. HURT:  I'm Jim Hurt.  I'm the public advocate 
in the state of Georgia.  I represent the residential and 
small business customers as classes in any legal proceedings 
involving the telephone, where we think that they have a 
direct interest.
		I'm going to bypass the unfair and deceptive, 
misleading practices this morning.  I think those were to be 
expected as we moved toward competition and no one should 
have been surprised that such things as slamming and 
cramming and so forth occurred.
		Otherwise, I think that there are three forces 
right now that are diminishing what we think of as 
traditional customer service.  And those forces are 
competition, competition and competition.  First, 
competition for larger customers, the large business 
customers, is creating a tendency in the companies to 
provide better service for them at the expense of 
residential and small business customers.  I spoke earlier 
this week with Commissioner Wise (phonetic) with the Georgia 
Commission and he affirmed for me that he had also discerned 
a clear pattern on this.
		Second, the laws of corporate behavior in a 
competitive situation.  The loss by the RBOCs of large 
customers creates pressure to replace lost revenues with 
vertical services.  And I think as a result of that, we're 
seeing increases in the cost of vertical services.  We're 
also seeing vertical services that are being rolled out too 
quickly before they're really ready to be used.  And then, 
when the glitches occur, that engenders a lot of service 
complaints about those vertical services.
		And third, the smaller companies are following 
suit in a competitive environment, simply because they can, 
raising the costs of vertical services, such as directory 
assistance and trying to meet public demand for other 
vertical services, particularly the more trendy ones, which 
also tend to be the ones that have more glitches in them at 
this point.
		I have an anecdote.  It is a personal anecdote.  
It occurred with me at my home, my telephone service.  We 
would notice that the telephone would be on in the middle of 
the night.  We have one of those lights that tells you when 
the phone is being used, and I would pick it up to find out 
what was going on and we would hear someone speaking in an 
African dialect and these calls would go on for quite a long 
time.  And the African dialect later turned out to be that 
calls were going from Atlanta to Gambia.
		The bills, eventually amounting to more than 
$1,200, accumulated on my telephone bill for this.  And we 
had to have six visits by the telephone company to our home. 
 And we went for four months, trying to get these charges 
off of the bill and they kept coming back every month.  Now, 
I did not go through regular channels in trying to clear 
this up.  I have channels that I can use --
		(Laughter.)
		MR. HURT:  -- and so that, of course, raises the 
queen question.  If the state representative, the officially 
sanctioned representative of consumers in the state of 
Georgia, has this much difficulty with this problem, what in 
the world is happening to "Joe Six-Pack" out there when he 
has a problem?
		I think the queen question at this point is, will 
competition eventually correct these problems, or will 
regular customers just have to accept the shortcomings in 
traditional customer service?  And the answer for me, and 
certainly this is an opinion, is that in our rush to create 
competitive markets with a multitude of business players, we 
have forgotten that telecommunications were regulated not 
only because they were of monopoly status, but also because 
of their essential nature to our way of life.
		I would suggest that close monitoring of service 
complaints at this point, closer monitoring, is appropriate 
and that we not be so ideologically bound to competition 
that we rule out any possible tougher reregulation of the 
service aspects of the telecommunications industry.  Thank 
you.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Thank you.  Our next speaker -- 
I'm sure many of you turn on the radio once in a while, you 
might have heard Shirley Rooker from Call for Action.
		MS. ROOKER:  And if they haven't, you should.
		(Laughter.)
		MS. ROOKER:  Our number is 1500 AM.  You can even 
get us over the Internet, actually.  Thank you very much, 
Roger, and thank the FCC for holding this very important 
discussion this morning.
		Briefly, Call for Action is a nonprofit 
organization that starts partnerships with radio and 
television stations.  We have 24 offices around the country. 
 We're about to open three more.  We have over 1,200 
volunteers who deal with hundreds of thousands of consumer 
complaints each year.  We reach about 40 million consumers 
with a network of Call for Action reporters that work with 
us.  So we hear from a lot of consumers.
		Now, I will tell you that when I started going 
back and started looking at some of the types of complaints, 
not only did we find that the telephone industry gets a lot 
of complaints, but we're seeing a lot of customer service 
complaints across the board.  But I will focus primarily on 
customer service.
		I'm not going to try to tell you about the 
complaints that we get, because I think the CIB 
representatives very eloquently expressed to you the 
concerns and problems that we have sometimes in getting 
correct information in a timely fashion.
		But I would like to focus instead on a study that 
I think is a very compelling reason.  It's a study that 
should be brought to the attention of all companies, no 
matter what your business or what service you offer.  And 
always, when I listen to our customer complaints, it makes 
me think, is customer service an oxymoron?  And certainly 
some of our consumers, our callers, would tell you it is.
		But going back to the study, there was a study 
commissioned by the Society of Consumer Affairs 
Professionals in Business.  It's not a new study -- I mean, 
it's a new study, but it just reaffirmed studies that have 
been done in the past.  And what it revealed was that 
customers come back to businesses, not because of pricing 
and merchandise, as you might have guessed, but because of 
how well the company treats its customers.  Now that's 
something that all telephone companies should keep in mind.
		The study found that there was a direct 
correlation between buying intent and a customer's 
experience with a company's consumer affairs department.  In 
fact, the study discovered that when consumers were 
satisfied with the way a company had handled their 
complaint, they became more loyal than customers who had 
never had complaints to begin with, which is really a very 
interesting revelation.  It's kind of converse to what we 
might have expected.  You've had a problem, but because the 
company satisfied it, that customer became even more loyal.
		But there was a word of warning there that should 
be issued to companies that use 800 numbers to handle 
consumer complaints.  If it isn't user friendly, customers 
are likely to hang up and take their business elsewhere.  If 
an automated 800 number gives consumers a long list of 
options without the ability to speak to a human being in a 
short period of time, the customer is going to walk.
		So this study should really serve as a guide for 
businesses: Take care of your customers and they'll come 
back to you.  So given this evidence, it seems to make good 
sense that businesses would provide excellent customer 
service.  Now, I believe there are a number of reasons that 
consumers are experiencing frustration in dealing with it.  
I think that the two preceding speakers have hit on some 
issues, but let me just add some thoughts to it.
		First off, I think automation is -- I hate going 
into "voice-mail hell."  I hate going into selections of 
menus where there are six, eight, nine choices and I've 
forgotten the first four before I get to number five.  You 
know, this drives consumers nuts, I will tell you.  So I 
find that sometimes technology gets in the way of service.  
But whether it's perception or reality, the consumers that 
we hear from think companies are not interested in helping 
them.  They find that technology gets in the way.  They want 
to pick up the phone and hear a voice, hear someone there to 
help them.  
		I think that's one of the reasons so many people 
contact Call for Action, because we don't have an answering 
service.  They get to us directly.
		Secondly, consumers complain because they're on 
the phone for too long.  They're being put on hold and 
they're angry.
		And then third, consumers are irate when they 
can't get back to the same individual that they've talked to 
before and they have to repeat the story.  Now, those are 
some of the things that we've seen.  As I said, I'm not 
going into my consumer complaints, but I will tell you, I 
think there are opportunities for all of us to improve the 
way customer service is handled and I think the key element 
-- and let me repeat it -- the key element is training, 
because information dispensed to consumers needs to be 
accurate.  Thank you.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Thank you, Shirley.  When we set 
up this panel, we were trying to think, well, before there 
were consumer offices, who did people complain to, and 
somebody said, Better Business Bureau, and we said, hmm.  So 
now, from the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Stephen 
Jones.
		MR. JONES:  Thank you.  My name is Stephen Jones. 
 I'm with the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which is 
the headquarters or umbrella organization for the 132 or so 
Better Business Bureaus in the U.S. and 15 in Canada.  We 
were the people that people went to to complain and we are 
the people that people go to to complain about telephones.
		I'm very pleased to be here today.  Two ideas have 
come to me that we can do to really facilitate our complaint 
handling.  One, we're going to get a button to press so that 
we can transfer all the calls to the FCC.
		(Laughter.)
		MR. JONES:  And the second was, we plan to impose 
a confiscatory tax on most phone bills so that it will cover 
our phone bills themselves, which are excessive.  As I said, 
there are 132 BBBs in the United States and we often rank 
complaints by the nature of the business.  We have 1,059 
different types of businesses categorized and for 1999, the 
telephone companies, not cellular equipment, just plain 
telephone companies, ranked number nine among the 1,059 
complaint categories.  They were tucked cozily between work-
at-home schemes and used car salesmen.  Not to suggest that 
the phone companies are in that class of business or class 
of salespeople, but I would also point out that for the year 
2000, the first quarter, the number one complaint category 
has been cellular telephones.  That's not including the 
others, the regular telephones and long-distance carriers, 
which if all ranked together, would be higher than eighth, 
for sure.
		The increase for `99 in cellular complaints alone 
has been -- I'm sorry, 2000 -- it's over 400 percent over 
1999.  So something must be going wrong or business is 
certainly burgeoning, which naturally brings complaints.
		I don't mean to overdramatize the position of the 
phone companies with complaints.  In universally used public 
utilities like telephones, these always expect to get large 
numbers of complaints, just because there's a huge number of 
customers.
		Nevertheless, our complaint statistics and from 
the complaint statistics and from conversations I had with 
Better Business Bureau staff and CEOs in preparation for 
this forum, it became clear that there are new problems with 
telephone service that have arisen since deregulation, and 
that the number is growing and that it can be quite serious.
		We think that's in part -- and I guess we agree 
with the other speakers -- that it's at least in part 
because of the change in the nature of the business and the 
growth in competition and products.
		Generally, the complaints we get at the BBB are on 
wireless and regular phones, break down into two main 
service categories -- billing and the quality of service.  
The alleged errors in billing have continued to be the most 
common area of consumer dissatisfaction as expressed to the 
BBB.  The problems are magnified and complicated by two 
factors.  One is the deregulation of the phone system, 
causing these incredibly long and fat telephone bills that 
are so complicated that most folks -- and I'm not saying 
just slack-jawed yokels, we're talking most folks, whether 
they be geniuses or rocket scientists -- have trouble 
understanding the bills.  And when they do, they come to the 
Better Business Bureau and others -- but they come to us in 
large numbers.
		The second aspect of billing problems is that even 
when customers do understand their bills, and especially 
when they do understand the bills, they believe that they've 
been mischarged, that there are mistakes in the bills.  BBBs 
report that typically complaints allege being charged for 
calls not made or charged for services that have been 
canceled, as has been very wonderfully told about earlier.
		This billing mess is exacerbated by the continued 
problems with slamming and cramming.  BBBs across the 
country still regularly get complaints from consumers who 
are unaware that their long-distance carrier had been 
changed or that they had "signed up" for another service 
they never intended to buy.
		Which brings me to the second area of frequent 
complaint, which is service.  The BBB -- as a rule, we tell 
people who complain to us, we ask them if they have already 
contacted the company to present their complaint and we ask 
that they do that before they come to us for help in 
presenting a complaint.  Well, it turns out that one of the 
things most complained of to the BBB is the difficulty 
customers have getting through to somebody, a living person 
at their phone company, someone who can help them resolve 
their problems.
		Time and again, we've expressed -- consumers have 
expressed frustration at their inability to navigate the 
voice response menus, as Shirley and others said.  
Complaints report that when they get hold of an actual phone 
company employee, the person cannot or will not help them, 
shunts them to another department, still another menu.  
Complainants report that when they do get a service rep, 
they are frequently brusque, rude and unhelpful.  
Complainants to BBB on cellular phone services have also 
claimed the representatives will make promises that they do 
not keep, for example, changing billing plans or termination 
of a service, and thus requiring repeated attempts to 
straighten things out with the company and calls to the 
Better Business Bureau.
		Several bureaus report complaints to the effect 
that phone company staff would refuse to transfer complaint 
calls to the supervisor or refuse to identify themselves or 
their supervisors.  This is very frustrating to consumers 
and they express their frustration to us.  It genders some 
really ill will towards the phone companies.  And it helps 
nobody.
		Sometimes when consumers complain to the billing 
phone company about being crammed or slammed, the companies 
say they are helpless, as has been said before, or other 
even more inventive excuses, such as that they cannot keep 
fraudulent long-distance switchers or people signing people 
up, off of their bills.  Now, there might be a truth in 
that, but it's certainly cold comfort to the customers who 
promptly and continually see the phone company as complicit 
in the scam.
		We've also received complaints alleging long 
periods on hold, being sold one plan and signed up for 
another plan, these kinds of things that have been 
enumerated here today better than I can do.
		But one thing I can tell you about is the Better 
Business Bureau experience with presenting complaints, and 
it's like the consumers'.  Not surprisingly, their 
complaints mimic the complaints we hear from consumers.  
It's very difficult to get through to phone companies -- 
sometimes, to get through to the right people at phone 
companies.  It's hard for the Better Business Bureau to do, 
even though we've had a relationship with the phone 
companies in handling complaints for 75 years.
		A number of unscientific conclusions that some 
Better Business CEOs have drawn and told to me -- I'd just 
like to report a couple of sort of anecdotes here.  One 
Bureau noted that they get phone complaints from both big 
companies and small companies -- start-ups.  They get 
complaints from old companies and they get complaints from 
new companies, but it's been their experience, at least some 
Better Business Bureaus, that the older and larger companies 
will handle the complaints in time, while the ones in the 
smaller start-up companies tend to fall through the cracks, 
perhaps because of lack of resources.  We don't know for 
sure.
		But they've also said that, for example, one 
large, regional phone company, one of the Baby Bells, I 
guess it probably was, when people complained to the Better 
Business Bureau, and they do by the hundreds, they had, the 
Better Business Bureau had a great deal of difficulty in 
reaching the right person to contact to fix the problem.  It 
ends up that it took an average of two months to get a 
complaint resolved when the Better Business Bureau is 
working on it.  And that's certainly not a satisfactory way 
of handling complaints.
		It probably is the belief of the Better Business 
Bureau in some of these cases that the company simply does 
not put the resources into handling complaints, but they're 
putting the resources into new products and new services. 
		We still do receive reports on sales tactics.  We 
receive them particularly on the people who get slammed and 
crammed.  It happens despite the assurances that we keep 
hearing that this is a problem that's being addressed and is 
over.  It's typical at BBBs across the country.
		We will say that most phone companies that we deal 
with give good service and also are prompt in fixing the 
complaints.  But the problem does not seem to be going away 
and it seems to be getting worse among the phone companies 
and the phone service providers.  And we are there, as the 
Better Business Bureau, to help and are ready, willing and 
able to work with communications companies to improve 
complaint resolution and increase customer satisfaction.  
Thanks.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Thank you.  The next consumer 
group we thought would be represented is -- I don't know 
about many of you, but as many of us get closer to a magic 
number which keeps getting lower and lower, we get cards in 
the mail to join a certain major organization, AARP, which 
now, I guess, is lowered down to 50.  I think it's one of 
the largest consumer organizations in the country now, isn't 
it, Jeff?
		MR. KRAMER:  I believe so, yes.  Thank you, Roger. 
 I'm Jeff Kramer.  I'm a legislative representative in 
federal affairs at AARP.  It's a pleasure to be here today. 
 I want to thank the Commission for inviting AARP to 
participate.  And I also want to commend the Consumer 
Information Bureau for being an essential link to the 
consumer community.  It's really nice to have a link between 
consumers and the Commission, which heretofore was 
nonexistent.  So I want to thank you for that.
		I don't think anything I'm going to say today is 
news, but hopefully we'll bring it to you in an AARP-type 
perspective.  Certainly the reason we gave for a lot of the 
complaints from consumers is because they feel that they're 
getting the runaround, they can't get a live person, and 
we've heard that a number of times.  And I think it's 
important to point out that what makes this more frustrating 
for our members is that, unlike other industries where you 
can go to a store and talk to a live sales representative or 
talk to someone when you make a lot of other retail 
purchases, with phone service you can't.  You're talking on 
the phone.  And so they move you around and transfer you 
around, that's the only option you have.
		You know, unlike years past, when you could go to 
a phone company and pay your bill and talk to a consumer 
representative, a lot of those offices are no longer in 
existence, so consumers have to rely on that.  And for our 
members, that becomes very, very frustrating when you're 
pushed around.
		I also want to point out, I think -- and I've 
mentioned this at some other forums when I talk about other 
issues related to telecommunication -- is good customer 
service is good for the carriers, too, specifically for 
AARPs' members.  As competition has started to develop in 
the telecommunications industry and it's thriving in a lot 
of areas, our members are starting to get into it.  More and 
more are on the Internet, more and more are buying wireless 
phones, more and more are getting advanced services 
regarding long distance or local service.
		But a lot of them are -- when they do start to do 
that and find that they have bad experiences -- are saying, 
no, no more, I'm just going back to what I have, keep me 
away from all of this.  So it's in the carrier's best 
interest, really, to deal with these consumers and try to 
handle their complaints as expeditiously as possible.
		With that said, I want to mention that, you know, 
again, AARP gets complaints from members, but we're 
certainly not the first line, I don't think.  I think by the 
time someone gets to call AARP or e-mail AARP or, you know, 
write AARP, that they've talked to someone else about it and 
their complaint hasn't been resolved.
		Still, in 1998, we got 178 communications from 
members regarding customer service in telephone service.  In 
1999, it doubled to 346, so just in a year, we got a whole 
different amount.  And if 2000 is an indicator, in the first 
five months we've gotten a whole bunch of them.  In fact, 
the ones I'm going to point out today were just received in 
the month of May.  And that's where I'm going to go.  I'm 
going to quickly go through some examples which I think 
provide a range of the kind of complaints we get from our 
members looking for assistance.
		We have one who says they called their company -- 
they're on a fixed income, like we've heard from the 
Gettysburg Center, and they're really concerned about a lot 
of the line item charges that are on their bills and what to 
do about them.  So they called their carrier to see if they 
could have it waived.  They got no clear answer and were 
told to call the county and were told that the county -- and 
this was after, they said parenthetically, after they had 
gone through the voice-mail system and all of that and it 
had taken a while to get to a live person.
		They called the county who, of course, had no idea 
what they were talking about, and sent them back to AT&T.  
Anyway, the bottom line is, this took months and months to 
resolve the complaint.  And again, these people were very 
frustrated -- and obviously, the charges were not waived -- 
but before they could even get an answer, it was quite a bit 
of time.  
		I have a customer, a member of ours, who's looking 
for cellular service and talked to a customer service 
representative of a company, explained what that person's 
needs were.  He said he didn't need it for much, he was just 
going on a trip, he wanted to have something for emergency 
purposes.  He spent a lot of time with this customer service 
representative.  He went on the road, hardly used his phone. 
 He came back and got a bill of $672 and tried to call this 
person to find out what was going on.  And he said, well, 
this is the service you signed up for.
		And the reason I bring this up is not for the 
amount as much as, here's a consumer who spent time talking 
to the customer service representative, asking for something 
specific, and I'm sure the plan he asked for was not, you 
know, $672 worth of services.  He just wanted to use it for 
emergency purposes.  Again, one of the things I'm going to 
get to is the fact that I think the carriers need to get to 
know their customers.
		Here's another one again from last month.  It 
says, "Dear AARP, Please help me," is the first line.  "This 
company is trying to collect money from me and I've never 
used their services and each month the costs keep 
escalating."  And this person has never even, you know, 
signed on to the service.  I'm not going to go into the 
details of it, but there are a number of follow-up letters 
to a number of different agencies and as of yet, and I 
called yesterday, this hadn't been resolved yet.  So this 
person continues to get higher and higher bills for a 
service they claim they never had.
		Another here, an 85-year-old person who is an AARP 
member just discovered that they'd been paying $5 a month to 
lease their phone since 1970.  So for 30 years, they've been 
leasing their phones.  The consumer says they weren't 
notified during deregulation that they no longer needed to 
lease their phone and they called the carrier to see what 
could be done.  Well, the carrier did terminate the 
contract.  This consumer was going into -- they would like a 
bigger refund.  But the point I'm making here is, again, 
maybe what the carriers need to do is look at their records 
and say, boy, we have a whole list of people who are leasing 
their phones.  Perhaps we should send something to them, 
letting them know that they don't have to pay $4.95 a month, 
they can go out and buy a phone for a whole lot less and not 
have to, you know, continue to lease this phone for all 
these years.
		And the final one I have is, again, one where it's 
a daughter of one of our members who is in ill health, who 
had their phone service terminated.  And the mother was 
afraid to tell anyone, but they obviously couldn't get a 
hold of her.  They were told it was done for nonpayment.  
Now, this person doesn't understand why, because she had 
been paying the bills.  Though they weren't coming to her, 
she thought she'd been paying the bills.
		Anyway, she talked to the phone company, said, we 
need to restore the service, send the bills to me.  This was 
in February she made the call, the service was supposed to 
be restored that next week.  It was into April before the 
service was restored.  So this older woman was without 
service for literally three months for nonpayment of a bill 
that the company later admitted was actually paid on time.
		So these are the kinds of complaints we're getting 
from people.  You know, it runs the gamut.  So what do we 
do?  You know, obviously AARP wants to work with the 
companies, work with the carriers, make sure that the 
information that they need to get is getting out to our 
members.
		Some of the things I would bring up and I think 
people have mentioned it, one of them is a working phone 
number.  And by working phone number, it means a phone 
number where maybe a senior can call to get someone 
directly.  They don't have to go through, you know, a whole 
voice-mail system.  They can actually talk to someone who 
can deal with senior interests on the phone.  That's very 
important.
		What's even more important is, if they're calling 
with a customer service complaint or a customer service 
issue, that there not be a marketing person trying to sell 
them additional services or tell them, you know, this is 
what you need to do.  You know, most of our members are 
pretty savvy and if they want an additional service, they'll 
make that call or they'll tell the customer service rep, 
well, maybe I need a different service.  Can you send me to 
someone who does those things?  Because again, people are 
turned off if they're calling to register a complaint.  
They're saying, well, that's too bad, but how about if you 
buy this additional add-on, then you won't have to worry 
about this anymore -- those kind of things.
		And if you're marketing someone, tell them in 
plain English what they're getting.  Let people know, if 
there's a contract, they're signing for a two-year term.  
Make sure they know that they're signing a contract for a 
two-year term, not just for month-to-month service, 
especially older people who aren't used to getting into 
wireless contracts and things like that.  It becomes a 
problem.  Or any kind of service you're trying to sell to a 
consumer, make sure they understand the terms and conditions 
as best as possible.  Then you alleviate a lot of these 
concerns down the road.
		And I guess the final point is really for the 
carriers to get to know the customers.  Spend time -- I know 
big business has millions of customers.  But if there's any 
way possible to do a little more personal relationship with 
a customer, to get to know what their needs are, the 
services they've gotten in the past and how you can help 
them to enhance their, you know, their experience with the 
carrier, it would be helpful.  Thank you.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  When we were setting up this 
panel, I was going over all of the groups that we should 
include and who handles consumer complaints, and I guess, 
subliminally, the TV was on Channel 4.  And I kept 
dreaming -- Liz Crenshaw, Liz Crenshaw.  And next is Liz 
Crenshaw.
		MS. CRENSHAW:  If you're dreaming about me, I'm 
going to start worrying about it, actually, and let my 
husband know.
		(Laughter.)
		MS. CRENSHAW:  I am the consumer reporter with 
NBC-4 here in Washington.  We do not call ourselves a 
consumer complaint office.  We don't pretend to solve 
consumer complaints.  We try to cover stories that we think 
will help people save time, save money, etc.  
		Having said that, of course, we get hundreds of 
phone calls a week from people who want us to solve their 
consumer problems and we try to direct them to people who 
can, in fact, help them.  That's what my goal is, is to not 
let people think that if you call a TV station, the TV 
station is going to call Bell Atlantic or AT&T or Sprint and 
solve your problem, because in my opinion, that just solves 
that person's problem, but it doesn't solve anybody else's 
problem.
		So we tend to do stories when we think the problem 
is big enough.  Unfortunately, I think we do too many 
telephone stories.  And what that means is, I think we do 
too many stories about people very confused about their 
telephone service. 
		I've been covering consumer stuff since 1982, so 
obviously I covered the breakup and obviously we had lots of 
problems in the early days.  But I can tell you that, 
outside of used cars, telephone complaints tend to be right 
up there on the list.  And I find that to be a disturbing 
sort of trend.  I mean, obviously telephone service was 
never meant to be terribly complicated.  People are 
harkening now, in 2000, back to the days when we didn't have 
all these choices.  We try to convince people on the 
telephone that because they have choices, maybe they're 
saving money.  But the people that we get to are at the 
point where they're saying, I don't care anymore about the 
saving of money.  This is driving me nuts.
		I had the researchers in my office -- and I won't 
go through -- this is just the past two months of 
complaints, of just phone complaints.  It is everything from 
cellular to straight Bell Atlantic service to AT&T to MCI to 
Sprint, everything from people being overcharged and not 
being able to get a customer service rep to talk to them, to 
actually being what they call "lied to" by customer service 
representatives.
		My mother calls me on a regular basis and most of 
her complaints are about her phone bill.  A lovely woman, 
but I'm beginning to go crazy.  
		The truth is, I'm confused about my telephone 
service.  That's not good.  I think that I'm a relatively 
intelligent person.  I have many phone bills that come to my 
house.  I think one of the important things that these 
telephone -- the variety of telephone services that we have 
must do better is they must communicate better with their 
customers.  I am not talking about a tiny little insert 
slipped into a phone bill that gets thrown away.  I can tell 
you that out of the blue, in my mind, last month, I got a 
brand new bill from AT&T.  I'd never gotten a bill from AT&T 
in my life, and I've had AT&T service, I think, since the 
day I bought my house.  Why did I get a bill from AT&T?  
Because AT&T decided that they're going to bill my long- 
distance separate from my local service.  And since I don't 
use that much long-distance at this particular phone, I'm 
only going to get my bill every three months.  What are they 
talking about?  I did a story on this and I still didn't 
understand the bill when it came in.
		There is a serious problem out there, I believe, 
in the fact that the phone services are making decisions 
about how we're going to be billed, the kinds of services 
that are being offered, and whoever is writing the inserts, 
whoever is deciding how to communicate that to customers is 
doing a lousy job.  I'm sorry, they're just doing an 
absolutely lousy job, because consumers are terribly 
confused. 
		Now, the people that write to me, I mean, we're 
talking letters that go on and on, you know, page after 
page: I called at 1400 hours, I called -- I mean, these are 
not people that are confused because they have a low IQ or 
because they never had phone service before.  These are 
people that have had phone service, they've had DSL lines, 
they have multiple cellular phone services.  They can't 
figure it out, and obviously you don't need me to go through 
every little detail in these complaints.  Some of them I 
can't read here.  It's a public forum and there's words I 
can't use here or on television.
		People who are trying to figure it out and then, 
when they make the wonderful phone call to the place where 
they're supposed to call, again, as other folks have said, 
they're on hold, they punch a series of numbers, they get to 
a person who tells them that they've gotten to the wrong 
person.  They ask to be bumped up, they can't be bumped up, 
they have to start the process all over again.
		Obviously, I understand how expensive it is for 
customer service people to be on the phone with a customer 
for a long period of time.  I did a story called "America on 
Hold" last month.  We know how expensive it is for a live 
person to handle a call.  We know that companies would much 
rather you solve your problem through a series of menus.  We 
understand it's a monetary thing.
		The bottom line, though, is people have to be able 
to understand what they're paying.  And the smart people are 
going to try to figure it out.  And when they can't figure 
it out by the stuff that they get sent in the mail, they're 
going to call you.  So my position is, make the stuff they 
get in the mail understandable, and guess what?  You're not 
going to get that many people calling you, trying to figure 
out what in heaven's name is wrong with their phone bill.
		You know, we've got complaints, everything from 
cellular to regular service.  The Guardian Plan, you know, 
everybody at Bell Atlantic got a lovely little note a couple 
of months ago that said that your guardian service is going 
up X number of dollars.  Do I have guardian service?  What 
is guardian service?  I thought I declined guardian service 
16 years ago when it was offered to me, because phone lines 
inside homes don't break very often.  But I get a note in my 
phone bill that says that my guardian service is going up.
		Well, I figured out that I didn't have guardian 
service and that they were just warning the people who did, 
but guess how many phone calls we got from people saying, do 
I have guardian service, and why is it going up?  First of 
all, they shouldn't be calling me about this, right?  And if 
the note in the phone bill, or a separate letter coming to 
them had said to them, this is guardian service, you may 
have it, you may not have it, and if you do have it, it's 
going up -- guess what?  Nobody would have called me, you or 
anybody else.
		I know I seem kind of agitated by this.  I am.  
It's my time.  It takes a lot of time in the consumer unit 
at NBC-4 to deal with this, and personally, it's a waste of 
time.  I mean, it's truly a waste of time.  These complaints 
are not because, you know, the company ripped me off and 
they overcharged.  These complaints are because there's been 
some kind of error or the customer doesn't understand what's 
going on.  And my position is, if the initial material to 
them was clearer, they wouldn't have this problem. 
		And I think it goes everywhere from selling 
original cellular service -- I bought a new cellular service 
last month.  I got my bill yesterday.  Honest to God, I 
cannot understand one charge on it, because I have a 
crossover service.  You know, I had a service before and now 
I have a new service and they prorate the new service onto 
the -- okay?
		And then the new phone bill with all the lovely 
words on it.  I mean, a guy here tried to type for me all 
the new words on his phone bill.  I thought he couldn't type 
because it was all misspelled.  I checked.  He typed every 
word right.  I can't say half of them, so I'm not even going 
to go through that.
		Anyway, you don't need to listen to me go on and 
on.  The truth is that obviously I believe that competition 
is a great thing.  And I think if people can get lower 
prices, that's all good for the consumer.  It doesn't help, 
obviously, if they spend most of their time confused about 
it, because guess what?  They think they didn't get a good 
deal after all that.  And in fact, they may have a good 
deal.  But the bottom line is, if they're confused about 
their charges, if they don't understand their phone bills, 
if they have to spend 20 minutes every month figuring out 
who to send what check to for what service, no matter how 
much money they save, they're still pissed off at you.
		So I would say, you know, figure out a way to 
communicate clearly with these people and they actually 
might really want to do business with you.  Thanks.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  As people have pointed out, the 
article like the Chairman mentioned that Caroline Mayer of 
the Post wrote this morning -- I've done consumer education 
since 1969, 30 years.  I got messed up.  It happens to 
everybody.  It's very, very confusing and while a lot of the 
carriers are doing the right thing and answering right, it's 
the perception of consumers.  If they perceive that they're 
getting bad customer service, that's bad enough, 
unfortunately.
		The way we've crafted the day is we're going to 
take a little break.  Then we're going to have a panel that 
talks about special constituency issues.  There are special 
groups of people that a lot of service organizations 
unfortunately forget.  And then we're going to say, okay, 
we'll tell you all the problems, we'll bring them to the 
forefront.  We're not going to regulate, we're just telling 
you what the problems are.  But what is good customer 
service?  Then we'll have an expert break down what exactly 
is good customer service.
		So enjoy the water, the coffee, the restroom and 
we'll have, like, a five-minute break.  Thank you.
		(Whereupon a short recess was taken.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  We're going to try to begin.  
Thank you.  Hi, I'm Karen Peltz-Strauss and I'm the deputy 
bureau chief of the Consumer Information Bureau.  And we are 
delighted to have you all here.
		I just want to say that, of course, as we've heard 
this morning, none of us are immune from the problems 
occurring with customer service.  I, myself, am up to here 
with a maze of prerecorded messages.  I've had my own share 
of horror stories over the last few weeks.  I've been thrown 
in mazes, not been able to get out of them, only to be put 
on hold and then be disconnected.
		I've tried to call back and cancel service and 
still not gotten through.  I think that that might have been 
intentional.  But the greatest indignity was recently when I 
tried to inquire about my long-distance service and was told 
that I could not even access my bill, could not ask, even 
begin to ask any information about my bill because the phone 
service was listed in my husband's name, despite the fact 
that I had signed up for the service.  I could not figure 
out why they put my husband's name on the account.  They 
would not even let me ask about the service.
		But as hard as it is for many people to access 
information, it's even harder for special constituencies to 
access this information.  Prerecorded announcements are not 
accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people.  People with 
cognitive disabilities have trouble accessing them and 
responding quickly.  People who are senior citizens who have 
slow response time have difficulty.  People who speak 
foreign languages and may not understand the prerecorded 
announcements may have difficulty.
		These are the kinds of things that we're going to 
hear from this special constituency panel.  I thank you all 
for coming and I think we'd like to begin with Charlie 
Crawford from the American Council of the Blind.
		MR. CRAWFORD:  Can everybody hear me all right?  
How about that?  Is that about right?  Oh, it's working, was 
working.  Is this working, can people hear me all right?  
Okay, great.
		To hear the speech from ACB, press one.
		(Laughter.)
		MR. CRAWFORD:  I'm pleased to have been invited 
and I thank the FCC for acknowledging and extending to the 
blindness community an opportunity to share with you our 
perspective on the facts that have been presented this 
morning.
		I think it's fair to say that coming up here to 
the podium, I felt as if I share a great common confusion 
with everybody with respect to what it is that we can 
reasonably expect within a competitive environment.  But 
there are clearly some things that I think not only are a 
question of common sense and courtesy and a matter of law.  
There are things that we really need to pay attention to if 
we're going to have a society in which the various 
components of that society can participate fruitfully within 
the service environments available to them.
		Well, what does all that mean in English?  
Essentially, the big fact about blindness, and it really is 
no secret, we can't see.  And the fact that we can't see 
does create a problem when you send us a print bill or when 
you put something on a TV screen that's a graphic or a text 
that is not spoken that advertises a particular service or a 
disclaimer associated with the service, so that the person 
trying to make a decision relative to what they want to do 
with this information is really at a loss to properly be 
able to handle that information and to respond to it in a 
way that's productive both for the company and the person.
		So unnecessary and difficult situations are 
oftentimes created simply because -- it's not just the lack 
of clear information, the reality is the lack of any 
information. 
		So what we are here to probably try to share with 
you as first priority is, take a look at the ability of your 
company to properly display information to a person who is 
not looking at it.  Now, we have some natural allies in our 
presentation here.  One of them is that, for example, with 
cell phones, we all know that it's very difficult to drive 
and talk on the phone and monitor the little display and do 
anything but look out the windshield.  
		The issue becomes, how do you get that person 
who's driving to safely use a cell phone and at the same 
time be able to drive safely?  And to use that cell phone so 
that you earn money?  Well, there are some strategies that 
are being developed in technology that I think make a lot of 
sense, not only in that application, but also in terms of 
blind persons -- I mean, if you have a phone that talks and 
you can hear what it's doing, as opposed to having to look 
at it; if you have text to speech conversion in your phone 
system, so that when you're on a cell phone, you can 
actually listen to what's going on on the Internet, versus 
trying to read the Dow Jones while you're steadily heading 
towards the front of that bus in front of you.
		Those are things that I think we should take 
advantage of and think about when we think in terms of the 
markets that we utilize, so that blind persons are a natural 
ally in many ways to the basic function of a telephone, 
which is an audio output.  So we believe that that's one 
issue that has to be handled correctly.
		A second issue has to do with billing.  If you 
send me a print bill, the likelihood is that I'm not going 
to read it.  The dog doesn't care about it, my mother's in 
Florida, and your getting paid is growing more and more 
distant.  So there have to be strategies implemented to 
provide the billing information in an accurate way to a 
person who is blind.  Now we've got some real issues with 
that with various phone companies, and other phone companies 
have been real cooperative and helpful.
		So I think that it's important that all phone 
companies take a real close look at how you do your 
processing of your bills so that ways to produce that bill 
in alternative formats, whether it's Braille, whether it's a 
file on a disk, whether it's on the Internet -- strategies 
that work to give the same information to somebody who is 
blind should be incorporated into your billing cycles.  And 
that's important to do.
		There are certain representations that have been 
made to blind people by customer service folks that border, 
in some cases, on insanity and in other cases are just 
basically a little bit of deceptive practice.  To tell a 
blind person that they don't have a right to receive 
information in an alternative format is not only not good 
customer service, but illegal.  To provide people with 
information that is only half the information because, 
golly, if we had to print up this whole bill in Braille, 
it's going to take four pages rather than three, that leaves 
the person that much lacking in the information that the 
original bill has.  To tell somebody that what comes in the 
Braille bill is not necessarily a representation of what the 
real amount owed is really kind of frustrates the purpose of 
sending the bill in the first place.
		I mean, those are issues that -- common sense 
dictates we need to make sure that we provide people with 
information that they can use.  And I want to take just a 
moment to wrap up and maybe expand the commentary a bit.  
This morning we've heard a parade of consumer complaints, 
but we've also heard some sympathy towards telephone 
companies that are trying to compete in an environment that 
is so rapidly changing that the nature of telephones 
themselves may not be recognizable within 10 years. 
		We all know that the electric plug beside you can 
carry data on a magnetic field around that coil.  And we all 
know that if everybody suddenly could just plug into the 
electric company's socket and get that data, that spells big 
trouble for a lot of companies.  That's one big threat out 
there.  There are a lot of them.
		And so we are sympathetic to the fact that phone 
companies, while trying to build business, are also trying 
to find ways to preserve the way that you deliver that 
business and recapture your investment, which is substantial 
in most circumstances, in order to get the job done and to 
have the product to sell.  And the product that gets sold 
may not even exist a year from now.  So we're very 
sympathetic to that.
		I think that we all need to start realistically 
thinking in terms of, what are the drivers in the equation 
that cause customer service to be a problem?  Clearly 
there's a problem in communication between one part of a 
company and the other part of the company and all that sort 
of thing.  But what really drives that?  Well, it's the 
competitive, chronic need to be out front, chronic need to 
be coming up with something new, never really having time to 
complete the loop of communications, always pushing your 
company in new directions so that it expands so far that 
parts of it no longer feel that they're related to other 
parts of it.  We understand that, and so that's the sympathy 
part.
		Now, here's the threat.  I believe that it has
been mentioned more than once this morning, consumers are 
not only confused, but they're getting angry.  And that 
anger is ultimately going to translate into either one of 
two things -- some level of constructive action on the part 
of consumerism, whether it's blind or otherwise, or 
together, that will result in demands on Congress, either 
you fix this problem or you're not going back to Congress.  
I don't care whether you're Republican, Democrat or 
whatever.  
		That's a real possibility and I think it's 
something we need to think about in the consumer community, 
because really, we cannot continue to exist with any degree 
of comfort if we're not able to realistically relate to the 
companies that we deal with.  That's one issue and an 
important one.  I know -- almost out of time, thank you.  
Talking competitively, this is subject to an ABR.
		The other issue, and I think it's important, is 
that we as consumers and as industry, need to settle on ways 
of communicating with each other which are mutually 
respectful and deliver on the product that's represented.  
Otherwise, we will sort of dissolve into this kind of 
litigious and, I think, very destructive environment.  And 
since I'm almost out of time, I guess I'm almost out of 
time.  So good-bye.  Thank you.
		(Applause.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  What can I say?  That was so 
eloquent, as usual.  Thank you so much.  And the next 
speaker is Mattie Robinson.  This morning we heard from Jeff 
Kramer on some of the problems that senior citizens 
experience, and Mattie will tell us firsthand the kinds of 
things that she has experienced and the kinds of special 
needs that senior citizens might have with respect to 
customer service.
		MS. ROBINSON:  Thank you so much.  I am very happy 
to be here and I must say, when I was first approached about 
coming, I certainly was very reluctant to say yes, because 
there is so much I needed to know, rather than to come and 
to talk about what I already know.
		I am delighted that this kind of information is 
being made available here this morning.  Many of us really 
need it.  And as a retired person after working over 35 
years in public education and then in private education and 
then finally making a second retirement and now approaching 
my 80th birthday, I just feel that I'm somewhere -- I just 
need help.  And one of the things I've learned this morning 
is that maybe, after all, I do not have to go and try to 
find a psychiatrist to find out what's happening to me 
mentally.
		Because what has really driven me up the wall is 
this terrible increase in the charges that I have to make in 
so many instances, particularly with the telephone service. 
I remember when my bill of six months ago went up to what I 
said never a retired person should be paying.  I called and 
made threats that I would certainly have my phone 
disconnected.  I just didn't need anything that expensive in 
my household at that time.
		Well, when I finally got to a person, a real, live 
voice, I was very thankful and told her exactly what I 
wanted -- all the explanations to be explained, why my phone 
bill suddenly almost doubled in cost, and if that this is 
really true, then I would have to have the service 
discontinued.
		Well, when she finished telling me, oh, yes, I'll 
tell you all the things you need to know, I found out at the 
end of that conversation I needed a lawyer, and I didn't 
have one.  I didn't have anybody in my family that I could 
even go to for legal advice.  Then I went around and started 
talking to some of my former co-workers, my church members 
and what not, and found they were having the same problem.
		So then I said, well, I guess I better not have 
the phone disconnected now.  If I have to, maybe go borrow 
the money in order to keep the service.  But what it all 
boils down to is what I heard this morning from the AARP 
presentation, also from Liz Crenshaw and then from the 
Better Business Bureau, because that was one of our next 
steps, do we go to the Better Business Bureau?  Well, I 
found out this morning, they may not be able to know any 
more than we know.
		So I'm here to plead on the behalf of the senior 
citizens who have long retired, who are not up to par in all 
the new technologies, help us to survive through this crisis 
by being more communicative to us.  And let us know why 
certain changes are being made.  
		Liz Crenshaw mentioned something that has just 
happened in our household.  The last two months, we are 
getting these separate bills from AT&T, and we just could 
not understand, well, why all of a sudden this change is 
being made and we were never told.  I did, just two days 
ago, before I even knew about this panel -- said, well, I'll 
pick up the phone and try again.  And the first thing I did 
receive was this long wait.  And I was just too busy that 
day.  I have other things I have to do as a grandmother and 
whatnot.  I could not wait to get an answer.  So I put that 
on hold.  I said, well, what will be my next step?  I'll 
have to call and be put on wait again.
		So I'm suggesting, as has just been mentioned by 
the speaker before me, that if we could get more help in 
understanding the changes, if we could get a real, live 
person to talk to, and if we could get some inkling that the 
service is going to get better.  It just seems to me that in 
the last two years, the service has been getting worse.  
Last year it got worse, and again this year, I don't see 
where there is any improvement whatsoever.  So I speak now 
as a retired consumer who has been around for many, many 
years and desperately in the need of help of understanding 
the new technology in the new age.  And we would appreciate 
any help that you can give us, so that we won't feel that we 
have a low IQ all of a sudden in our old age.
		(Applause.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  Thank you so much.  I think 
that all of us have felt that we have a low IQ at various 
times.  I can tell you that the last time I purchased a 
telephone, I purposely purchased one with a speakerphone so 
that when I'm put on hold for very long periods of time, I 
could press the speaker and do things around my house.  
However, that doesn't work either, because I didn't 
understand the directions for the speakerphone.  So when I 
have called and been put on hold, there's two problems.  
First of all, the music in the background is very low, I 
have to keep my kids quiet.  I waited on one particular 
occasion -- on actually one particular occasion, I'm 
embarrassed to admit, I waited and I waited and I waited.  
Finally somebody came to the phone.  I pressed the wrong 
button.  This is about 30 minutes of waiting.  I pressed the 
wrong button and I had to start all over again.
		(Laughter.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  I wanted to cry.  I thought, 
finally I had the solution and I blew it. 
		Okay, the next speaker is Claude Stout.  And 
Claude comes to us from Telecommunications for the Deaf, 
Inc., which is an organization in Silver Spring that 
specifically works on telecommunications issues for deaf and 
hard-of-hearing people.
		MS. STOUT (Interpreter speaking):  Thank you, 
Karen.  I'm going to try and stay within my limit of five to 
ten minutes.  I'm going to try and identify the different 
problems that we face in our daily use of the phone.  And 
then I will try and present some solutions.
		There's a problem, but I also want to comment on 
several things that have happened in our everyday 
experiences.  Are you following me now okay?  We deaf and 
hard-of-hearing, and deaf and blind, we use a relay service 
in many different situations.  We use a telecommunications 
relay service, but we don't have the same billing 
arrangement while we're on the TTY to TTY calls.  And that's 
been a big problem for us.  Often, we end up paying more 
than we should.  
		Another thing, when we use TRS and long-distance 
calls, very often we don't know that our calls are being 
charged through a default long-distance company, not to our 
preferred long-distance company.  Also, when we make a TTY 
call, we look at the blinking light on our TTY machine and 
we see the light blinking and we think either the line is 
busy or someone is not there.  But in reality, the blinking 
light was from somebody's voice provided by the phone 
company.
		Other times, if we see the light blinking on the 
TTY, we think maybe it's voice-automated or it's voice mail, 
but we can't tell the difference.  We want to participate in 
the wireless phone market with the cell phones, with the TTY 
attached to that.  Now we have that in analog, but we have 
yet to have that in the digital mode.  But that causes a lot 
of problems when we use TRS, the Telecommunications Relay 
Service.  Either TRS will not allow us to proceed with the 
cell phone through TRS, because of billing issues -- very 
often, TRS doesn't have the billing arrangements already set 
up with the cellular companies that we have a contract with.
		Very often, us deaf and hard-of-hearing people and 
deaf/blind, we don't have access to information.  You don't 
see much information services in the papers and in 
magazines.  We don't see enough of the telecommunications 
companies, of their staff and their administrators going and 
intermixing with us at the meetings and social events or in 
conferences.  There's not enough of them around.
		Often, when we call cellular service reps with any 
particular phone company, we call on the TTY and we wait and 
the person who answers the phone is looking around for a 
TTY.  They find the TTY buried under the desk and that TTY 
has so much dust on it, they have to dust the TTY off and 
the deaf person is sitting there waiting.  And we're 
thinking that they're not going to respond to us, so we hang 
up.
		I want to share with you several situations from 
observing the deaf/blind consumer.  They can't access a pay 
phone because they don't have the large print or they don't 
have the Braille capabilities.  Another thing with the 
deaf/blind that's really frustrating is they can't enjoy the 
wireless pagers because they don't have Braille capabilities 
or they don't have large print.
		Often, also, with a deaf/blind person calling the 
relay and having access to voice mail, the voice-mail 
information comes in so fast that the deaf/blind person 
doesn't have the opportunity to ask TRS operators to slow 
down.  The voice mails are often automated information in 
the system.  It just comes in so fast, and they don't have 
the capabilities to request them to slow down that 
information so that they can read it.  Very often deaf/blind 
are frustrated with the cell phones themselves.  They don't 
have the amplifiers.
		Now I want to present a solution.  For the phone 
companies who are staying in tune with our needs and our 
desires and our wants, with this service, we encourage you 
to include us in your consumer advisory boards.  We're 
talking about specific service like TRS, so if you develop 
the new product or you design the new service, please do 
involve us.  Do include us.  You will be surprised at how 
much we can offer with ideas and recommendations, than if 
you don't involve us upfront.
		We really want to see TRS work out with different 
long-distance phone companies so that when we identify that 
I would like to use my preferred long-distance company 
carrier, I would like TRS to proceed with that and not put 
us onto the default situation.
		It's not happening now, but we very much want to 
see TRS become multivended.  That is, we want more 
competition for TRS.  For example, if we dial 711, we
want -- on mine with 711, it will tell you what my preferred 
TRS is.  It will tell you which mode of communication that I 
use, if I use the TTY or VCO or ASCI.  That way we don't 
have to repeat ourselves every time we make a TRS call.  
		How much time do I have left?  Okay.
		This material I have, we have a chart of voice 
compared with TTY intercepts.  That way, if we dial the 
wrong area code or if we -- if we don't know if the number's 
been disconnected, you give us a TTY intercept so that we're 
not struggling with this blinking light with no information.
		I want to share with you all one important 
situation where a telephone company really involved us in 
trying to instruct us on their services.  One company here 
in the Washington, D.C./Maryland area, Bell Atlantic, about 
two or three weeks ago called a person from Massachusetts.  
This gentleman just happened to be deaf and came down to 
Northern Virginia to give a speech to deaf senior citizens. 
 The deaf senior citizens were just puzzled about the 
different lines on the phone bills.  So this person is 
explaining to them in straight ASL, making everything, 
making the message go through perfectly clear so they 
understand everything.  The message was so clear that these 
about 60 deaf senior citizens were just so overjoyed that 
they understood more what was involved with each line on 
their phone bill.
		That's one example in where we deaf and hard of 
hearing and deaf/blind, we often ask for something and we 
don't get enough support.  I ask that that kind of support 
be provided to us from other telecommunications companies.
		I thank you all and I thank the FCC for providing 
us with this opportunity to give this feedback.  We think 
this industry's -- to increase these goals for us in 
telecommunications.  And thank you, Karen.
		(Applause.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  Thank you, Claude.  
		Ahora quiero introducir Gloria Verduzco.  Okay.  
Now, for those of you who may not have understood me, I 
said, now I would like to introduce Gloria Verduzco.  I 
imagine that there are many situations that she has 
presented to her or her constituency where they may not 
understand something the customer service people say and 
we'd like patience in the process.  Go right ahead.
		MS. VERDUZCO:  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. 
 My name is Gloria Verduzco, and like we say back home, 
buenos das.  I work for the Federal Communications 
Commission at the Gettysburg Consumer Center, but I'm also 
here to represent Hispanics.  I handle the Spanish line for 
the entire United States.  I handle all incoming calls and I 
even get calls from Latin America, Spain and Mexico.  
		In that capacity, I answer calls regarding all 
telecommunications issues, but the main problem facing 
Hispanics is telephone customer service and billing.  The 
callers are from all groups and all socioeconomic levels, 
all the way from professionals to blue-collar laborers, 
homemakers or retirees, but they all share a common ground 
regarding complaints of telephone service.
		I'm not here to point fingers or to play the 
minority card, but with the hope that rather, after this 
forum, we can work together to reduce the frustrations 
encountered by Hispanics regarding telephone customer 
service complaints and improved relations with the Hispanic 
consumers.
		Over and over I listen to consumer complaints, and 
the main issues cited by Hispanics regarding telephone 
company representatives are, being treated in a 
condescending manner, being spoken down to, treated with 
arrogance, rudeness, impatience, apathy, threats and 
intimidation, broken promises, being put on hold with long 
waits when they request a Spanish-speaking operator.  An 
example comes to mind: being passed from one representative 
to another with laughter in the background and then being 
disconnected or getting no live operator.
		Hispanic customers report that they experience 
prejudice and perceive they are treated as second-class 
citizens because of their nationality or origin, their 
Spanish surname or a language barrier.  Hispanics are the 
fastest-growing minority in the United States, and the 
majority have acclimated into American society.  
Nevertheless, the stereotypes persist.  The discrimination 
can be blatant, it can be subtle, unspoken, but it exists.  
It is a common misconception that lack of fluency in English 
makes one illiterate or indigent or even an assumption that 
we're here illegally or are immigrants, even though some of 
us were born here.
		Why do I mention this?  Because it happens and I 
hear it every day from customers regarding the treatment 
they receive.  Very well, you might ask, why don't they 
learn to speak English?  Ladies and gentlemen, I do speak 
English, but -- and a lot of your other customers do, also. 
 But those of us that are not so privileged to have access 
to an interpreter, all we want is to be treated with 
dignity.  We are not asking for handouts.  We're paying for 
the services, so we have the right to some respect.  All we 
want is fair treatment.
		As a Mexican-American, I have personally 
experienced the treatment I referred to above, when I was 
transferred to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, by the FCC four 
years ago from Texas.  I attempted to establish new 
telephone service.  I contacted the local carrier and 
proceeded to give my order.  The telephone company 
representative asked my name and upon hearing my surname, 
asked, are you Spanish or do you speak Spanish?  I replied, 
yes, whereupon, without warning, I was transferred into "la 
la land" and I was put on hold for almost an hour.  I had to 
return to work so I disconnected. 
		I called back later from my office and spoke to a 
supervisor and said, I work for the FCC and all I wanted was 
to establish a new account and why should my call be set 
aside because of my Spanish surname?  She apologized 
profusely and proceeded to take my order.  I was lucky.  I 
had to resort to name dropping in order to get better 
service.  But what about those customers who don't have that 
privilege?  Why should they be treated differently because 
of their national origin?  This is equivalent to racial 
profiling whereby, in a lot of areas, minority motorists are 
stopped by police and singled out because of their 
appearance.  Except in this instance, it's an accent or a 
Spanish surname or a language barrier.
		It is my suggestion that it would be extremely 
helpful if each telephone company would establish a Spanish 
liaison to reference instances of discrimination and to 
better represent Hispanics.  I would also add that it would 
be a smart merchandising move for service providers to 
accommodate the Spanish population.  They're a huge 
majority, work hard, are family oriented and have an 
excellent earning capacity.  So it's beneficial economically 
for companies that provide goods and services to tap into 
that market and to provide good customer service to 
Hispanics.
		I also hope that by appearing here today, we can 
open the lines of communications and that we have a better 
understanding of the roadblocks encountered by Hispanics on 
a daily basis.  Thank you.
		(Applause.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  Thank you so much, 
distinguished panel, for all of your excellent 
presentations.  My child has a book called Frog and Toad, 
and in one of the stories in Frog and Toad, the frog -- I 
can't remember whether it's frog or toad, but one of them is 
telling the other about a dream that he had, where he's 
standing on stage and he's one size and he's shrinking and 
getting gradually smaller and smaller and smaller.
		I called customer service not that long ago -- 
actually, this was to ask questions about my computer modem 
connection -- and the customer representative barked 
commands at me, obviously aware that I was not highly 
technical.  And by the end of that phone call, despite the 
fact that I consider myself a somewhat confident person, I 
had gotten smaller and smaller and smaller.  And it's a 
terrible feeling when a customer service agent does that to 
you.
		Again, thank you very much and now I think we're 
going to move directly into the next panel, which will be 
presented by Lorraine Miller.
		MS. MILLER:  Hasn't this been informative?  I 
think this is one of the good things about doing these 
forums, is not only do we learn from each other, but it 
helps us kind of really focus on where we need to go with 
this.  And today, I think this is the perfect segue into the 
part of our forum today that really comes to the crux of 
what we hope to do.  What is good customer service?
		And today we have what I consider an expert.  This 
guy is the real John Goodman and he'll explain that to you. 
 John is the president of e-Satisfy, and e-Satisfy is a 
customer relationship management company that measures the 
customer experience for click-and-mortar companies. 
		Before this position, he was the founder and 
president of TARP as well as an advisor to Customer 
Insights.  This is interesting.  Since 1972, he has managed 
over 1,000 separate customer service studies and assessed 
the customer service- and complaint-handling systems of over 
800 corporations and government agencies.  Listen to his 
client list -- 3M, Xerox, Toyota, Lexus, American Express, 
Citibank, AT&T and MCI.  Now he's a real, a real credible 
and educated man.  John graduated from Carnegie-Mellon 
University with a B.S. in chemical engineering and received 
an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business 
Administration.  
		John A. Goodman.  Thank you, John, for joining us.
		(Applause.)
		MR. GOODMAN:  And hopefully we're going to --
		MS. MILLER:  Did everybody pick up the packet that 
John had outside there?  Okay.
		MR. GOODMAN:  Okay, are we up on the screen?  
Great.  While Gloria said she wasn't going to point fingers 
or name names, I am going to point a finger, because, in 
fact, there really is one person who really is the cause of 
all the poor service that we've been hearing about all this 
morning, and that is the chief financial officer of those 
corporations.  And what I'm going to suggest is that you can 
convince the CFO that, in fact, good service is good 
business.  You just have to have the right kind of 
information.
		Now, if I'm not totally at the end of my rope on 
this, I am going to hopefully bring this up here.  And it 
didn't shut down or do anything bad to me.  What I'd like to 
cover in the next 20 minutes is first of all, very quickly, 
what's in e-Satisfy, and then talk about the causes of 
customer dissatisfaction -- what are the key attributes -- 
and then, how can you actually explain service to the chief 
financial officer.  And I'm going to give you an example 
derived from a wireless company.
		Now, in terms of e-Satisfy, we started out as an 
ad hoc student group at Harvard 30 years ago and have yet to 
get real jobs.  And one of our claims to fame is that we've 
done two studies sponsored by the White House Office of 
Consumer Affairs, looking at customer service and complaint 
handling.  We've even done satisfaction surveys for the 
Central Intelligence Agency.
		Now, contrary to popular belief, Saddam Hussein 
was not a customer, he was a recipient of their services and 
he also didn't return his questionnaire.
		(Laughter.)
		MR. GOODMAN:  Our basic approach to customer 
service is rather straightforward.  Ideally, you want to do 
the job right the first time, but this is where companies 
get into trouble, because they define quality as, we 
delivered the product according to spec.  The problem with 
that is the customer may not have the same set of 
expectations, and I'll come back and talk about that.
		The second half of the equation is, you have to 
have an effective contact management system, but we find 
most corporations will have hundreds of people answering the 
phone, but no one saying, why are we getting all these 
calls?  To the degree that you have that allocation of 
resources, you have doomed yourself to forever being in a 
fire-fighting mode.  Does this look at all familiar?
		In fact, our suggestion is -- and again, we think 
Toyota and Lexus have a good operation.  They have -- for 
every 25 people on the phones answering questions, they have 
one full-time person saying, why are we getting all these 
calls?  How many people does your company have?
		Now, what are the causes of customer 
dissatisfaction?  We find that most corporations assume that 
if a customer is dissatisfied, obviously some employee has 
fouled up and if we can identify who that person is and have 
a public hanging, life will then be beautiful.  Our 
suggestion is that only about 20 percent of dissatisfaction 
is caused by the actions of individual employees.  Forty 
percent is caused by the company delivering products or 
services that have unpleasant surprises built into them or, 
God forbid, marketing overpromises.
		I have a Dilbert cartoon that I didn't bring with 
me, where Dilbert is told, go work with marketing, and the 
marketing guy says, now, I know this looks like criminal 
fraud, but it's not, it's marketing.  And that is a serious 
issue.  And in fact, we've developed -- we have a working 
paper we'd be happy to send you a copy of, that talks about 
an index of marketing quality, which basically says, how 
much of the expense on the back end in service is due to 
marketing not setting proper expectations upfront?
		Now, the last 40 percent of dissatisfaction is 
caused by the consumer.  Consumers do rather strange things. 
 One of our clients is a liquid bleach manufacturer and they 
get not a complaint but a suggestion once a month, why don't 
you make your bleach taste better?  The specific suggestion 
is cherry flavor.  People brush their teeth with it and it 
does whiten your teeth.  It also whitens your esophagus and 
I don't know what it does for your breath.  But it's sodium 
hydrochloride, it won't kill you.
		Now, most corporations say, hey, look, if the 
customer is an idiot, it's not our problem.  Well, it is, 
because you have to clean up the mess.  And so our 
suggestion is that if you educate the customer on how to 
stay out of trouble, it becomes a win-win.  Now, most 
corporations say, customer education is a goody-two-shoes, 
nice waste of time.  Au contraire.  
		This is data from Mannington Floors, and one of 
the things Mannington found was that no one ever reads the 
care directions for their no-wax floor.  So the first thing 
you do is you take Ajax, an abrasive, clean the floor and 
you have now ruined the surface.
		So what we did was we worked with them to get the 
care instructions into the hands of the consumer, and the 
dealer actually opened the page and pointed out two or three 
things to them.  Not a big deal, but -- you know, 30 to 60 
seconds of time.  We took 2,000 people who had been educated 
versus 2,000 who hadn't, went back to all of them, and what 
we found was that those who had received the education were 
10 to 30 points more satisfied.  And if you look at the top 
box, people who said, I definitely would buy this again, you 
had a 25-point increase.  So a little bit of education can 
have a 25-point impact on customer loyalty.  And most phone 
companies are desperately working to raise their 
satisfaction and loyalty index one or two points.  Customer 
education can deliver as much as 25 points.
		We also found that problem experience was half as 
great, which means you're getting a lot less phone calls. 
And if they did have a problem, you had a higher complaint 
rate to the company and a higher level of satisfaction.
		Now, in terms of setting appropriate expectations, 
the best time to do it is at the point of sale.  But if you 
don't do it then, one approach we have seen which a number 
of companies have used -- Vodaphone is one good example.  
One of my senior staff, Jeff Maisel (phonetic) who is here, 
has worked with Vodaphone in Europe.  Vodaphone makes a 
welcome call that says, hi, we're happy that we've activated 
you.  Let me explain how to use everything, and by the way, 
here's what your bill is going to look like.
		Or you can have an interim follow-up call after 
the customer has had three or four weeks of service where, 
okay, you're about to get your first bill, here's what it's 
going to look like, and by the way, here's how to use your 
call-waiting and your voice-mail system that you're just 
still trying to fight with.  We find that a preemptive 
educational strike is one of the cheapest ways of enhancing 
quality.
		The worst time is when the unpleasant surprise has 
taken place and service is needed.  Now that rep is going to 
have to try and say, well, yeah, you didn't quite pick up on 
that charge but here it is.  But at that point, you're 
already looking like a bunch of crooks.
		This is an example of setting proper expectations. 
 We've decided to hang loose this vacation and go wherever 
the airline sends our luggage.  United Airlines is now 
trying to implement this policy.
		(Laughter.)
		MR. GOODMAN:  Now, what are the causes of 
regulatory complaints?  The customer feels like he's been 
stuck with an unpleasant surprise, and hey, you know, you're 
stuck, you've got to pay the bill.  That's when they 
escalate.  Nonresponse causes escalation.  Rudeness causes 
escalation.  The thing I find mind boggling is, in many 
cases, your own employees are referring customers to the 
regulators.  This is crazy.  But what happens is that the 
front-line employee doesn't feel they can defend themselves 
and they say, well, you know, hey, I am mad at my company 
for putting me in this position, so the hell with the 
company, I'm going to refer them to the regulator.  And so 
your employees are sandbagging you when they do this, but it 
does happen very often.
		Or no channel is provided, at which point they 
will go to Call to Action or whomever and then you -- they 
get referred to the regulator.
		And finally, failure to acknowledge a problem.  
One of the things that we have seen with, especially, 
cellular companies is, you have dead spots and areas where 
you have static.  Our suggestion has been, publish a map of 
the dead spots and basically say, don't start a new, 
important call as you go into that valley.  That will save 
you a lot of time and money as opposed to having the 
customer call up and complain.
		What we have seen in many cases -- and I've 
actually monitored these calls -- a consumer calls up and 
says, I just had a dropped call.  The rep says, oh, I'm 
really sorry that happened.  I'll give you credit for the 
call and I'll report it.  The implication is, something is 
going to get fixed.  It's not going to get fixed.  So the 
sixth and seventh and eighth time the person calls, now they 
don't believe you, but by the way, you've also incurred the 
expense of those eight calls.
		Wouldn't it be simpler to say, here's a map of our 
dead spots and don't call when you're in those areas?  Now, 
in fact, Jeff has worked with Vodaphone, and Vodaphone 
actually does provide maps of their dead spaces in Europe.  
We have yet to get a U.S. telephone company who is willing 
to do that, because the marketing people say, oh, God, if we 
admit we have dead spots, we might not get the sale.  
Everybody has dead spots and they're going to find out as an 
unpleasant surprise and it's going to cost you a lot more 
money.
		Now, what is good service?  Basically six 
functions, and I'm going to whiz through these rather 
quickly.  You need to solicit complaints, which I know, from 
your perspective, sounds nuts.  You have to get people to 
the right place.  You have to log the contact.  You have to 
have the right kind of response.  You have to do analysis 
and reporting for prevention purposes and then you have to 
actually evaluate.
		Now contact solicitation is basically telling the 
customer, we really do want to hear from you, and that 
message has to be in front of the customer exactly when he 
needs it.  Having it on page 23 of the user's guide is 
useless, because no one ever gets beyond the inside front 
cover or the outside back cover.
		Now, screening is getting people to the right 
place on the first contact.  You need to be available at the 
appropriate hours.  Voice mail does 17 percent damage to 
customer satisfaction and loyalty, if you hit a voice-mail 
system.  The next one, which everyone has already referred 
to, is the automated response system.  And Tom Peters did a 
great interview with me a few years ago.  He titled it, 
"Push one, push two, push three, push your customer over the 
edge," and that's what you tend to do.
		Now, people have complained vociferously about 
automated systems.  There is a silver bullet.  If, wherever 
you print the phone number, you print the menu, then the 
customer doesn't have to listen to the 17 options.  They 
know, okay, I'm going to have to push one and push three.  
This also dramatically cuts your line charges, because you 
don't have people listening to all this stuff.  This is an 
example.  Western Digital, the hard-drive company -- this is 
printed on their inside front cover of the manual, so I know 
I'm going to call this number and then I want to push three, 
then I want to push two.  And it makes it much more 
efficient, and at the same time, customers don't have to 
encounter this massive automated system.
		Logging is creating a record of the call.  Now if 
it's a serious complaint, most of your companies will create 
a record of the call.  The problem is, we find that 30 to 40 
percent of all the calls to a phone company are what I call 
dumb questions and trivia, and in many cases they're 
answered relatively quickly, but you've still incurred the 
dollar or the dollar and a half to handle the call.  But 
they aren't logged simply because it would take me longer to 
fill out the screen than to answer the question.
		The next problem -- and I'll come back to that in 
a minute -- the next problem we've seen is that in most 
telephone companies, you log why Mrs. Jones called, but you 
don't log the general cause.  Was it that she didn't 
understand that this issue was an unpleasant surprise, she 
was quasi-incompetent or we actually made a mistake?  If you 
don't log the general cause, there is no way you can ever do 
any analysis of how can we prevent this call.
		And what we find is, very few organizations log 
both reason for call and cause of call.  Your reps, in most 
cases, can diagnose at least generally what the general 
cause of the call was.  Example: You get a notification from 
your auto insurance company that they're canceling your 
insurance.  You call up all upset, what's going on?  Well, 
ma'am, you didn't pay your premium notice.  What do you 
mean?  I never got a premium notice.  We sent it to 123 Main 
Street.  Wait, I live at 127 Main Street.  So the reason for 
call is cancellation and error, though most insurance 
companies would simply put "Billing inquiry,"  and then the 
general cause is bad address.  Now where did that bad 
address come from?  Do we have a keying error or do we have 
an application that forces you to scrunch your handwriting 
so we're systematically generating bad addresses?
		The point is that the general reason for call, you 
canceled me, and the basis cause, bad address, are two 
conceptually different kinds of data.  And if you don't log 
both of them, you're screwed, you can't do any analysis. 
		Now, as I also said earlier, you need to log the 
dumb questions and trivia, but most of your systems do not 
allow the rep to just put in, I just got this kind of a 
standard call and here's the general cause in less than 10 
keystrokes so they can then move on.  So what most 
organizations simply do is, you don't log that stuff.  You 
also don't log misdirected calls.  And we ran a phone 
company call center in Silver Spring not too long ago and 20 
percent of all the calls were misdirected due to confusing 
advertising programs, and they were spending all the money 
redirecting those and never realized that their misdirect 
volume was that high, because nobody was doing any logging.
		Now, response investigation is, you need to have -
- your front-line rep needs to have all the information to 
be able to answer the call on first contact, because that is 
the key litmus test you should put against your service 
system.  What percentage of issues can get handled on first 
contact?  You have to have all the necessary information.  
They have to be able to get it in two to four seconds, and 
if your front-line reps can't get it, they have to have 
internal service agreements with the rest of the 
organization to be given that information quickly.  Your 
front-line customer service units should have the power to 
write a performance appraisal of everyone who has to give 
them information.  
		Now, the next problem that drives people crazy is 
that in many cases, consumers are given unpleasant 
information by your front-line staff.  And in many cases, 
when the customer is unhappy, they'll say, well, why can't 
you do this?  Why do you have this policy?  And if your reps 
can't defend it, they do one of two things.  They either 
say, look, lady, I don't make the rules, I just enforce 
them, that's company policy, which comes across as rudeness, 
except in New York.  (Laughter.)  Or -- our data shows that 
New Yorkers complain 3.4 times as much as the national 
average, while people in Portland and Seattle are sound 
asleep.  We think it has to do with the rain and the mold.
		But in any case, it's either look, Mac, it's 
company policy.  Or worse yet, they'll deflect the 
customer's anger by siding with them and say, yeah, that is 
a stupid policy, I don't know why we do it that way, I work 
for a stupid company -- neither of which does much for 
corporate image.  
		So what you need to do is provide them with what 
we call response rules.  Here's the short answer, but if the 
customer says, why? -- here's the clear, believable 
rationale for why we do what we do.  And what we have found 
is, your customers will accept a clear, believable 
rationale, even if it's bad news.  A good example is, if the 
airline pilot gets on and says, we have a one-hour delay due 
to a mechanical, your reaction is, they're a bunch of foul-
ups.  If, on the other hand, he says we have a leak in the 
hydraulic pump, your reaction is, hey, I want a good 
hydraulic system.  Take an extra half hour if necessary.  He 
makes you thankful to be sitting on the ground.
		We joke about, at Toyota, that when you're saying 
no to the customer or giving him bad news, the object of the 
game is to tell the customer to go to hell in such a way 
that he looks forward to the trip.
		(Laughter.)
		MR. GOODMAN:  So your front line has to have 
response rules that allow them to do that and to deal with 
challenges.  In the auto industry, a standard query is, do 
you have a defect in this part of the car?  Standard answer, 
courtesy of lawyers, is, we're not aware of any defects -- 
because if we were, we'd have to have a recall.  Then the 
zinger comes back, well then, why did the dealer tell me 
he's repaired 29 of these this week?  And that's when reps 
get rude, is when they're backed into a corner and can't 
defend themselves.  And so you need to provide them with, 
here are the challenges you're going to get hit with.  And 
by the way, here's how you can respond to those challenges.	
	This is an example of a not-so-good response rule: 
We've lost your stuff, but you get first choice of any bag 
off Flight 601.  
		Okay, response production is, the computer should 
do the follow-through.  We've heard about broken promises 
about 30 times today.  That is because some person has to 
fill out a piece of paper, pass it to someone else, and hope 
they do something with it.  To the degree that your 
computer, when I put into the computer that this needs to be 
done, the computer automatically executes.  
		This is why, at American Express, the rep will 
say, okay, I've taken this charge off your bill, it has been 
done, and they speak with absolute reassurance.  The reason 
is that the computer has already taken care of it.  In many 
cases, and I realize these are legacy systems, the phone 
companies don't have that seamless linkage.
		Now, in terms of evaluation, you need to evaluate 
your individuals and your service organization in terms of 
satisfaction and repurchase.  And we find in most cases, 
it's only productivity.  What percentage are being handled 
on first contact and are you getting good information to 
prevent future occurrences?  These top two areas, where I've 
allocated two-thirds of where evaluation should be taking 
place, are almost nonexistent in most corporations.
		Now, how you evaluate satisfaction surveys in 
conjunction with call-quality monitoring is critical, but we 
put more emphasis on the satisfaction survey because, in 
many cases, the clear, believable explanation is what's 
going to lead to customer satisfaction.  Now, when I'm a 
front-line rep and I give you the corporate policy, the 
supervisor who is monitoring that call says, oh, yeah, 
that's clear, that makes good sense to me.  Well, the 
supervisor wrote the policy.  Certainly it's clear to them. 
 It is not clear to Mrs. Jones in Des Moines. 
		Also, the other problem we've seen is that people 
use satisfaction surveys to evaluate individual 
representatives or service units.  The most important 
analysis should be, what kinds of issues are we 
systematically not making people happy?  So the analysis 
should be by type of problem, by type of product or type of 
client, not just is Mary Jo giving better service than Sam?
		This is an example of what we're now finding for 
Web surveying.  More and more, the Web is a way of 
communicating and we're finding that if you have a pop-up 
survey like this and you can ask 10 questions in less than a 
minute, you can get very high response rates very, very 
quickly and you get almost instantaneous feedback.  We do 
believe you have to modify your survey to your clientele.  
This is from a bar and grill in Emporia, Kansas, and an 
example of the modification is, if you look at the top 
category under service, it says, "Unbelievable, I want to 
marry this person," versus the bottom category is, "Slower 
than wet blank sliding down a dry rock."  We think this is 
an interesting way of modifying your survey to fit your 
clientele.  It has some other categories you can read at a 
later time.
		In any case, the last function is analysis and 
reporting, and what we find is, in most telephone companies 
the customer service reports have very little impact.  And 
this is four questions that you can ask to see if it has 
impact.  Ask the head of marketing or the head of 
operations, did you receive last month's report or use this 
with complaint reports for those of you who generate them.  
Did you read it?  The euphemism you'll get is, I scanned it. 
 Did you find anything useful?  Oh, yeah, good report.  What 
action did you take?  If they took no action, you're wasting 
your time, their time and a lot of trees.  
		So the analysis has to be tailored to the 
individual audience.  We find most complaint reports are 
written in a tattletale mode of, who screwed up this month. 
 And so, basically, it has to be done in a consulting mode, 
and the first thing you learn as a consultant is, don't 
embarrass your client.  They have to be timely and then, 
rather than saying, last month we got 132,000 complaints, 
better to say, here are the three key kinds of complaints.  
Here's the problem, here's how many customers were affected, 
here's the damage to loyalty, here's the cause and here's 
the proposed action.
		Now, how do you convince the CFO?  I'm not going 
to go through all the gory details of this, but you can 
follow through it.  We also have an article entitled, 
"Selling Service and Quality to the CFO."  Just give us a 
business card and we'll send it to you.  
		But basically, here we had a wireless company with 
600,000 customers.  Eighty percent had had problems.  Of 
those, only 50 percent complained, and of those who 
complained, we had about 85 percent satisfied.  What we were 
able to calculate is, out of those 600,000 customers, 
because of problems and how they weren't being handled, they 
were losing a net of 117,000 customers.  Now, admittedly, 
22,000 of these customers were people that they really were 
just as happy to be rid of, but in addition, they were 
losing another 8,000 customers due to negative word of 
mouth.  Now, what each of you in your company should do is 
figure out, what does your baseline look like.
		We then did a calculation of -- okay, everybody 
says customer service is a cost center.  What if customer 
service was eliminated and either people didn't complain or 
they would go back to their Radio Shack store where they 
bought the service?  What we found was, you would lose even 
more customers, and in this particular case, it would cost 
you another $10 million because you didn't give service.  So 
in fact, it was a net loss of revenue if you eliminated the 
customer service department.
		Now another approach is, gee, let's get more 
people to complain and let's satisfy more of them.  And what 
you find is that you, in fact, get incremental profit of $17 
million if you get more people to complain.  This goes back 
to the basic finding, complaints are good, because 
complaints are the customer giving you an opportunity to 
retain his loyalty. 
		One other approach is, what if we just educated 
customers on how to use the cell phone or the telephone 
system more effectively so that they don't have as many 
problems?  If we reduce problem experience from 80 percent 
to 60 percent, this company would save 15,000 customers and 
make about $11 million more in profit.  So if you could do 
the customer education for $5 million, you would get over a 
200 percent return on every dollar invested.
		So we have found these kinds of analysis are 
acceptable to the chief financial officer, and that really 
is the key person that you need to convince if you're going 
to see an improvement of service.  And I would also suggest 
that even the regulators need to, rather than talking to the 
government relations people, need to go talk to the CFOs, 
because they're the people who are really the major barrier.
		So in summary, you need to invest in customer 
education, do the basics well to close on first contact, use 
consistent response rules across all the different channels 
so people don't start shopping the system, provide an 
internal appeals channel to reduce regulatory complaints.  
Here is one quick secret we've learned in the power industry 
and the airline industry.  If the FCC or your state 
regulator is beating you up because you have too many 
complaints, what you should do is put a high-visibility 800 
number where your consumers can call and file a complaint 
with an internal corporate appeals board.
		The minute you do that, I guarantee your 
regulatory complaints will drop by 40 percent.  We've done 
this with power utilities and airlines.  The airline that is 
top on the DOT complaint list in terms of, they have the 
lowest number of complaints, I don't think gives necessarily 
better service.  But they do have 800 numbers posted in 
Newark Airport and if they cancel a flight, they give 
everybody a comment card.  Now if you have five minutes of 
anger, where do you spend it?  Filling out the comment card, 
as opposed to finding the DOT complaint number.  
		So what we have seen is the number of complaints 
go down dramatically.  The regulators say, gee, we've 
succeeded in creating better service when, in fact, probably 
not a lot has changed, but at least you're handling your own 
complaints.
		And then, finally, show the CFO the cost of poor 
service and you'll get what you need.  Thank you very much 
for your time.
		(Applause.)
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  That was great.  One thing John 
didn't mention that we learned at the FCC is that people's 
impression of the FCC is not necessarily the Chairman or the 
Commissioner's, but the person they speak to on the phone 
when they call up our call centers.  And I remember John did 
a study a long time ago about how many people repeat a bad 
experience versus how many people repeat a good experience. 
 And what is it, it's, like, multifold?
		MR. GOODMAN:  What we find is -- through word of 
mouth -- is, twice as many people hear about a bad 
experience as a good experience, but what we have found on 
the Web is that four times as many people will go to a chat 
room and post bad things about you as the number of people 
who go to a chat room or bulletin board and say nice things 
about you.  So the word of "mouse" is four times as much.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  So remember, I guess, complaints 
are good, they really are.  I guess the next segment we have 
is, if anyone wants to come to the open mike and -- be it 
either consumer or a carrier or anybody -- and make any 
comments?  Yes, we have a lady.  If you just could identify 
yourself, I'd appreciate it.  Thanks.
		MS. WOOD:  My name is Gwendolyn Wood and I would 
like to know how many of the carriers are contracting out 
customer relation services to other companies and how are 
they handling that?
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  That's a good question.  Is there 
anybody here from a carrier who would like to respond?  We 
find that is a very good question and a lot of times -- 
we're finding that a lot of the complaints that we get is 
because the main company doesn't really know what's being 
said at some contracted center somewhere all around the 
country, or a center maybe in Iowa has no idea what's going 
on in Manhattan and cannot really relate to the problem.  
That was a good question, excellent question.  Yes?
		UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:  While he's coming to the 
mike, I'll just add to that.  The problem that I mentioned 
earlier this morning with one of our major companies not 
being responsive to consumers was caused largely because 
when something came in -- when we called them, we got their 
regulatory side.  We did not get their consumer affairs 
side, and the regulatory side was not empowered to solve the 
consumer's problem.
		So there was an automatic gap.  They felt they 
were giving us better service, but actually it was worse 
service for us and worse for the customer.  And when they 
got rid of that at our insistence, all of a sudden, the 
problems went away.
		MR. REAL:  My name is Jim Real (phonetic).  A 
question concerning notice in changes of rates and changes 
in long-distance plans.  I'll use myself as the anecdote.  I 
was on a long-distance plan where I was paying 10 cents a 
minute.  When I received my monthly bill, the rate was 12 
cents a minute.  When I called to inquire about that, they 
said the rate had increased.  I said, well, I wasn't 
notified about that.  They said, we ran ads in major media 
and that we're not required to tell you directly, and oh, by 
the way, your plan was discontinued two weeks ago, which was 
also without any kind of notification.  There really can't 
be any good customer service story in anything like that, 
but the obvious question that I asked was, well, aren't you 
required to notify your customers of rate increases -- and I 
meant, directly notify your customers.  And the response 
was, no, we are not required to notify our customers 
directly, only by putting a notice in some type of major 
media.
		So obviously the question is, is that correct and 
the question to the carriers is, how can this be good 
customer service?
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Actually for the answer, I'd ask 
one of our specialists.  Tom?
		MR. SHIRLEY:  Yes, sir, that is correct.  That's 
Part 42, I think -- 
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  The microphone, so people can hear 
you.
		MR. SHIRLEY:  That is correct, that the 
requirement is only that the carrier place an ad in a 
newspaper, just what you said.  It's Part 42 of FCC rules, 
if my memory serves, it's 42.6, and it says just about what 
you just said.  I wish it were better.  I think it would be 
better for the carriers to notify their customers in their 
bills.  They may, there's no prohibition of the carriers 
notifying their customers more personally than notification 
in the newspaper.
		We wondered why that was, that it was only 
required that they place an ad in a newspaper, and we came 
away with the answer, well, probably because it's cheaper.  
You know, a fraction of a cent, printing each bill is going 
to be a lot of money for the carrier.
		MR. REAL:  I can understand the monetary aspect of 
it, but then three days later, I got an advertisement from 
the same long-distance company, filled with glossy printed 
ads to sign up for cellular service, which no doubt cost 
many more cents than a single line at the top of my bill 
which would have said -- they wouldn't have had to put an 
extra insert in, but just a single line on my bill that 
said, "Your plan has been discontinued and the rates have 
been increased," and not requiring a separate piece of 
paper.  But it seems a few extra words on a bill wouldn't be 
that expensive.
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  There is a new proceeding at 
the FCC on detariffing of long-distance telephone companies, 
and one of the outgrowths of that proceeding is that there 
will be direct contracts with consumers for telephone 
service.  And I believe -- this is new to us, as well, but I 
believe that there is going to be some provision for direct 
contracts with consumers.  And as part of that, notification 
requirements for changes in rates would seem pretty basic. 
		So we're going to follow up on this, the Consumer 
Information Bureau will follow up on this, and try to ensure 
on behalf of consumers that there is future notification as 
this rulemaking proceeds.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  I think also what you're saying is 
just common sense, good marketing.  Why should there be 
regulations?  Why doesn't the company just think of it on 
their own, for goodwill?  
		Yes?
		AUDIENCE MEMBER:  On top of everything else, I -- 
and didn't find out about it until three months later, 
because the company had -- .  So I think many see the --  
the same plan and they find themselves switched to 
mechanical calling rates and find out about it three months 
later.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  As we find here, just within our 
new bureau, consumer education is really important and has a 
great payoff.  It really does.
		Anybody else have any questions?  Lorraine, do you 
want to -- oh, go ahead.
		MS. STEWART:  This is Pam Stewart.  Just to make a 
comment on what Karen said, I think that's great that 
they're looking into something like that, but if I'm having 
a hard time understanding my bill, if I'm going to have to 
understand a contract that I make for services with the 
phone, I can't even begin to imagine that.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Excellent point.  Yes, Nancy?
		MS. BROCKWAY:  We seem to be sort of doing an 
informal notice on the rulemaking right now.  Led me add to 
that -- I would second that.  We've seen in the gas 
restructuring industry, for example, in New York, that big 
billboards for one of the major companies would say, 100 
percent complaint handling or something like that, 
indicating that they had a very strong practice of mediating 
with the consumers about their complaints.  If you got the 
contract in the mail, which was several pages long, single 
spaced, buried in it. it said, all complaints will be 
referred to the American Arbitration Association under their 
rules, and in the meanwhile, you have to pay your bill.
		So there are a lot of potentials for abuses in 
these form contracts.
		MR. GOLDBLATT:  Thank you.  Any other comments?  
Oh, yes, sir?
		MR. CRAWFORD:  Well, I've already talked enough, 
but I just want to exhort people, when you go back to your 
companies, you have to examine whether or not you, 
individually, have any real say in what happens tomorrow at 
your company.  And depending on the answer to that, you need 
to connect with the people who do.  Or if you have the power 
to do it, I think there's a real need to come out of this 
conference with a message back to the company that the water 
is hot and getting hotter, and unless the company wants to 
end up in an unpleasant stew, it really has to make a change 
in its strategy.  I mean, that's the whole bottom line to 
all of this.  If somebody won't say it, well, the hell with 
it, I will.  Thanks.
		(Applause.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  Lorraine has tasked me with 
doing the closing comments.  First of all, I want to thank 
Roger Goldblatt and Janice Wise and everyone from the 
Consumer Education Office that put on this excellent forum.
		(Applause.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  As with our earlier forum on 
billing, this is only the beginning, and many of the 
concerns that were raised here were extraordinarily helpful. 
 This is why we now have a Consumer Information Bureau.  We 
will take your suggestions, we will listen to them carefully 
and we will move on them.  We will act upon them.  When the 
detariffing proceeding comes along, we will respond.  We may 
respond earlier than that.  We just want you to know that 
we've listened very carefully, we thank all of the 
panelists.  We will be addressing some of these issues in 
our own Customer Service Center.  I also want to thank all 
of the CAMs, the Consumer Advocacy and Mediation specialists 
(applause) as well as Sharon Bowers and Martha Conti and Tom 
Shirley for helping to organize their participation.
		(Applause.)
		MS. PELTZ-STRAUSS:  And again, please feel free to 
contact us whenever you'd like to.  We've learned a 
tremendous amount here.  We hope that the telephone 
companies that participated today learned a tremendous 
amount.  And now we want to issue a challenge.  And the 
challenge is that the telephone companies improve their 
customer service by a certain date, actually.  You have 
three months to start changing your customer service 
patterns and policies to meet the various recommendations 
that were presented today.  After that three-month period, 
in early September, we are going to conduct, again, a survey 
of the types of customer service complaints that come into 
our consumer centers.  It will be a 30-day period that we 
will be looking at the types of complaints that come in.
		We propose to release the results of that survey, 
naming names of telephone companies, on October 13.  So you 
have a real challenge presented before you and we are hoping 
that you will not want to be number one on the list of the 
worst customer service companies.  Thank you very much.
		(Applause.)
		(Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the hearing in the 
above-entitled matter was adjourned.)
//
//

	REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE


FCC DOCKET NO.:	N/A

CASE TITLE:	Telephone Customer Service Forum

HEARING DATE:	June 9, 2000

LOCATION:		Washington, D.C.

	I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence 
are contained fully and accurately on the tapes and notes 
reported by me at the hearing in the above case before the 
Federal Communications Commission.

Date:   June 9, 2000          _____________________________
                              Gabriel Thomas
                              Official Reporter
                              Heritage Reporting Corporation
                              1220 L Street, N.W., Suite 600
                              Washington, D.C. 20005-4018


	TRANSCRIBER'S CERTIFICATE


	I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence 
were fully and accurately transcribed from the tapes and 
notes provided by the above-named reporter in the above case 
before the Federal Communications Commission.

Date:   June 9, 2000          ______________________________
		             Diane Duke
                              Official Transcriber 
                              Heritage Reporting Corporation


	PROOFREADER'S CERTIFICATE

	I hereby certify that the transcript of the 
proceedings and evidence in the above-referenced case that 
was held before the Federal Communications Commission was 
proofread on the date specified below.

Date:  June 9, 2000           ______________________________
                              Lorenzo Jones
                              Official Proofreader
                              Heritage Reporting Corporation
 

 
 
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