Once Worked at Verio
I once worked at Verio, roughly a decade ago. It is now known as Verio/NTT. I had applied there after being laid off by a small family business operated near my apartment.
A gentleman by the name of Terry Clancy had called and left a message, saying he'd like to schedule an interview. It took a couple of return calls but finally set up a time to meet.
Will never forget the sweat running down my sides while sitting in his office, learning he was a vice-president and literally having him selling the company to me on why I should join it.
Part of the reason I was hired was likely due to the low starting salary of around $25K a year. Another part may have been the varied experience on the resume. Or a very good
reference from a previous employer. Whatever the reason, I was pleased to have found work within a few weeks. It was interesting to go to work for a publically traded company and that
shares of stock were issued yearly as a benefit. A way to get employees invested in where they work, am fairly sure. One of the few really great choices by management that I was aware of
them making.
While I applied for technical support, it was suggested to me by Terry Clancy that I instead go into billing customer service. He pointed out that having a technical background
would prove very useful. The idea wasn't fully accepted with enthusiasm, the logic made sense then and does now. They started by giving me the documentation of Arbor and Vantive, two
internally used systems, both requiring a specifically installed client (i.e. a nationally-shared network application). Later, they had me sit with other associates to listen in on the
inbound calls from customers regarding their accounts. It ranged from simple issues dealing with updating there account information or getting an invoice faxed/re-mailed to them to the
full-blown nightmares that still haunt to this day.
Now before going into the first real issue that couldn't be resolved by updating data, faxing/mailing a document or asking a co-worker; it's time to give some background. The call-
center consisted of roughly a dozen or so people when I started there. This is a nation-wide company. It consisted of a few majour ISP's gobbled up in certain regions to provide the
backbone of the network. Their majour coup was the purchase of the ISP previously ran by Rice University, later spun-off and known as Sesquinet. Bringing a company together comprised of
several small offices around the nation means trying to integrate the systems. Arbor and Vantive was a huge help, but all the records previous to their accounts being added simply wasn't
uploaded into the system. So previous invoice statements, written agreements and other miscellaneous documents weren't visible by the billing support staff located in Dallas, TX.
Link: Short News Article about Verio & Sesquinet
So lower management's job was trying to make sense of the chaos that ensued. The way things were set up, the billing support agent taking the call had to usually contact someone at
the local office to get Verio's side of the story... after hearing the customer's. It wasn't uncommon that those customers were being frustrated by lack of Verio's internal communication or
with their own previous failed attempts trying to get resolution. We are talking mosty dialup accounts (PPP) and some ISDN or T1/T3 connections. Those with majour backbones usually had a
point of contact within Verio to help them get answers. Most of the time that started with the salespeople that sold them on Verio in the first place. But each office still had their own
support staff to handle the problems that kept occurring. What some of them didn't realize was that their jobs were about to be phased out in time.
One way the billing representatives stayed in touch with local offices was through an instant messenger (IM). Everyone used AOL's IM or AIM But the first inexplicable issue
was very local. If memory serves, the business customer name was DotCom Limited.
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(C) Copyright 2010 by Randall C. Rap