Responsibility Blog

[#1]

I am pleased to announce Verizon’s 2011 Annual Report which, for the first time, combines our financial and corporate responsibility performance.

Our CEO, Lowell McAdam, combined these reports because the two topics are increasingly bound together. This new technological era creates fresh opportunities to deepen the connection between our business interests and those of society. By reinventing our networks around mobility, broadband and global connectivity, we expand the innovative capacity of the economy and enable new business models. This in turn will create new ways to address to the world’s unmet environmental and social needs.

The report highlights some of the opportunities we have in health care, sustainability and education.

We see this is a fundamental growth strategy for Verizon – one that opens new markets and creates long-term value for both society and our business. We call this creation of shared value “Shared Success” to reflect the fact creating a healthy, sustainable society is the surest path to a healthy, sustainable business. 

[#2]

I don't understand how you can boast of corporate responsibility when you are completely mismanaging your long-standing landline division.   I do understand that the company's future is in wireless and FIOS, however, there is a huge customer base that are still landline, have no ability to move to FIOS and will not become wireless customers -  these are the many homes of those people 65 and older.  They represent your oldest customers, people with the same phone number for the last 50 or 60 years.  People who remember party-lines, and they get the worst customer service ever.  They are in neighborhoods where the lines are bad and the repairman will simply try to make it work and tell the customer "I'm sorry, we can't replace the main wires because the company won't let us". 

Recently my office, a small business, changed from Verizon to comcast, because comcast came to the door and offered a better package with internet than our current bill, upon cancelling verizon, they offer a competitve Verizon package with FIOS, but the person who made the decision felt - you had this avilable and you never reached out and explained it to me, so you've been cheating me the past 5 years - he'll take comcast.  He then went and changed his home service also, because he was so frustrated about being overcharged.  So you lost 2 good customers to comcast because your marketing plans are not working.  For current customers who are not up on the benefits of FIOS, and they don't realize they'll save money - why would they think getting something newer and better would be cheaper?  You need individualized marketing approaches for your current customers, so they can see how savings will apply to them.  When they see a commercial or get mass mail they don't think it applies to them, so they don't read it through (I have been in marketing most of my life - knowing your customer is the most important thing.

Finally, the strike with the unions and the current treatment of your union employees is deplorable.  Perhaps the corporate level of your company doesn't realize how things are in the trenches.  But you have created a situation where you have highly trained workers being micromanaged and therefore making them feel like they are not trusted, using the wrong managment strategy with workers most-often doesn't work, and the treatment of your field technicians is definitely a case where their first level and second level supervisors don't know how to treat them, and maybe more importantly, don't understand their jobs.  I have been interviewing technicians (part of a labor relations paper) since the strike and have found an overwhelming feeling  that Verizon would just love to get rid of them.  People with 20 years of service feel they are being mistreated so badly by immediate supervisors that they "hate" going to work.  People with this much knowledge should be revered at their jobs, not belittled by supervisors who can't even do their job.  Surely you have some knowledge of Peter Druker and his management theories.  Perhaps you should sit down and really consider how this group should be managed - then do the same for your customer service department, who seem to be clueless if you can finally speak to someone.

I do understand that your are a company in transition, but the way you manage that transition will determine the company that you are in the end.  The old saying "what goes around comes around" applies to nearly everything in the universe, and here, your treatment of your oldest and loyalist customers, as well as your treatment of your union workers is showing a poor image for your future as a global company.