AOL Customer Service

This particular article that I found is a follow-up to the Vincent Ferrari case study on AOL customer service. Recently, Vincent Ferrari, a former AOL customer, called in to try and disconnect his service, but was relentlessly harassed by the cuastomer service associate who tried to change his mind. Ferrari recorded the phone call and posted it online expecting nothing more than maybe some fellow disgruntles who would also speak out against the internet provider. What actually happened however, was a widespread hysteria in response to Ferrari's blog/clip of his phone call. AOL took a pounding over the incident and are still trying to recover. Ferrari was asked to be on the Today show in addition to many other mainstream media outlets to tell his story and share the experience. This post is to show what AOL has done to try to alleviate some of the damage that this has done to their image. Supposedly there is a plan of action to reform the customer service portal of AOL and around $1.25 million was paid to the state of New York according to the article. Apparently, the article implies that customer service representatives received a bonus for meeting a customer retention quota which has since been done away with. Another key component to this reformation is the installment of a third-party watchdog to keep a close eye on customer/customer service relations. Other individual subscribers received refunds on their service due to similar situations and it appears that the state of Ohio also received a lump sum. I beleive that AOL has conducted itself well according to effective PR strategies but it will take much more to complete the seemingly impossible task of wiping the mud off AOL's name. As the textbook says, "Simply log onto Google and type in aol customer service." See what you come up with...
--westonJ OUT
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5842727.html