Verizon unveils integrated portal

Verizon Business today announced a new integrated customer portal that ties together the previous efforts of Verizon and MCI Communications and adds new features and tools as well.

The Verizon Business Customer Center provides a single log-in for customers to track their services, trouble tickets, bills and service level agreements for all Verizon Business services through a Dashboard which offers in integrated personalized view. A new Quick Status features offers an immediate update of trouble tickets at the portal log-in screen and a Click to Chat button provides online support from customer service personnel.

“Quite obviously in the area of the customer experience and customer self-service experience, we had a situation where we had two portals , two e-bonding environments and two EDI environments,” said Mark Chodoronek, executive director of customer enablement at Verizon Business. “As of two weeks ago, we released a portal into production that is one cohesive environment. The customer doesn’t have to go into two places to do their general business tasks--trouble ticketing, orders, bills--and we have added some sophisticated tools.”

Much of what has been added was the result of extensive customer surveys conducted over the last nine months to determine what business customers want, he added.

“The biggest tangible difference is that they have pulled together the various portals and put them under a single log-in,” said Brian Washburn, industry analyst with Current Analysis. “But that’s what shows on top--there is a whole lot of iceberg under the water line, a lot of functional integration. Whenever you get into those portal integration issues you get into a whole area of complex integration questions.”

Verizon rival AT&T has positioned its customer portal as a service differentiator, Washburn said, and this new integrated effort enables Verizon to respond.

The other major integration challenge for Verizon was creating a global portal that today supports seven languages, including U.S. English, U.K. English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, and Portuguese, and will soon support Japanese and Chinese/Cantonese.

“The Dashboard is probably the most comprehensive feature,” Chodoronek said. “It enables our customers to look on their desktop and get a comprehensive view of Service Level Agreements for voice and data product sets, plus they can see topology maps down to the circuit termination level, look at trending reports on alarms, look at fault and trouble ticketing, all from one place.”

The portal enables more customer self-management and cost control of service, he said. Customers also cannot only make payments but view up to six years of back invoices.

“What we are finding from the customers is that the ability to have self service is really table stakes for the telecom industry,” Chodoronek said. “As we move into more IP-centric services, wireless and Bandwidth on demand, the portal allows and forwards that flexibility to the customer on their terms and times. It helps them manage their time and control their costs.”