MCI revamps Web-based customer care

MCI Communications today moved closer to its long-distance rivals by revamping its customer care Web portal, adding more interactive features and self-management tools.

MCI had trailed both AT&T and Sprint in automated customer care.

"Our customers have consistently been asking for new tools and online capabilities," said Mark Chodoronek, senior director, E-management, for MCI. "To try to address that, we've created a new look and feel and additional applications to MCI's Customer Center."

The MCC now will feature near real-time communications capabilities that keep customers informed of billing status, outages or other troubles, service recovery or any applications issues, he said. Customers will have a mini-dashboard that displays messages and enables customers to order and manage the full range of MCI's products and services, making changes and tracking orders and customer-generated trouble tickets.

"Most customers have a propensity to pick up a phone and call a service center," says Chodoronek. "This is available 24 by 7, and it has the functions to change configuration of a service."

For example, he said, customers can deploy toll-free network management applications to manipulate the termination of 800 calls to call centers by time of day or location. In the event of a disaster, calls can be immediately directed away from an affected call center to one that is not affected.

"They can balance out call patterns across the centers to get good utilization of their resources," he said.

Customers can easily access their personal profiles to change e-mail addresses and personal information and to manage internal moves and changes. They can also access information about their bill using MCI's Web-based billing, and sort that information in a variety of ways, based on cost centers, locations or individual extensions, Chodoronek said.