FCC Furthers Consumer Engagement Efforts with Consumer Help Center Enhancements

A core component of the Federal Communications Commission’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau’s mission is to empower consumers in the telecommunications marketplace. True empowerment requires that consumers be active participants in the FCC’s processes. That is why, in January 2015, the FCC launched the Consumer Help Center. Through the Help Center, the FCC not only modernized and revitalized the consumer complaint intake process, these improvements also introduced new resources for educating consumers and sharing complaint data. Since the Help Center’s launch, we have made concerted efforts to continue to improve the quality of visitors’ experience, increase transparency around the complaint data we collect, and develop new ways to engage consumers.

Our latest enhancements to the Consumer Help Center is the “Tell Your Story” feature that gives consumers a new way to share with us their concerns and observations about a provider, a policy, or an issue affecting them or their communities generally. The redesigned Help Center webpage also provides easier access to all of the FCC’s consumer guides as well as the latest updates to consumer-related information on FCC.gov.

When you “Tell Your Story,” your comments will not be formally served on your provider as is our practice with complaints about service and billing. Instead, they will be used by Commission staff to inform policy making and identify practices that may be ripe for potential enforcement action. This differentiation will better allow the agency to focus its complaint resolution resources on those types of issues while maintaining and enhancing consumers’ ability to give voice to other concerns and thoughts.