All the personal data that Verizon FiOS uses to keep you from canceling

When you call Verizon FiOS, the customer service representative on the other end of the line already knows quite a lot about you. The American television and Internet provider is now closely tracking exactly what you watch, what devices you use, and how much data you consume. It knows whether your household spars over DVR conflicts and how many hours your kids spend binge-watching shows on HBO. What’s more, the company is listening in on phone calls to customer service in real-time, with supervisors poised to jump at the moment they sense a fight brewing or hear trigger words from an unhappy customer, such as “switching to Time Warner Cable.” El Assir explained how Verizon monitors billions of data points a day from 7 million Verizon FiOS customers to make sure its customer service representatives know pretty much everything about their customers’ TV consumption habits before they start trying to talk someone out of canceling a bundle of channels or getting rid of that extra DVR. “Customers are four times more likely to upgrade their DVR boxes to newer versions that record more shows when we bring up the data on recording conflicts,” El Assir said.