WorldCom Will Pull Back Efforts With Agents, COO Says

WorldCom

Beaumont said WorldCom has "not had great success" with agents on the business side. He added that on the consumer side, the company's involvement with agents is minor.

"On the business side we have used agents sporadically to augment our sales process," said Beaumont. "We have not had what I would say was great success with agent programs on the business side and don't anticipate you'll see us increasing that."

WorldCom is decreasing activities with agents in its wireless business. "We are moving away from [agents," he said.

The pullback may not come as a surprise to CRN readers, who gave WorldCom low channel support marks in CRN's recent Channel Champions Survey, even though the carrier won the overall award in its product category, data services.

In the survey, WorldCom received high technical ratings, coming in first in price/performance, provisioning time and escalation procedures. On the channel criteria side, however, Sprint beat out WorldCom in technical support, return on investment, training and certification, and marketing support.