BellSouth is about to find out how important good customer service can be.

Its Managed Home Service trial, now underway in Atlanta, will enable residents of selected areas to get a new level of service – for a fee – from the telco. That service, which will encompass PCs, software, home networking and adjunct products such as digital cameras and game systems, will cost customers between $50 and $230, depending on whether it is offered over the phone or in person.

“We’ll tell them up front, we can help you, and the rate is this,” said Rick Suarez, BellSouth general manager for network operations. “But we also tell them that if we don’t fix it, you don’t have to pay.”

The trial is tied to one area of Atlanta because field technicians are available there, he said. When calls come into a customer support center from the designated trial areas, agents accepting those calls have been trained so that, if the customer’s problem is something other than BellSouth’s broadband service, the offer is made for further assistance, at a cost. If the customer says yes, that call is transferred to special agents, who have the training and support materials and tools to address the myriad of other consumer problems in the digital age.

“Normally, we would have to tell consumers to call Microsoft, or whoever else is involved,” Suarez said. “Today we are taking a lot of those calls anyway, and we are eating those costs anyway. We want to give great service and if we can figure out a way to pay for it and maybe generate some profits, that’s great. But this is more about service to the customer.”

BellSouth will charge $50 for phone fix and between $130 and $230 for a truck roll to send a technician to the consumer’s home. The higher rate is for more complex services including data back-up, data migration and operating system restoration. The basic $130 service is for installation, and the company will charge $160 for PC repair.

BellSouth is using both its own technicians, who’ve had additional training, and outside partners, Suarez said. The company will also experiment with a monthly subscription model and a possible per-minute fee basis.

“Right now, it’s a one-time payment,” he said. “And if, after you’ve paid for a phone fix, it turns out you need a truck roll, we waive the phone call fee.”

The fundamental purpose of the trial is to determine whether or not customers will pay for customer support and the preferred approach to billing, Suarez added.

The company is using a combination of its remote diagnostic tools and standard PC support to provide the additional service. BellSouth is also investing in self-help tools, on the Web, to enable those consumers who want to be self-sufficient to do so.

“The first thing we have to do is isolate the network,” he said. “But if the person’s problem isn’t connectivity, then we can take the customer to the Web and provide the tools that we have for our agents, so that our customers can help themselves. There is a small population of customers who would rather do that every time The challenge is there is a bigger universe of users who are not PC-literate and they would rather just call in. Our strategy is to guide them through this but always provide them with a chance to get live help.”

On the Web, that can be a click to talk button, and in an interactive voice response system, they can always get to a live rep, he said.

BellSouth is investing “to get really skilled at isolating the problem, so we can be sure when we say something to the customer, it’s said in a way that is convincing,” Suarez added. “There are a lot of people doing these things. If you can have the suite of services yourself and have them available when that customer needs it, the customer will stay with you. We want to provide truly excellent customer service, and if that reduces churn, all the better.”