Comcast CEO Still Pretending His Company's Horrible Satisfaction Ratings Are Just A Normal Part Of Being So Huge
from the King-Kong-was-simply-misunderstood dept
As we've noted before, Comcast has not only the worst customer satisfaction ratings in the telecom industry, but among the worst customer satisfaction ratings across all industries. The reasons for this are not complicated: the company grew like wildfire through acquisitions, then made a habit of skimping when it came to customer support and subcontracted installation technicians. The result is a never ending parade of ridiculous stories involving poorly trained or under-funded Comcast employees doing something aggressive, pathetic, or downright abusive.Every six months or so like clockwork Comcast CEO Brian Roberts will come forward with his hat in hand and a puppy-dog look on his face, promising that the company has heard the public's concerns and is doing everything possible to fix things. While the press has fixated on Comcast lately because of the Time Warner Cable merger, this has been going on for most of the last decade.
During one of these episodes about a year ago, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts came forward to insist the company was working really hard on improving customer service, but that the problem was really a matter of scale. To hear Roberts tell it, the company only really sees such a heavy volume of complaints because Comcast itself is just so huge:
"What unfortunately happens is we have about … 350 million interactions with consumers a year, between phone calls and truck calls. It may be over 400 million and that doesn't count any online interactions which I think is over a billion. You get one-tenth of one-percent bad experience, that's a lot of people..."Fast-forward nearly a year to just last week, and Roberts was once again back in the public eye, professing to be "embarrassed" (he really, really means it this time) about the company's 2014 iteration of its annual customer service scandal:
"At an event in San Francisco, Roberts said that he was “embarrassed” and “disappointed” when he heard the recording. “It was a teachable moment for employees and it was a teachable moment for all of us,” he said...Still, the Comcast CEO maintained that such customer service nightmares are not the norm. “We get 250 million phone calls a year,” he said. “The nature of our business is that we’re going to have these things."Except again, awful customer service at Comcast is absolutely the norm. These aren't just anecdotal squeaky wheels. Every single customer satisfaction survey, whether its J.D. Power & Associates, Consumer Reports, the American Customer Satisfaction Index, the YouGov Brand Index or the less scientific Consumerist Worst Company in America Awards have made this abundantly clear: Comcast is among the very worst companies in America at customer service. Period. This hasn't changed because Comcast has no meaningful competitive incentive to change, and therefore simply refuses to spend the money necessary to fix the problem.
Continuing to pretend that the problem is a matter of scale simply doesn't cut it as an excuse. Worse, if "these problems happen when you're big" is really the explanation the CEO wants to keep falling back on, what happens when the company's $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable gets approved?
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Filed Under: brian roberts, customer satisfaction, customer service, scale
Companies: comcast, time warner cable
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The "Free market" enthusiasts would shut any attempt do do so down pretty damn quick on the grounds that it's government intervention, choosing winners and losers, etc.
Assume they're right; how in the world would you trade or boycott your way out of it? You can't.
We really do need to break up the big players in the telco cartel.
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Customer serv...ales
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Re: Customer serv...ales
Couple that with the fact that their advertising and website obfuscate true price and products to avoid actually informing customers, and that all business transactions are completed verbally with no written confirmation until the interaction is completed.
Of course you're going to get tons of people calling who are already pissed off, or will become pissed off when they realize they're getting jerked around because a certain percent of people don't understand their bills and won't call in because it's a hassle.
There is no incentive for Comcast to improve, only incentive to say that they'll improve in order to get permission to expand.
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Let me show you something else Comcast sucks at
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1034_3-5218178.html
Second, note the date on it: May 24, 2004.
Third, look at this partial ("partial", as in a very tiny fragment of a vastly largely whole) list of Comcast-hosted zombies that are emitting spam in November 2014:
c-24-125-66-72.hsd1.va.comcast.net [24.125.66.72]
c-24-128-237-128.hsd1.nh.comcast.net [24.128.237.128]
c-24-13-111-177.hsd1.il.comcast.net [24.13.111.177]
c-24-131-110-73.hsd1.pa.comcast.net [24.131.110.73]
c-24-16-77-131.hsd1.wa.comcast.net [24.16.77.131]
c-24-2-244-225.hsd1.ma.comcast.net [24.2.244.225]
c-24-2-4-69.hsd1.mo.comcast.net [24.2.4.69]
c-24-2-41-10.hsd1.ca.comcast.net [24.2.41.10]
c-24-21-191-3.hsd1.or.comcast.net [24.21.191.3]
c-24-98-21-33.hsd1.ga.comcast.net [24.98.21.33]
c-50-138-91-9.hsd1.fl.comcast.net [50.138.91.9]
c-50-139-165-165.hsd1.ma.comcast.net [50.139.165.165]
c-50-142-246-188.hsd1.tn.comcast.net [50.142.246.188]
c-50-143-74-164.hsd1.fl.comcast.net [50.143.74.164]
c-50-168-217-85.hsd1.ut.comcast.net [50.168.217.85]
c-50-181-255-20.hsd1.wa.comcast.net [50.181.255.20]
c-66-41-226-243.hsd1.mn.comcast.net [66.41.226.243]
c-67-174-124-191.hsd1.co.comcast.net [67.174.124.191]
c-67-174-67-65.hsd1.wv.comcast.net [67.174.67.65]
c-67-174-81-166.hsd1.in.comcast.net [67.174.81.166]
If you look at those hostnames for a moment, you'll see that they're all in subdomains by state, e.g., the last one is in Indiana. Thus this (and the millions of other entries I've accumulated over the past decade) clearly indicate that this is a systemic problem -- it's not confined to some small portion of Comcast's network. And it's persistent: this isn't some transient issue that only surfaces from time to time.
10 years. 10 years, and Comcast still hasn't managed to take even rudimentary, first-pass measures to stop their network from being an operational menace to the entire rest of the Internet. Nothing has changed from the day that this was posted:
http://forums.comcast.com/t5/E-Mail-and-Xfinity-Connect-Help/Comcast-welcome-to-SPEWS/td-p/14 9116
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http://www.cracked.com/article_21756_5-reasons-working-comcast-worse-than-you-think.html
In short, it claims they have high staff turnover rates, poor training that allows inexperienced staff to mess with live customer accounts and a focus on sales over and above solving any customer problems.
While an irreverent article on a comedy site, it definitely seems to describe some likely scenarios that can't be excused on size alone.
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To him, customer service is doing a damn fine job since they keep making sales.
The problem here is that nobody has told the CEO what the actual meaning of customer service is.
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Some actually have. Then he fired them. I've seen it.
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City wide
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Check it out, the only channel you can cancel or downgrade your service through is their phone tree, and that would hang up on me every time I chose that option.
http://bit.ly/cccustser
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Unfortunately, that usually has to be done through a very lengthy and difficult process as well. But once you're done, it is a worthwhile expenditure of time and effort. Just wish I had more than one viable option for internet.
I am trying to teach as many people as possible that it is a far better expenditure of time and effort to not hit the crack-pipe they call Cable to begin with... I just need to figure out a way to do it with a cute girl, a frying pan, and eggs and I think I've got it.
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And if their press releases are to be believed, my area will be hooked up with fiber within 3 years. Based on their track record, I'm fortunate to have little to complain about.
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Mine isn't *bad*, relatively speaking. I've got friends with TWC that have all sorts of lovely stories that make me count my blessings.
They say that they upped my bandwidth recently to 100+ Mbps, so I am getting about 12-16 Mbps (yes, Mbps...not MBps,) on average now. Still not even close to their advertised "up-to" limit, but at least now I am getting pretty close to what they promised I was before. With 12-16 Mbps average, I can watch Netflix at SD quality on most days and see no issues. Now if only they raised the cap, I'd be a little happier (but as it is, I only hit their 300GB/mo cap once a quarter now instead of every month.)
I am happy with my service, but if there was more than one viable competitor, I'd be even happier because it would force them to fix some of the stupid stuff they aren't currently fixing in order to keep customers.
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I cut the cord from Comcast when I got my house a couple years ago and went with U-Verse, though I cut the cord with TV service with Comcast a few months before that.
I think paying a bunch of money for TV service is dumb!!! Why are channels like ESPN which only a small percentage watch get the most money? Subsidized by everyone else with TV service. When I got my house, the first thing I did was put up a large antenna. When I look around at where I live and don't see any others, I just think SUCKERS!!!
I get ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, PBS, etc all in HD and 5.1 surround for FREE Legally!!! I record using my PC and Media Center and can watch all that content on one of my 3 HDTV's with full DVR controls. Start watching in the family room and continue in the Bedroom. Zero monthly fee's!!! The upfront costs of some hardware is paid off in no time flat with all the money you're saving.
Then there's this thing call the Internet where you can pretty much watch any cable show you want Legally or not, plus Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. I have more to watch now then ever before and not enough hours in the day.
My brother just moved into another house a few weeks ago and this time he threw up a Antenna also. Finally got his wife on board to stop paying for TV. She likes all those housewives shows. They're kids pretty much watch only Netflix Kids section. They didn't even know what a commercial was for quite some time. They do have Comcast for Internet service. Myself, I like my $35 a month service!!! I used to pay Comcast $170 a month and that was just for some basic stuff.
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Fixed that for you.... you had an extra word in your statement.
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Comcast is a monopoly in most places served
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350 million...
Most homes are already wired for cable, but I've found cable companies want to send people out for trivial things like setting up a cable modem (i.e., they bring a modem to your house, plug in in, and verify it lights up). One could build a system in which the user buys a modem from whereever, plugs in it, and does an online bill payment with the MAC address in the customer number or memo field to have it activated (and then every following month to keep it active; maybe send them to a web portal when payment or contact details are needed). Any other industry would want signup to be easy, and would give away free samples or even cash to get customers. Cable companies, by contrast, charge you money and waste your time.
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There's absolutely no reason Comcast couldn't do this as well. They use the exact same modems.
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This is how I got U-Verse to drop my cheap 1 year plan that shot up after the year was up, I just threaten to leave and go with Comcast. It wouldn't have been much more for much faster service. I'd need to run a new wire from outside my house to my Closet where everything else is at, Not a huge deal. I got them back down to $35 a month for another year.
When the year is up, I'll do it again. If I have to I'll jump to Comcast for Internet Only, Get one of their 6 month to year lower price deals, and do the same thing. if they don't play along I can jump back to U-Verse again.
If you're dumb enough to just sit there and take high prices year after year after year, that's on you. If people wised up, prices would just drop and we wouldn't have to play these silly games.
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Glad I was able to leave them
So I said screw it, canceled Comcast by taking everything into the local office and had U-verse installed. I now get more channels by far, my internet is comparable (Comcast was rated for 50 mbps, U-verse for 45). I won't say everything was perfect (it wasn't, I had a few issues caused by the initial installer doing a crap job, a couple of equipment issues and problems at the node up the road) but I've been pretty happy with it outside of those. Most of the people have been very helpful and polite. The onsite techs even gave me their cell numbers and said if I had any more problems in the next 30 days that I could call them directly. It's like they looked at what Comcast is doing and said, "Let's not do that. In fact, let's do the fucking opposite of that."
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As a professional in the customer service industry, I think your conclusion is probably wrong. At least insofar as you're assuming it's all about not spending money.
Here's the thing: it's possible to spend money on customer service efficiently, and it's possible to spend money on customer service inefficiently. If you have bad service but spend the money well, then spending more money is likely to improve the service.
But if you're spending the money poorly, then spending more won't get you better service, just more bad service.
The kinds of complaints you see about Comcast have all the hallmarks of money being spent very badly.
For example, while occasional long hold times can be caused by a surge in calls, it costs money to have very long wait times to reach a customer service rep day in and day out. All those people sitting on hold are tying up phone ports and running up long distance charges. Sure it's fractions of a cent per person per minute, but it adds up. And if those people don't get through today, they're calling back tomorrow.
And it's very expensive when a customer talks to a rep but doesn't get his problem fixed on the first call, because that customer is calling back and it's going to cost twice as much.
But even that's nothing compared to the money Comcast wastes when they have to send a truck to the customer's house multiple times for the same problem (or when they send a truck for something the customer could have fixed herself).
I have no inside information, but my gut tells me that Comcast is actually spending far more on customer service than they should have to. The problem is they are wasting most of the money by delivering the wrong service.
My guess is that if Comcast got its act together, it could deliver much better service and save a ton of money. But that would require an upfront effort to (a) train agents better, (b) allow support reps to spend more time with each customer to solve the problem on the first call, (c) empower reps to solve customer problems, and (d) allow different parts of the company to coordinate better.
The irony is that this investment would primarily be in the form of management time and attention, not money. The savings would probably start rolling in pretty quickly.
So the real problem is not that Comcast doesn't want to spend the money to fix its service. The real problem is that the senior leadership doesn't want to pay enough attention to customer service.
All IMHO, of course.
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It could work the other way , If they were a great company they would have fantastic satisfaction ratings , but they fail You get one-tenth of one-percent good experience, that's a lot of people... they still fail using this analogy.
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BIG
TO
CARE
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.. and they're terrible in predicting repair times ...
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