Behind The Veil Part 5: Comcast Metrics For All Employees As Simple As ABC, Always Be Closing
from the anybody-but-comcast dept
In the ongoing fallout Comcast is facing due to the high-pressure sales tactics of their non-sales employees, the company has consistently indicated that these employees are not behaving in a manner consistent with the company's wishes. The common thread in most of these stories consists of customer service duties being handled by customer retention reps as often as not and complaints or attempts to cancel service being met with sales pitches instead of service. Comcast has specifically indicated that these examples are outside of the way they train employees to conduct their business.
Comcast, as it turns out, is completely full of shit. The latest reveal via past and current Comcast employees spilling their guts to The Verge is all about employee metrics. And it seems that Comcast sees everyone as part of the sales team.
Guidelines for repair reps, which show how a trouble call can be segued into a sales call, are part of S4, Comcast's "universal call flow." S4 is an evaluative measurement to ensure that all agents "give every customer a great call experience every time." It stands for: start, solve, sell, summarize. Part S3, or "sell," includes four parts: "transition to relevant offer," "present offer," "overcome objections," and "proactively close sale."That's not even a retention rep being trained in that document; it's a repair tech. Because, hey, the thing I most want when Comcast's service is failing is the person fixing it to sell me more of that failing service. This is the kind of pressure tactics that lead repair calls down the dark path to an angry customer who likely subsequently finds out that Comcast has a monopoly on service in their area. Where are my free-market conservative friends on this stuff? This is supposed to be in your wheelhouse!
It doesn't get any better for customer service reps.
Similarly, a scorecard for customer service reps in the Pennsylvania area shows that sales are explicitly worth 18 percent of an agent's performance. Sales are measured again in the general customer service "Pinnacle" metric, which is worth 27 percent. An excerpt from the Pinnacle guidelines says "Sales/Conversion" is one of eight categories measured in an employee's interaction with a customer.A fifth of a customer service reps performance is judged on their salesmanship. Let that sink in for a moment and then remind yourself of this fact the next time you call for a complaint or help with your service. That person you're speaking to is being judged on whether they can sell you on something when they're supposed to be helping you.
You can see the full dump of the metrics documents here, but don't eat much before you go looking. You may not be able to keep your meal down.
Filed Under: broadband, customer service, selling, upsell
Companies: comcast
