Confessions Of A Comcast Video Repair Agent

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Well this certainly explains a lot. Comcast customer or not, I think most of us have had experience with our service provider doing one or more of these things to us. :(

According to M., Comcast doesn’t actually care if video repair agents — the people you eventually get passed to when you call to gripe about your service not working — actually fix your TV-related problem. He says there are only two metrics that matter to his bosses: “Did you sell the customer something? And how fast did you got the customer off the phone?”
 
Comcast is catching quite a bit of shit over this, but here is reality. This has been call Center policy across the board for years now. I worked in a call center from 2003-2004 until I landed a job in IT in another part of the company. They were a younger call center so it wasn't that bad when I started. By the time I left the company in 2008 it was just as bad as what is being described about comcast. There was a move in the early 2000's started in call centers that small fixes to get the customer off the phone and bullshit like described here was the method of choice.

The reason for this is simple..SLAs or Service Level Agreements that call centers have with their vendors. They are required to Average certain call lengths and other metrics to keep their contracts. It isn't a choice, it is policy across the board. If your SLAs fall below certain guaranteed thresholds, then you get penalized. So as such call centers operate in this method of keep passing the customer around until they give up to keep their metrics for individual calls low. They never ever do metrics on how many times an individual account called and how long is really took to resolve, its done by just blind calls.

Most call centers will have large flat panels all over the place displaying their SLA's in real time. If those SLAs start to get near the red, then floor supervisors and QA start roaming the floors pressuring CSRs who are spending too much time on the phone to get off, some going so far as disconnecting the call. It really is a pathetic way to run things, but the street runs two ways. It is the Vendors fault for prioritizing stupid meaningless metrics and it is the call centers fault for continuing to push these anti consumer behaviors. It likewise is the consumers fault..why? Because the vast majority do in fact give up and never push. The one call that actually gets escalated and requires a Real supervisor to deal with and resolve, got past 1000+ other calls that got bounced around on their 15minute hold, sub 3 minute actual call a dozen times and just gave up. These people are convinced that no call should ever take more than 3 minutes and that is an industry standard, not just comast. What you will never get them to show you is that it took 15 of those 3 minute calls to resolve it costing them a real total of 45 minutes. Had one intelligent CSR been allowed to remain on the phone, in most cases a single 15 minute call would of resolved it. But because people complain about hold times instead of actual problem resolution, this is the shit we get.
 
Comcast is catching quite a bit of shit over this, but here is reality. This has been call Center policy across the board for years now. I worked in a call center from 2003-2004 until I landed a job in IT in another part of the company. They were a younger call center so it wasn't that bad when I started. By the time I left the company in 2008 it was just as bad as what is being described about comcast. There was a move in the early 2000's started in call centers that small fixes to get the customer off the phone and bullshit like described here was the method of choice.

The reason for this is simple..SLAs or Service Level Agreements that call centers have with their vendors. They are required to Average certain call lengths and other metrics to keep their contracts. It isn't a choice, it is policy across the board. If your SLAs fall below certain guaranteed thresholds, then you get penalized. So as such call centers operate in this method of keep passing the customer around until they give up to keep their metrics for individual calls low. They never ever do metrics on how many times an individual account called and how long is really took to resolve, its done by just blind calls.

Most call centers will have large flat panels all over the place displaying their SLA's in real time. If those SLAs start to get near the red, then floor supervisors and QA start roaming the floors pressuring CSRs who are spending too much time on the phone to get off, some going so far as disconnecting the call. It really is a pathetic way to run things, but the street runs two ways. It is the Vendors fault for prioritizing stupid meaningless metrics and it is the call centers fault for continuing to push these anti consumer behaviors. It likewise is the consumers fault..why? Because the vast majority do in fact give up and never push. The one call that actually gets escalated and requires a Real supervisor to deal with and resolve, got past 1000+ other calls that got bounced around on their 15minute hold, sub 3 minute actual call a dozen times and just gave up. These people are convinced that no call should ever take more than 3 minutes and that is an industry standard, not just comast. What you will never get them to show you is that it took 15 of those 3 minute calls to resolve it costing them a real total of 45 minutes. Had one intelligent CSR been allowed to remain on the phone, in most cases a single 15 minute call would of resolved it. But because people complain about hold times instead of actual problem resolution, this is the shit we get.

That's a really long excuse for "Companies are cheap and refuse to deal with the overhead involved with customer service of consumer products/services." If Comcast/TWC/whomever was barely turning a profit or something, I might take it as an excuse, but that isn't reality. That is the root cause and no one cares about the BS of the middlemen in between....
 
This is par for the course with nearly any customer service or retail role. From Target employees pushing their red card, to car rental people pushing the protection plans, to whatever.
Customer service isn't customer service - it's another chance to sell.
If there is a real need for service, everything comes down to measurables that don't equate to much...but they make for great graphs and statistics.
 
This is par for the course with nearly any customer service or retail role. From Target employees pushing their red card, to car rental people pushing the protection plans, to whatever.
Customer service isn't customer service - it's another chance to sell.
If there is a real need for service, everything comes down to measurables that don't equate to much...but they make for great graphs and statistics.

I personally think the issue is caused by customer apathy and that we as a society do not really put value on customer service in many cases.

Everyone says they care are CS, and blah blah blah but look at Wal Mart, they prove that for the most part all we care about is getting the most stuff for least price... everything else is 2nd.

If a place is 10% cheaper and has horrible CS, chances are many people are "happy" to shop there then complain all holy hell when they get what they paid for.

Apple, while I generally dislike their business practices, they offer a pretty good value. Good CS, good products, and ease of use. Yet when it comes down to it, Android takes over due to price.
 
Shocker! Large corporations act like sociopaths. Comcast isn't anything abnormal, it's just center of attention right now.
 
That's a really long excuse for "Companies are cheap and refuse to deal with the overhead involved with customer service of consumer products/services." If Comcast/TWC/whomever was barely turning a profit or something, I might take it as an excuse, but that isn't reality. That is the root cause and no one cares about the BS of the middlemen in between....

Um, I wasn't making an excuse. I was simply stating how All call centers operate. It is completely shitty and anti consumer.
 
There are some valid points in the article.

I having worked in the field of cable/satellite for a long time can tell you it doesn't surprise me to see an article like this. Things you need to know.

- Sat/Cable provider is looking to maximize profits as with any other business.

This results in the following. Call centers that handle the companies customer service are forced to provide (acceptable coverage) with a limited budget. This in turn means they can hire X amount of staff to run their operations. ACT(Average call time) is measured by each representative to determine if they are performing up to par. This will lead to the representatives wanting to get you off the phone as soon as possible.

The companies do wish to provide good customer service. They do extensive quality control that listens to representatives phone calls to ensure proper steps were taken. Some of the metrics of which how those calls are graded include did they offer additional services to the customer. Again they want to make sure you provide them the most cash while trying to keep you happy.

Retention department representatives probably have the worst job. They need to take a pissed off customer and try to convince them to keep their companies services. What is even worse they are usually judged by their "Save rate" or how often can accomplish the task of keeping a customer on board. If the representative doesn't have a good "save rate" then they are ultimately fired. You guessed it this leads to them being pushy and not wanting to disconnect your service because well their job depends on you keeping your service.

The root company does want to provide good customer service. Its just a long road down to people actually providing the customer service and the methods they employ to keep their jobs.
 
“The gap between the call center and local dispatch is miles apart,” explains M. “Anything a representative says about getting another tech out for a no-show is a lie and you’re better off rescheduling. Technicians will tag doors and run back to their vehicle or just drive by and describe the house like they’ve been there.”

In our region dispatch has to attempt to contact the customer before they'll close it with a Not Home. Techs aren't given the ability to close jobs with those codes.
 
The issue is that these are huge corporations and most competition is a joke now. Get shitty service at Comcast? Go to...well, probably no one, but maybe Time Warner, who has 99.99% the exact same service and policies!

Pissed off at BofA? Head to Wells Fargo, or Citi, or Chase....whose service and policies are 99.99% the same! Rinse, repeat.
 
Um, I wasn't making an excuse. I was simply stating how All call centers operate. It is completely shitty and anti consumer.

I have to admit it sounded like a excuse when you start off with, "Comcast is getting a lot of shit for this but it's been done this way everywhere for a long time". I guess what you are saying is that Comcast in particular shouldn't be singled out, but if they are the company that ends up being exposed on this issue, then I have zero problem with that.

Comcast should be getting shit for it. Any company that does this should be getting shit for it, and it should change because of it. I have no sympathy for Comcast or any other greedy anti-consumer corporation. If they have to be the scapegoat for this issue then so be it, if it leads to change.
 
Comcast should be getting shit for it. Any company that does this should be getting shit for it, and it should change because of it. I have no sympathy for Comcast or any other greedy anti-consumer corporation. If they have to be the scapegoat for this issue then so be it, if it leads to change.

If not for protectionism keeping competition out of their sector, they WOULD get shit for it in the form of customers moving to companies that don't suck.

Protectionism is only good for those being (directly) protected.
 
I called Comcast customer service once... to cancel my cable subscription.

Tada!
 
Apple, while I generally dislike their business practices, they offer a pretty good value. Good CS, good products, and ease of use. Yet when it comes down to it, Android takes over due to price.

As somebody who has worked in IT for the last 10+ years, Apples CS is one of my worst...what they do excellent though is appease people when they screw up.
 
this is unacceptable, but Dekoth-E- is 100% correct. I was at Software Spectrum servicing aol in 1999-2000. EXACTLY the same scenario. SUCKS, but it today's biz model.
 
I had a gaming buddy once, knew how to fire up Counter-Strike but nothing else - he had to ask me how to bookmark a webpage. Literally, a week or 2 later, he got a job as customer service for an ISP.
 
*sigh*
Remember the days when Comcast was proud of it's LOCAL service agents and customer service?

...'course that got in the way of profit....
 
This is par for the course with nearly any customer service or retail role. From Target employees pushing their red card, to car rental people pushing the protection plans, to whatever.
Customer service isn't customer service - it's another chance to sell.
If there is a real need for service, everything comes down to measurables that don't equate to much...but they make for great graphs and statistics.

Yeah, but when stores offer me an extended warranty, or a customer program card, or whatever, I'm still usually able to actually conduct business with them while saying no. At the retail level, best buy has been the only exception to that.

Cable is literally the only good or service I have consumed where there is zero concern by the seller to get you what you paid for.
 
*sigh*
Remember the days when Comcast was proud of it's LOCAL service agents and customer service?

...'course that got in the way of profit....

Yeah...actually, one thing I will say is that when I've had to go into the "local" (read: 30 min drive) Comcast office, they have always been really friendly and helpful. I have heard that they will give you good deals on service because they make commission on that kind of thing, so they are much more willing to work with you on certain issues than the phone CSRs.
 
Funny how crap like this works:

* companies like this are trying to get you *off* the phone as fast as possible.
* other companies are trying to *keep* you on the phone as long as possible, the long they have you on the better the chances of them hooking you.

The latter is one I deal with a lot. Damn credit card processing companies call us here at work literally 1-3 times a damn day. They try everything to keep us on the phone. They last ~30 seconds with me though. The others here are wimps and don't have the balls to get them off the phone quickly. ROFL
 
The issue is that these are huge corporations and most competition is a joke now. Get shitty service at Comcast? Go to...well, probably no one, but maybe Time Warner, who has 99.99% the exact same service and policies!

You can't even switch to Time Warner (or vice versa) in the vast majority of the country. Comcast and TW purposely avoided each other's "turf" to avoid the frightening prospect of actual competition.

They even brought this up themselves as a reason why the merger isn't a bad thing. Their logic is "we already avoided any sort of competition anyway, so just let us do this Mr. FCC chairman" (former lobbyist for the cable industry).
 
They even brought this up themselves as a reason why the merger isn't a bad thing. Their logic is "we already avoided any sort of competition anyway, so just let us do this Mr. FCC chairman" (former lobbyist for the cable industry).

That makes absolutely no sense, lol.

"We already attempted to create a virtual monopoly between us, so let us make it official!"
 
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