M|Welsh Design

Recipe for bad customer experiences require some effort on ‘improving efficiencies’ and a complete fixation and inward obsessions.

I understand and appreciate many of the pressures to acquire and retain customers and how important it is to do many thing well simultaneously to achieve results even in a less than competitive pseudo monopoly that Comcast has. I may, however, have trouble with expressing the following and my grammar, tense and tone may be off, the central takaway is that if there were a viable, path of least resistance alternative to Comcast(C) I would be there already.

This is meant as a learning moment for me, and a new normal expectation of Comcast. I will outline the issues and attempt  to recount my experiences with some level of specificity (thanks Tim) without ID, Monica operator XXXX or the others I had the unfortunate opportunity to deal with.

Phone Gates? The power of a person. WTF

The phone system and voice prompts at comcast are an example of bad usability ontop of no strategy and even less value with zero calls to action that current custs need. Nice idea bad execution because, but due to the shear numbing weight of voice prompts, repetition, and ultimately getting on hold with no wait time verbal prompt– 30 mins in, I hate piss poor user guidance + bad scripting and bombarding ads.

There are few things that i would care to write about except that i had the distinct pleasure of dealing with what i now label the Brian Roberts Customer Satisfaction Victimization Center of Excellence.(this will surely end up in someones google alerts inbox a few times as I make it my goal to SEO this post for that purpose). PS, Brian Roberts is the current Comcast CEO.

I Called Comcast, and phoned myself through the gates painfully on a few key levels:

1. Ben Stein ad….omg let me opt-out of that horror
2. Im calling from home and my caller id is broadcast plus my VoIp is self identifying…jesus H christ
3. I still have to pick through useless menu prompts and try to press 00# and 000000## until finally the system gives up and says please hold… just get a person on the effin phone
4. 10mins later i get a person, she identifies herself as Monica(not her realname) Operator XXXX, how can i help you today?
5. I state my interest in re-upping my contract that is up on the 20th of December 09.
6. Monica, flatly states we cant talk about anything until the 20th, period…
7. LEARNING MOMENT: You have to be retarded as a business to do this, if a long standing customer calls and wants to discuss the upcoming contract ending.  What options and programs are available to save money and or upgrade perhaps, especially since i am considering FIOS and Satellite. It is always better to have the conversation, keep a record and retain the customer…but I digress.  Strategically, the interaction at that level is a ‘brand transaction’ in the sense that i experience little directly from comcast outside the bill.

Called again in mid-January’ish….to accomplish the above…Try 2

1. the above 1-5 steps occured…inclusive of the wait..no weight time…
2. Hello, script, script script buy more, buy more, This is Rita operator OIUY, how may I help you?
3. Really? So buy now you can imagine the sheer joy and gaiety with which i engage this gentile woman with a restrained anger that i can only describe as, annoyed saddness with a touch of WTF.
4. Hi, I’d like to discuss what options, if any are available to me either via renewing for a longer period or combining promos to acheive a lower monthly payment for that fixed period of time, that i remain a loyal customer? Mind you I have been a loyal customer for umpteen years at this moment, as are most of you reading this.
5. Well, am i speaking to Michael Welsh?, I respond, Yes. Can you verify the address, last four or something like that. I do and then she states a need to put me on hold for a moment…she does and returns with a series of promos and packages with various incentives and addons…My want to have my bill remain the same or lower over a longer period is addressed by saying, “we no longer to contract terms”, Ok, I said, instead what they do is give you a ‘higher rate’ for some or portions of the packages you have and suggest that the ‘new dvr’ is free and that the fixed uplift each year for the next 3 years will more than justify the current increase and the out year increases. This is less than ideal and i am not negotiating, I’m picking from shitty and shittier…I jokingly suggest that it would be great to pick my favorite channels and pay as i go by channel or allow longer term customers specific sets of terms and conditions for being invested in time with comcast.

I’ll be sending you a new DVR in the mail and you can drop off the old box at any of our centers….

• bottom-line put RMA workflow in place to return swap equipment. No Brainer…they do it with old toner cartridges for gods sake….
• more on this later.

You’re all set Mr. Welsh…with a higher priced package and no changes except a ‘free’ dvr upgrade and one other pay channel which i never watch anyways…and sports channels i dont care about.

1. She then ’sends a signal’ and blows up my internet and forces a download to my mac and an install which resets all my interwebs…no warning on that shizz…when i call from my house, verify my iD and ask to pay more effing money…dont fcking reverify me, I am paying you to provide a service aka internet pipe to my house that step affected me for about an hour setting and resetting the modem, router and computer per the 3rd Call with the tech support guys, who to their credit were trying to help and acknowledged the less than stellar process for ‘re-onboarding’ a renewing customer….Comcast FAIL

Then on or about the 21st my TV signal goes dark.

1. I am watching my TV debating whether to switch to appleTV to watch The Proposal (I know a chick flick but i like Sandra Bullock, and my wife kinda looks like her) then the screen says ‘Not Authorized’
2. So i call
3. I speak to another person…who does internet not TV
4. He tries to help and ultimately resignals my box 2x and has me run the sequence 2x
5. He gets me another TV specific guy who finally realizes that the way my account is configured on thier end is screwed up due to the aforementioned equipment swap out….old equip still configured…new equip no provisioned…
6. 1hr goes by
7. He apologizes and states this is not typical but he sees this from time to time. for me it was my 4th time…

Finally, running errands today with the old digital box in my trunk i call comcast and ask for the nearest to my current location service center to drop off the box

• Holy sht you’d think i asked for the nuclear codes…the woman asked repeatedly for my address and told her i was in paoli and wanted the nearest service center…thats it…it ended up a 30 minute call…I finally said nevermind…i asked what country are you in? You know its over at that point.

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• So i pull out my iphone and look  up comcast and try to find my way to the locations and the site is even less helpful than the phone groups… i end up googling ‘comcast service centers’ and finally find one with a phoenixville address and think, great, I’ll go there…and there is a number in the listing and i call it…oh sht i get rerouted through the comcast call software sht storm until i reach a 5 or 6th operator is who is very sorry but doesnt even know what i am calling about until i tell her about the service center on main st in phoenixville. Also that i cant call them directly, she can t transfer me, there is no direct number and i cant even ask how to get there….Now i have completely had it…comcast has completely lost grip, touch, and short feel for how to handle situations, people, and the all important….wait for it….common god damn sense nature of two people on the the gdffin phone one with information and one without. Brand Transactions are opportunities ppl please!

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The moral of the story…

1. Comcast has lost its grip on what made them
2. Brian Roberts CEO of Comcast is trapped in powerpoint lined cage of distracted desperation…
3. Dominos figured out that drunken cardboard food is not a long term growth strategy for investment….ie no hockey stick of growth…nice work papa johns.
4. Call center management is actually a brand strategy…not a HMO tactic for deniability
5. Common sense, and plainness are assets in a warehouse of aggressive dumbness coalescing around failure, attrition and boycotts
6. Shareholder (I actually am one in institutional 401k and individual shares) equity and predictable revenue depends on the efficient management of churn, top-line growth and bottom-line expense control….You are hosing your churn and top-line
7. Comcast has internal org issues that these are symptoms of…when sht like this happens to people like me things are ‘challenged’ on the inside….ie there is some six sigma, process innovation or centers for excellence bullshit going on affecting how service is delivered….

While rambling and issue laiden the amount of frustration over the course of Dec-Jan I can’t measure….

This has to have been the worst customer sat experience I have ever had where the company was oblivious for the most part and its clear they dont give two shits…that’s where the gagging reflex comes from….I remember a few years ago having a completely different set of experiences with Comcast. Now all bets are off and since i get three of the key services from them, i will now begin the long term process of dumping all their sht to the curb…and telling as many people in as many places as often as possible of my experience…just the forrester and gartner say i will.