Can broadband do right by customers?

As cable and phone companies slug it out in markets across the U.S., improving customer care is becoming a core part of their strategies.

For the past few years, cable and phone companies have been neck and neck in many markets. Cable companies have introduced new phone services to compete with phone companies, and phone companies have started offering competing TV services.

On the broadband front, cable and phone companies now offer similar speeds in feeds in many markets. While cable has historically been priced slightly higher than services offered from phone companies, these too are evening out in many markets with various promotional service offerings.

Now, more than ever, consumers seem to be influenced by their perception of a particular company and their own experience with customer care. What's more, the Internet has changed things. It used to be that a single disgruntled customer would influence only a few friends and neighbors. But with the advent of blogs and forums all over the Web, unhappy consumers can find a much wider audience, potentially reaching thousands or even millions.

"Customers are making choices every day," said Rick Germano, senior vice president of Customer Operations for Comcast. "They are trying to figure out which company to go with to get TV, high-speed Internet service, and now phone service. And their perception of who is offering those services is a big driver in who they choose."

Unfortunately for Comcast, its customer service has taken a beating recently. Just last month, the company got the lowest score it's ever gotten on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, a major customer satisfaction study conducted by the University of Michigan. And last week, it ranked as the second worst company in terms of customer care in an MSN Money customer survey.

These results follow publicized tales of a technician sleeping while on the job and a hammer-wielding grandmother going crazy due to poor service. And it also follows accusations that the company throttled BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic.

Germano acknowledged the company needs to improve its service and perception.

"Comcast takes full responsibility for what these surveys are saying," he said. "We don't disagree with the results. And we're listening. We get it. But we look at this an opportunity for us to improve. As a business we have to do it."

Comcast's main competitors, AT&T and Verizon Communications, have faired better in these surveys than Comcast. But that doesn't mean that there aren't pockets of dissatisfied customers.

In fact, my sister who recently moved to a suburb near Boston chose to get her Internet and TV service from Comcast even though Verizon's new Fios service was available in her town. Why? The reason was simple. The Verizon technician who was scheduled to set up her basic phone service didn't show up twice for his appointment.

"I knew from the phone incident that there was no way I was going to get Verizon's Fios service, no matter how good or fast the service was supposed to be," she said.

My sister isn't the only dissatisfied Verizon customer I've heard from. Several readers have sent e-mails and commented on the "Talk Back" of some of my blogs saying they have had similarly bad experiences when trying to get Fios service installed. Verizon executives acknowledge the company has experienced some growing pains, especially as it rolls out its new Fios service. But Tom Maguire, the company's customer service czar, says the company is making improvements.

"I don't think anyone wants to be known for providing terrible customer service," he said. "Everyone wants to do the right thing for the customer. So we have to figure out how to remove obstacles that are preventing us from delivering great customer service every time. If we can't deliver the best product with the best service, the customer will go somewhere else."

Winning customers over
So what are these companies doing to improve?

Comcast has hired 15,000 new customer service agents and technicians over the past 18 months to help the company answer calls and provide service to customers. It has also rolled out new high-tech diagnostic tools for agents in the field and at call centers to help better assess problems. Comcast has also started re-dispatching field technicians if it looks like a certain technician may not be able to get to his next appointment.

Customer service agents are also starting to work on Saturdays and Sundays to schedule and serve customers when it's most convenient for them. And it's offering real time online chat services so that customers can talk live with a customer account executive.

Germano said the company is trying to listen to customers more, and that includes establishing a special team within the company to follow blogs, like the Consumerist.com and online forums where many problems are often reported by customers.

Verizon's Maguire said that his company is doing something similar. Like Comcast, Verizon has a team that monitors blogs. And Maguire himself often answers e-mails from customers with complaints as part of what the company calls a "you touch it, you own it" philosophy.

The phone company is also starting to roll out a new text-messaging system that automatically alerts customers when a technician has been dispatched to a location. It will alert customers if the technician is running late.

In addition, Verizon has made big improvements in its customer care centers. One major change is that it has been staffing the fiber solutions centers, which handle technical issues with the fiber-to-the-home Fios service, with customer care representatives who can resolve billing and enrollment issues.

"It's more cost effective and better marketing to take care of the customers you already have than to go out and try to acquire new customers."

--Tom Maguire, Verizon's customer service czar

Verizon also has improved its voice response system to help customers resolve certain issues on their own. And it's given customers who would rather reach a human representative a way to navigate out of the voice response system.

It's implemented a new queue-busting system that monitors the flow of calls into call centers. If a center is getting overloaded with calls, more representatives are added dynamically to handle the overflow calls.

"Our goal is to make it easier for customers to do business with us," Maguire said. "It's more cost effective and better marketing to take care of the customers you already have than to go out and try to acquire new customers. And the magic formula for doing this is really the golden rule. Treat customers how you want to be treated."

Another major trend that seems to be filtering into every major broadband provider is a greater focus on standardizing processes. While local branch offices will continue to handle local service calls and dispatch technicians directly to customers, bigger service providers, such as Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, say that it's important to make sure that best practices are shared throughout the company.

"If someone calls with a problem, chances are good that they are talking to someone in their town," said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. "But they will still have the big company experience in that we are sharing what we've learned from our 150 million calls a year to implement best practices that can be shared across the company."

Maguire, who took over as Verizon's head of customer care late last year, said he's already started seeing an improvement.

"Improving customer service is a journey that really has no end point," he said. "We're always striving to do better. But I do think things have gotten better. One indication is there are a lot fewer calls that get escalated to my level than there were when I started."

[chuckm310]

I think these people, (cable and land line companies), have become arrogant. While visiting ming my son in Tampa Bay and know I will be moving here, I called brighthouse to see about cable and high speed. Their whole attitude was, "we're the only game in town" and seemed to not care if I hooked up or not. Additionally, I have been a Direct TV customer for more than 12 years. I called to split my account, as I have done in the past, and was told, no way, must have two accounts and will have to hook up for two years with penalties to shut the new one down early. I think we need some protection from these vultures. What say you?

[kennethpdavis]

Everything in this posting rings true. For me, Comcast's service improved noticeably about a month and a half ago. Now I may be too cynical--is that even possible?--but that was right around the time that Verizon's local website announced FiOS construction on my block.

The biggest improvement both (and most other) companies could make--at relatively little cost--is a button press to turn off the music while customers are waiting on hold. I don't mind the wait as much as I resent the fact that I am unable to do (or even think about) anything else during it. I'd prefer a simple "please continue to hold" every 60-90 seconds.

[Lerianis]

Well, the main reason why they don't do that is because they tried that one time, and some stupid customers thought they had been hung up on when the music went away, so now we are stuck with it.

[gaspero1]

I was a customer of "Bright" House, until last week. About a month ago, I upgraded to their "fastest" package. That gave me about a 6 Megabit burst connection, with an average 2 megabit speed, for $60 a month. That's still slower than the 7-10 Mbps connection I had on TCI Cablevision in 1994, before Comcast bought and ruined that service. Last week, someone from Bright House "customer care" called. They insisted that they were "phasing out" their fastest service. The only way to continue to receive the fast signal was in a bundled package. Since their picture quality is pathetic compared to over the air HDTV signals due to their heavy compression, not to mention the starting package is $100 a month, I told them where they can go. I called AT&T, who now has 60 megabit running to my house, which results in 25 megabit down and 2 megabit in my house, a nice jump in performance over Bright House. The best part is, I'm paying less than I paid for the "Bright" House "high speed" service. Just based on experience though, It will be only a matter of time before AT&T irritates me and I'll be out shopping for someone else. Already, they're blocking ports that keep me from doing some of the things I could do on Bright House, such as edit my own website.

[inachu]

They offer these speeds on TV advertisements but then they offer half of that.

[jscott418]

I think many fail to realize the expense of broadband. It's very costly to buy enough bandwidth from available trunk lines. We have also seen a start to a major shift in what we use the internet for. First it was just a web portal for information and then it became a buying tool. Now we have seen music,video streaming and even large file downloads like movies. The questions now come up. Do we have enough bandwidth for these things?? To expect a lot of competition is expecting multiple cable companies to come in a install hundreds of miles of cable and hardware to support this. It's just not going to happen. So far the bright spot in improving bandwidth headroom is fiber optics and at the cost of it. I don't see this being a standard for delivering broadband anytime soon. The unfortunate truth is what you have right now is what you will have and if it's a problem with overall bandwidth limitations then you might see internet providers begin to back off their advertised speed in order to provided better service to all and not just the heavy downloaders.

[john55440]

I live in a highly populated suburban/urban area, but Comcast has a monopoly on high-speed internet service here, because Qwest DSL isn't available. It's disappointing, because Qwest offers excellent service in this area. On the rare occassion that there has been a problem with my land line, Qwest repair people always show up on time, are always polite, and always fix the problem the first time.

[strider 667]

I don't think "The Authorities" should obsolete analog TV reception, until Broadband has made significant improvements, and solved its myriad of problems that the customer experiences in everyday situations. Overall quality of Broadband vs. Analog rates about a "2"; on a scale of "1 to 10". Where is the "voice" of all people/users on this subject. Soon, there will be no alternative, no freedom, no franchise for free airwaves whatsoever. What do you call that- "Tyranny"?

[slhaynes]

I'm using the AT&T U-Verse service and I love it. The only problems I've had with it is the wireless router had to be locked on to a specific channel because there are so many users in my neighborhood. Also, the Fox Business Network is on a higher tier than it should be. However, the NFL Network is on a lower tier. I would have to pay extra to ComCast for the NFL Network.

[Bill_I]

Tell Maguire that Verizon's voice response system STINKS ! Whoever designed, implemented and purchased that system should be locked into a room and made to use it for 48 hours, no sleep allowed. My phone has 12 handy buttons that work just fine to navigate the CS maze. When a real person comes on the line, they MUST be located in North America.

[ralfthedog]

I live in Oklahoma, Cox Cable has been running commercials that say, "Don't use Verizon, they keep increasing their rates." The Funny thing is that Oklahoma does not have Verizon service.

That tells me that Cox is terrified that Fios will someday come to OKC.

PS. If one of those Verizon blog monitors is out their, can you tell me if Verizon is planning on coming to OKC? I would love to try both and compare.

[johnorourke1951]

Ms Marguerite Reardon,
Thank you for the post. I live in the Decatur Illinois area and since Comcast became our phone and internet provider the service has worsened. My Fiance and I share an apartment in a new complex in Decatur and we've had three visits from Comcast technicians since February of 2008. My fiance is recovering from a mild stroke and has not experienced these issues over the last three months. I'm totally blind myself and kringe when a phone tech support specialists asks me "let us know when the lights are blinking on the modem. In addition, I have a Belkin Wireless router for my laptop. Belkin International informs me that, "we can't assist you unless you have sighted assistance for the color coding." Comcast Belkin and I are on a colision course toward an Americans With Disabilities Act law suit under Title III of the ADA. Every negative reaction to Comcast is deserved. This is far from the company I left when I lived in the Arlington Virginia area several years ago. Thank you.

[Albertv]

The real problem is that infrastructure is not being updated while usage and services are sky rocketing on the network. We are fast becoming a third world power in internet speeds. In the last few years we in N. America have dropped from number 1 to number 15. Not only are other countries beating us in speed they also do so at considerably less cost to the consumer.

[Lerianis]

You are absolutely right. Infrastructure is not being upgraded anymore, instead all of the profits are going to the shareholders and the CEO's, which is a stupid thing to do in any industry that needs constant upgrades and improvements, like internet service.

[i_made_this]

"Did I hear you correctly? That you'd like to cancel service? Please hold and a live customer care representative will be right with you." What's the basic economic difference between getting your "triple play service" from the cable company versus the phone company? You can go month to month with cable whereas the phone company demands a long-term contract (subject to credit approval). What percentage profit margin do you figure your broadband internet provider makes at current prices? Will they lower that margin in an effort to compete with the phone co's? No, they'll do the same as the phone co's and offer you lower ISP speeds if you require a lower price. Hiring more customer service rep's and similar touchy-feely nonsense is not the answer for either of them. You and I know the answer for both of them - but they won't do it anytime soon because FCC regs continue to protect and nourish monopoly pricing. No one watches cable TV anymore because we've realized it's fundamentally the same as the networks and now even has as much advertising in-between shows as network TV. They know these things. So, they tried to bully us back to cable TV - no more NFL football on the networks etc .. you name it .. all sorts of efforts "to bully us back" have continued and it still hasn't done them any good. "Hi, my neighbors on all three sides are hacking your bandwidth via my legitimate cable connection which has slowed to a crawl. They don't pay you - I do. Can you fix this please?" They suggested writing a letter of complaint to the FCC.

[Bill_I]

Take the antenna off your modem box and string those cat5 cables direct to each computer.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

Slug it out? In most markets you have a monopoly telco and a monopoly cable TV outfit, both of which sneer at their customers and beat them like dogs should they ask for support. How about this idea: snake fiber through the municipals sewers to every household and let the ISPs *bid* on the right to provide services to the community. You have a toilet; you'll have reasonably priced broadband. Turn the monopoly on its head. No sewers? Toss up municipally owned WiMax instead and let comms companies bid on the right to service the system and users. In the mix, you may get better maintained infrastructure. Locally, Verizon, the monopoly telco has completely abandoned maintenance of the copper infrastructure. No new lines. Splitters nailed to the sides of houses all over the place (an installation scheme that was considered an emergency measure 10-15 years ago), crackling lines when it rains, basically land line telephony as you might have imagined in Taipei circa 1951. Comcast? The company would be called an organized crime ring in any civilized country. Had to deal with them once and everyone their alternated lies with grunts. Finally just bought a router and rung around their local offices until I found a guy who understood that I knew what I was doing and handed me off to tech support in Texas which had me lit in 5 minutes (as I figured, all they needed was the MAC address mapped to the physical service line). Otherwise, the grunting twits would have extracted a $99 truck roll from me. On the plus side, no one urinated on my leg or ate my pets. If you deal with any of these companies, the best you can do is self-support and assume that no support is available. It's fee for service at best (when someone shows up that kind tie his shoes) or just abuse listening to people who regard you as an annoyance lie to you, dismiss you, mock you and do whatever they can to get you to drop the phone.

[Jonathan]

Dear Comcast...fix your damn billpay system. Sorry but I shouldn't have to remove my damn router and have a direct connection to pay my bill online because you guys are using a funky flashed based system. And this isn't just my computer. I can't pay my bill at work (Probably firewall based.) And it isn't OS or browser based because I have the same problems under Windows or OS X, IE or Firefox. So multiple computers, multiple OS's, multiple browsers. This is all Comcast.
Oh and the 12-14MB file size limitation for uploading files to your online file share is asinine. I was trying to share a 20MB PDF with a coworker and I couldn't e-mail or upload because of your crap service. When I move I will NOT be using Crapcast again. Its a fracking joke.

[zeroplane]

Comcast!
It's Craptastic!

I am looking forward to dropping their services at the end of the year when I move. At this point I don't need cable, I watch TV over the internet or I download missed episodes. Also many of the shows I watch are on podcasts now. Streaming music is also available so why would I need to pay $160/mth for something I don't need?

Even if Verizon has crappy installation service it will be worth it to only pay $50/mth for fiber and $15/mth for voip (that is only $65/mth); verses the $160/mth I pay to Comcast for crappy service for phone/internet/cable.

The new year is upon me soon and I will be liberated.

[TV James]

Or they could just try offering it where I live... still can't get Qworst's DSL service because they're oversold. So I'm stuck paying twice as much for Comco$t's service.

[CyberWoLfman]

Comcast's cable customer service seems bad no matter where you live, according to many people I've spoken with on the internet, and the connection seems iffy especially after a rain storm. Had to call them up several times to complain about this, and, even though I've told them I've power-cycled everything, they insist I do it again every time I call. You'd think my telling them that the cable connection light on their modem would give them a clue, but, some people remain entirely clueless . . . As for the DSL type connections, they seem to be blocking a lot of ports, like for those that use 3D chat programs' world servers such as OuterWorlds, so you can't keep your 3D world up unless you use another service. Not really understanding this one, since it's not that much of a drag on the bandwidth, as all the files for the worlds you are hosting are actually on a Web site. But, for them to block ports so you can't update a Web site, as another person mentioned, sounds even dumber for an internet company. A lot more people are making their own personal sites now, and need to upload pictures of their trips to wherever or events they've gone to in their area, et cetera. If their intent is to lose customers to other companies that CAN provide this service, they're doing an admirable job.

- CyberWoLfman

[devonmacdonald]

Employees on the front lines have the largest impact on customer satisfaction, and the overall customer experience, yet they are often the least trained and lowest paid. I love the story about the technician on the couch.

More thoughts on my customer experience / customer satisfaction blog
http://thecustomerisalways.blogspot.com/

[BtmnHatesRbn]

I guess I'm lucky. AT&T's WiMax service...they haven't billed me since December, claims I don't have an account with them, and that my service doesn't exist. Yet here I am, on the Internet, downloading LOADS like a madman! TV shows, video games, etc. And it's only been off once since November! For only 5 minutes! Can't complain, especially the price!

[TennMom1]

If Comcast's customer service has improved, I sure haven't noticed. Then again, after months of attempting to convince every Tom, Dick and Harriet at the company that their new beta format is rife with problems, I have given up and learned to live with the constant aggravation of missing email, flawed links from their homepage, and extremely slow response to complaints. The only change Comcast has shown me is another rate increase.

[Lerianis]

Missing e-mail? Now wait a minute, I have Comcast service, and I haven't had any 'missing e-mail'... except when Comcast has blocked an e-mail address for child pornography or something similar by accident because of a report from some idiot.

Flawed links on their homepage? Which one, Comcast.com or Comcast.net? I have seen any broken links on either website, to be honesty.

Extremely slow response to complaints? Hey, when I have complained, I have gotten an answer back almost immediately or within the next two hours, faster if I use their flash-chat application.