Blisstering Solutions

Bu Chris Bucholtz

Just today on the Focus Blog I wrote about a great study TOA Technologies did gauging the experiences of customers waiting for installers/delivery people in the cable, telecommunications and satellite industries. Sadly, the numbers are exactly what you’d expect: many people feel that the companies they buy these services from really couldn’t give two figs about their time.

Waiting for the “cable guy” is a weirdly anachronistic activity that all too many of us have to engage in. The numbers in the survey show that 82 percent of us wait for at least a day a year, while 63 percent wait two days or more. When you consider that this amounts to you trading in your scarce vacation days for the honor of sitting and waiting (and hoping the technician shows up and is able to fix the problem), this is something people should - and do - take very personally.

I know I do. Here’s my story: I live in sleepy Alameda, a town of about 40,000 on an island just west of Oakland, California. Until earlier this year, we had our own dumpy little cable company, which was taken over by Comcast, whose first moves were to raise the prices, drop several channels from the package I had, and then restrict our Internet bandwidth (a nugget I pulled out of a technician who came to investigate my complaints and solved them by adjusting the amount of signal from a control box down the street). They also air commercials all over local TV incessantly, so I guess we know where their customer efforts are focused (new customer acquisition).

Comcast didn’t get to where it is by being dumb. By that I do not mean dumb about customer relationships. I mean dumb about doing what’s best for Comcast. The company decided to make half our basic channels digital (for reasons I have yet to hear explained very well). In order to see all the channels you’re being gouged for, the subscriber needs to hook up a converter and an additional box to his televisions – all of them – and use a new remote control. Toward that end, Comcast sent me two very large boxes filled with converters, remote units, cables, and many, many booklets.

So, instead of having to wait on a technician, I get to take a half a day to assemble this collection of stuff – pull out the TV, screw and unscrew multiple wires into multiple boxes, then call to activate them – just so I can continue to get what I’m paying for. Well, that sure beats a technician’s visit! I mean, from Comcast’s point of view. They could save a fortune if they could get the customers to do all their own field support!

From my point of view – y’know, that of the customer – it’s a massive pain. I look at the pile of devices that right now take up most of my dining room table and I can only imagine what this mound of technology looks like to an older, less tech-savvy person. Any money Comcast is saving by having all its customers go DIY is going to be eaten up by calls to the call center, and the result is not going to be happier customers.

I know Comcast’s Frank Eliason is a real social CRM guru (in fact, he’s a Rock Star of Social CRM!), but the stuff I and other subscribers suffer through is not going to be solved by some responsive Twittering. This is CRM sub-1.0 stuff – don’t make it hard for people to use your products and services. Companies do this by failing to create customer-centric processes and instead basing all decisions on what’s best for the company.

The one thing Comcast could have done to make this more palatable would have been to encase my mandatory new remote in that Nerf material. Then I could have thrown it at the TV every time I see a Comcast commercial.