Five Customer Service Lessons From Today's Viral Comcast Call
English: Comcast service van, Ypsilanti Township, Michigan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)The epically awkward Comcast 'client retention' call that tech writer Ryan Block recently recorded is the customer service outrage du jour, to the extent that I doubt I even need to post a link. (Here goes, anyway.)
I've been asked to give expert customer service commentary on the Comcast call a couple times already today. Most recently, the interviewer seemed clearly disappointed when I wouldn't lay into Comcast as being the worst thing on earth.
So, let me clarify here: The performance of the comcast telephone representative (and his quote unquote managers who enabled his behavior) was about the worst thing on earth, at least as far as first world customer service problems go. Embarrassing for all concerned. But the lessons to be learned for those of us in business aren't 'Wow our company's so much better than that; something like that could never happen here,' nor are they along the lines of 'Of course this happened at Comcast, they're terrible in everything they do.'
Let's look at the specific customer service lessons to be learned here that lead to that overall understanding. 1 An organization like Comcast needs to do absolutely everything it can to strive for cohesion. Comcast is a large, very complex organization, made of a variety of employee divisions and contracting companies. There is nothing wrong with using contractors, if and only if they are trained and held to the same standards as the home company (and, as an aside, if you're not doing this to skirt labor laws or otherwise exploint employees). But with Comcast, my experience is the standards are rather all over the place. [Note: by 'all over the place' I mean sometimes they're fabulous beyond my expecations. Including repairmen -- and most recently a repairwoman -- who really know their stuff, wear their little booties to not track dirt in the house, and show up on time, though admittedly 'on time' can mean hour 3.75 in a 4 hour window due to that fun Comcast practice..]
Failing to train subcontractors to appropriate standards, while terribly harmful to a corporate reputation, is hardly unusual. I have secret shopped four star and five star (more than one, by the way) hotels where the overall experience was destroyed - destroyed! - by the haphazardly hired, terribly trained subcontracted valets. Great way to make your first, and last, impression when you're getting everything right within the hotel doors. By contrast, have you ever used the curbside checkin at Southwest? Those men and women are so fabulous that they seem like actual Southwest Airlines employees. Yet they are subcontracted. The secret is that they are trained in Southwest procedures, expectations, and goals. Trained and retrained.
2 Incentives get twisted. The gent on the phone for Comcast was obviously incentivized to retain this customer. Overly incentivized. Now, I don't know that it was a financial incentive that pushed him over the edge. It may have been, it may have been fear of losing his job. Or, it may have been an entirely different type of incentive, no less powerful: An understanding (probably a misunderstanding) that this was what was expected of him.
3 Teach your people - even your 'retention experts' - to be good losers. Customer service, and business in generaly, are often about living to fight (or, in this case serve) another day. Restaurants know this-just because you look at the menu, peek through the window, and walk on doesn't mean you won't be back. But you certainly won't be back if the manager runs out the door and follows you down the block asking you to state your reasons for not dining with him. (Which-and then some-is what the 'client retention expert' at Comcast did.)
4. Give your customers multiple channels to reach you- and make it clear you actually want to hear from them. Now, Comcast, to its credit, has done this. You can reach them and quite speedily via @comcastcares (thanks @comcastmike and @comcastdave ). I suspect the veteran tech writer who had the severe pleasure of recording this ridiculous call actually knew that, but proceeded with the call for the edification of all. Which is fine. But better for the rest of us, without 18 minutes to spare, that Comcast offers these end runs when we desperately need another way to reach them. You should do the same. For when the train is going off the rails.
<em><a title='Micah Solomon' href='http://ift.tt/YXQboF'>Micah</a><a title='Micah Solomon' href='http://ift.tt/YXQboF'><em> So</em>lomon</a> is a customer </em><em>service consultant, customer experience speaker, and bestselling author. </em>
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