A call to Comcast’s customer service last week went viral, as a customer who also happens to be a well-known tech blogger recorded the call with a Comcast employee, who tried to do everything humanly possible to prevent a service cancellation. Comcast is apparently very sorry about the incident, and the company published a memo in The Consumerist, where the company’s COO Dave Watson tried to explain the company’s side of the story.
In short, Comcast is annoyed at how it all went – and it’s probably even more annoyed the call was recorded in the first place – but that doesn’t mean it’ll stop trying to prevent service cancellations in the future. It’ll just do it in a different, more respectful way.
In other words, don’t expect Comcast to give up on you that easily.
While acknowledging that the call did not go too well for Comcast, Watson also said that, ultimately, the care representative did what he was trained to do, which is to save a subscriber.
“It was painful to listen to this call, and I am not surprised that we have been criticized for it,” Watson said. “Respecting our customers is fundamental, and we fell short in this instance. I know these Retention calls are tough, and I have tremendous admiration for our Retention professionals, who make it easy for customers to choose to stay with Comcast. We have a Retention queue because we believe in our products, and because we offer a great value when customers have the right facts to choose the package that works best for them. If a customer is not fully aware of what the product offers, we ask the Retention agent to educate the customer and work with them to find the right solution.”
He continued, “The agent on this call did a lot of what we trained him and paid him—and thousands of other Retention agents—to do. He tried to save a customer, and that’s important, but the act of saving a customer must always be handled with the utmost respect. This situation has caused us to reexamine how we do some things to make sure that each and every one of us—from leadership to the front line—understands the balance between selling and listening. And that a great sales organization always listens to the customer, first and foremost.”
Comcast’s customer service isn’t exactly something the company should be proud of anyway, regardless of whether such customer care calls get viral or not, as its own employees can attest.
The full memo is available at the source link below.
