For a long time, big cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable have had infamously bad customer service and yet it hasn’t hurt them because they’ve often had regional monopolies when it comes to delivering broadband services. That said, the recent backlash against Big Cable that culminated in the American government moving to block the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger has gotten cable companies to rethink the way they deal with their customers, as a new initiative from Time Warner Cable shows.
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In a post on its official blog this week, Time Warner Cable vowed to improve its customer service and stop acting like… well, like Time Warner Cable.
“We know how you feel about cable companies,” the company confesses in its open letter to subscribers. “We’ve seen where Time Warner Cable falls on customer satisfaction surveys and we know the ‘cable guy’ jokes by heart. We hear you loud and clear. We also know that your video, phone and Internet services are critical to your daily lives and deserve our highest investment and very best effort. So we’ve made some changes to get better.”
So what kinds of changes is Time Warner Cable talking about? Here is its official list:
• No More Waiting Around – We’re offering one-hour arrival windows. They’re available days, nights and weekends.
• The End of Long Hold Times – We’re answering your calls faster than ever before but if you have to wait, you can schedule an appointment to be called back on your schedule.
• Quick Service Response – If you lose service, we are committed to coming to your home same day or within 24 hours.
• No Need to Call – With our My TWC® App, you can pay your bill, online chat with us, check on your equipment performance and find WiFi hotspots around town.
• Better Products – We’re delivering improved products: Faster Internet speeds, more HD and On Demand programming, and local and cable channels streaming to all the devices in your home. We’re also investing in our overall system infrastructure to give you more service stability and fewer outages.
One-hour arrival windows are certainly nicer than waiting at your house for eight hours for a technician who may or may not ever show up. And hey, who could find fault with faster Internet speeds and more on-demand programming? We’re also going to assume that TWC’s new customer service improvement plan involves telling employees to stop changing customers’ names to vulgar slurs on their monthly bills, which will also be a nice change of pace.
The key, however, is whether TWC is really successful with this. We’ve all heard ex-significant others vow to change in the past, but whether they actually do so is another matter all together.
