How is it possible that Comcast’s customer service is so relentlessly terrible? Hint: It’s not because it’s hired a disproportionate number of people who are psychotic. If you look at reviews of Comcast on Glassdoor, we can see that even current and former employees of the company think it does an absolutely terrible job of delivering quality customer service. What their reviews basically boil down to is that Comcast doesn’t offer enough resources or training to its staff to prepare them to deliver quality service and it puts too much emphasis on trying to upsell customers on more expensive service bundles at all costs rather than addressing needs and concerns.
Here are some of the highlights:
- “Comcast is too big for its own good,” writes one current Comcast direct sales representative. “The right hand does not know what the left hand is doing… Even though are [sic] sales channel is paid generously, the same cannot be said of other departments which could lead to low employee morale and performance. This explains why Comcast consistently ranks on the bottom of JD Power customer service rankings for telecom providers.”
- “Customer service is a joke,” writes a current Comcast sales supervisor. “I deal with customers everyday who say the exact same thing — call center support is of very little help. If you don’t know someone local to help you, you’re out of luck. If you’re a customer and was told you’d be getting a call within 24hrs to resolve your issue, forget it! “
- “So much of customer service has been outsourced, both in and out of country, that the customer frustration factor has increased exponentially,” writes a current administration support specialist. “Management needs to realize that you get what you pay for.”
- “The company talks big about improving customer service but requires employees to force sales down the throats of customers and makes it very difficult to actually help/satisfy customers,” writes a current sales consultant.”
- “Treats customers and employees like garbage,” writes a former customer service rep. “After working in theCustomer Service Center, I will never subscribe to Comcast even if it is the only thing available.”
You get the idea.
While it’s not unusual to have angry current and former employees complain about their companies on Glassdoor, we should note that Glassdoor has found that “customer service” is the No. 1 factor that employees listed as a negative aspect of their jobs. Couple this with the torrent of surveys we’ve seen showing that Comcast and would-be merger partner Time Warner Cable have the lowest customer satisfaction ratings of any companies in the U.S., and we can see that Comcast has a serious problem that isn’t relegated to one “rogue” customer service representative.
Additionally, after writing about the infamous Ryan Block-Comcast call on Tuesday, we’ve been contacted by other former Comcast employees who have similarly said that the company’s customer service apparatus is horribly disorganized and puts its emphasis much more on retaining customers and on pushing them to buy services they don’t want than on helping them. We’re sure that we’ll have many more such stories to share with you in the coming days.
