Cable Systems With Great Customer Service!

Enough cable trivia. Enough channel line-up oddities. Get real. Any cable companies whose customer service doesn't suck? An actual person (consistently) answers the phone in 30 seconds or less. No voice menus. They show up when they say they will; no all day or half-day appointment windows. No arm twisting when you call to cancel. No foreign call centers.

"We're sorry, but Diogenes and his lamp are not available right now. But your call is important to us. A representative will be with you in...one hundred...and...forty...seven...minutes. Please continue to hold."

I don't think there will be too many posts to this thread.

I can only speculate why lousy customer service is so endemic with cable companies. San Francisco has had horrid cable customer service for decades, starting with Viacom, which was bought out by TCI which was bought out by AT&T, which was bought out by Comcast.

Viacom was by far the worst - the rudeness of their staff was like nothing I have experienced, before or since. TCI customer service was a big improvement over Viacom, but still spotty. Believe it or not, Comcast has been the best, by far.

Time Warner has always done pretty much what they said they would. After installation, I only needed someone to come to my house once. I think the man may have been a little late, but what he had to do with me took a long time. Then he found out he only had to do it if I wanted the shopping channel, the community college channel and the religious channel. I didn't. TiVo told me the wrong information. They also said everyone was going digital. Not true. I didn't have to upgrade.

After a storm there was some damage not repaired and I wanted to see if this would affect anything. My service was fine but I was concerned about the tennis racket on their line. There may be a name for it other than that but that's what it looks like to me. Each time the man showed up quickly. The second time I had to make sure, since nothing was done, that I showed him what ppeard to be wrong. He seemed to think it was fine.

Now last week I was told I wouldn't get anyone to come to my house until Monday, even though it was Thursday. My mistake was in not checking each channel before calling. The fact that I had no sound when i first turned on the TV was irrelevant. Changing channels is harder with TiVo but I should nhave just done it. And every channel had sound. Had I done this first, i wouldn't have had to call. I was able to cancel the man who was coming on Monday.

What gets on my nerves is the fake emotion from the automation.

FredLeonard said:

Enough cable trivia. Enough channel line-up oddities. Get real.

Click to expand...

Agree with all of the above. Now to my answer.

When I was with Comcast, I was impressed that they had a LOCAL (not 800) number that I could call for service. Yeah, I usually had to go through the "press 1, press 2" bit, but I was impressed that I could talk to someone right here in Nashville. The problem for me was that I was an internet-ONLY customer, and their rates for internet were going up for those who were NOT bundling internet with cable. I did not want cable, so that did not impress me. Furthermore, I was on a tight budget at the time, and cable represented a luxury that I really did not need.

What is DirecTV like these days? I was always pleased with their service. Somebody answered promptly and they always took care of whatever the issue was. I haven't been a subscriber there for several years (thanks to a neighbor's tree between me and their satellite). Are they still good.

Comcast is OK. Takes a while to reach someone but when I did they took care of things. I dropped Verizon because they were terrible. Thirty to 45 minutes to get somebody. They usually didn't speak English well. And it took repeat calls to get a result. Sad because when they were Bell Atlantic and Nynex, they were excellent.

I have DirecTV, and although they have the automated voice system that all these companies have today (and I personally can't stand), I've always had pleasant experiences with them. The wait times aren't unusually long (I believe the most I've waited on a phone call was five minutes), and the customer service reps are very friendly and professional. As far as any service appointments, they've pretty much been on time each time they've had to visit my home.

In-between stints with DirecTV, I also had Time Warner Cable...I also haven't had too many bad experiences with them, although I do wish that their quality of service could be a bit better (TV recievers, occasional internet outages, and so on).

Arugably, the most irritating customer service I ever had to deal with, as far as TV and/or internet, was with Clear internet (which is now owned by Sprint). The internet speeds are okay, but you have to live an area in which they have cell towers; I couldn't use them at my previous residence because I was out of range of their towers. As far as their customer service...there's a reason why I despise outsource--service reps who can barely speak English, and are clearly reading from a script. It's nothing at all personal towards those folks...I just prefer to have someone who lives in my own country who can provide the service needs I desire. I'm looking for another internet provider (maybe going back to TWC is a strong option), because I can't continue to pay $55 a month for mediocre service (and I was paying $50 monthly for Clear prior to Sprint officially taking over).

My family has never really had any problems with Charter and their triple play service. In fact, my mom switched her business phones from AT&T to Charter recently. A neat thing is that the caller ID shows up on the TV if the phone rings while the TV is on.

Reading these responses, it's clear that too many people settle for merely adequate customer service, and consider that "great". "Great Customer Service" describes excellent, superlative service, above and beyond all average expectations. It's a sad commentary on how low the entire industry has sunk that merely doing the minimum expectations is thought of as "great".

For truly "great" customer service, the phone would have to be answered by a real live human being after no more than four rings. The answering phone would also use caller ID to link to the customer's service account in the companies computer so that the person answering the call would know who was calling. In the event the customer was calling from a different phone, the service rep should be able to quickly and painlessly access the customer's account data. If it's a troubleshooting call, the service rep should be able to handle most common problems, or to bring a tech support rep into a conference call before bailing out of the conversation. For calls about onsite service calls, the customer service rep should have real-time information about the field service reps location and workload. For issues about billing, the customer service rep needs to have all information available. And for calls about special promotional rates, no cable company should ever offer any sort of special rate packages for new customers that aren't also available for their existing customers.

I'm not aware of any cable (or cell phone or other similar industry) company that comes even remotely close to that ideal.

Avid Listener said:

For truly "great" customer service, the phone would have to be answered by a real live human being after no more than four rings.

Click to expand...

With the millions of cable subscribers out there I can't even begin to imagine how much it would cost a company to support that level of service. They would need to have hundreds of CS reps on standby at every moment. Then everyone would be complaining about how much higher their rates are. And as much as you may hate automated answering systems, that helps to facilitate getting you to the correct person. You seem to suggest that whoever answers the phone is going to have all the answers from billing, to tech support, and everything else. That simply is not realistic.

ansky212 said:

With the millions of cable subscribers out there I can't even begin to imagine how much it would cost a company to support that level of service. They would need to have hundreds of CS reps on standby at every moment. Then everyone would be complaining about how much higher their rates are. And as much as you may hate automated answering systems, that helps to facilitate getting you to the correct person. You seem to suggest that whoever answers the phone is going to have all the answers from billing, to tech support, and everything else. That simply is not realistic.

Click to expand...

Realistic or not, that is what it takes for customer service to be "great". If you want a list of "Cable Systems With Great Customer Service!", great customer service has to be defined. If, for the reasons you state, providing great customer service isn't possible, then the list of "Cable Systems With Great Customer Service!" is not going to have anything on it! I you want to say something is unrealistic, what it unrealistic is to expect any cable system to have great customer service.

Words have meaning. "Great" is a superlative description. It cheapens the language to water it down to describe something that is, at best slightly about average.

ansky212 said:

With the millions of cable subscribers out there I can't even begin to imagine how much it would cost a company to support that level of service. They would need to have hundreds of CS reps on standby at every moment. Then everyone would be complaining about how much higher their rates are. And as much as you may hate automated answering systems, that helps to facilitate getting you to the correct person. You seem to suggest that whoever answers the phone is going to have all the answers from billing, to tech support, and everything else. That simply is not realistic.

Click to expand...

This why cable companies and companies in other industries get away with terrible service: People no just willing to put up with it but willing to excuse it. Yet, some companies do provide great service in their fields. Many of the old line US department stores were noted for it. A few companies like Zebo are today. Japan, Inc. is slavish about quality (thanks to an American, W. Edwards Deming, whose work is ignored by US B-school types).

Rich people rigged the game in their favor. It's called "capitalism" because the people who come up with capital are the only ones who matter. Public be damned. Worker be damned. Product safety be damned. Environment be damned.

It's amazing how some working class people are so interested in making sure elites keep getting richer. The Roberts' need to buy another cable company, network or movie studio, or put up another skyscraper. Same people who scream about welfare look the other way are indifferent to corporations that avoid taxes and still get refunds.

And the disease spreads. You call your doctor's office and you get voice menus and the exact same message as you wait on hold, "All our agents are assisting other customers." Agents, in a medical office?