Here Is Comcast’s 10-Point Action Plan For Winning Over Customers

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The full Comcast Customer Experience Action Plan is at the bottom of this post.

For years, Comcast’s plan to win over customers was to do absolutely nothing because they — just like most cable companies — were the only choice. But with its pay-TV subscriber numbers dropping, the company is realizing that can indeed lose customers by treating them horribly. In an e-mail obtained by Consumerist, Comcast leadership has outlined its optimistic plan to win back all those customers who hate being residents of Kabletown.

“As a company, we haven’t always put the customer first and we need to do a better job,” reads the e-mail sent out to employees by Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit. “We need to look at everything we do through a customer lens.”

Smit then goes on to outline the plan — hiring most customer service staff; opening new call centers — we wrote about earlier, before reading the minds of just about every single person seeing this e-mail:

“There are a lot of skeptics who don’t believe we can do this,” he writes. “Impressions are lasting and it’s going to take time and proof to change their minds.”

At the same time as that e-mail went out, Comcast shared with employees its 10-point Customer Experience Action Plan. You can read the whole thing below, but here are some of the more salient points:

4. Being on Time, Every Time
As mentioned in the earlier story about Comcast’s customer service turnaround plans, if a Comcast tech is late for an appointment, the customer’s account will be credited $20. The company’s goal is to “always be on time” by the third quarter of this year. Comcast says it will be hiring hundreds of new techs and bringing its dispatch operations in-house, rather than relying on various subcontracted services.

5. Get it Right the First Time
No one likes calling customer service, and the dislike only grows when you get passed from rep to rep before (maybe) finding someone who can resolve your issue. Comcast says it is going to try to minimize call transfers and seek higher rates of “first call resolution.” Techs will also be performing Home Integrity Checks before leaving a house to hopefully catch any errors that might lead to someone having to come back.

6. Keeping Bills Simple and Transparent
“We are simplifying our pricing and making it more consistent across the company,” reads the plan, which says that bills will be completely redesigned for 2016 to “make them simpler and clearer.”

Comcast says it will also be giving receipts for all orders and returned equipment so that there should always be a paper trail when there’s a dispute.

8. Rethinking Policies & Fees
“We are reassessing all of our policies and fees and getting rid of ones that customers find particularly frustrating,” reads the plan, “like change of service and equipment return charges.”

10. Keeping Score
We’ve long heard from Comcast employees and contractors that the level of their success was based on things that had nothing to do with providing good service, but on metrics like how quickly the call was ended or how much you were able to upsell a customer on add-on products and services. Comcast now says that its employee scoring will measure “performance based on customer satisfaction.”

Here’s the full list crafted by Comcast:

by Chris Morran via Consumerist