New CSRs at Comcast's Woodbridge, Ill. customer service center go through eleven weeks of training before they're let loose on the public, but the job also requires people skills that are impossible to teach in a classroom.
Even with 11 weeks of training, there is a mind-numbing amount of information to learn, from price structures to technical support to basic human relations. But mostly I learned that taking customer service calls isn't as easy as it seems.
"Sometimes it's hard, but we're learning to just put ourselves in the customer's shoes," said Carla Woodson, a trainee who had transferred to the Woodridge facility after spending two years answering calls for Comcast in Peoria.
Woodson, 40, said she knows what some people think about customer service agents.
"There is a bad perception, and we're working to change it," she said.
She looked around the room at her 13 classmates, mostly young men and women, all seemingly bright and enthusiastic.
"We are your mother, your sister, your family," Woodson said. "We do care."
In the end, Yates learned what any experienced consumer warrior or former call center employee can tell you: if you have a bad experience, call back. Any call center has bad apples, but eventually, you might reach a competent person willing to help you.
So you think you can be a customer service agent? [Chicago Tribune] (Thanks, Mary!)
(Photo: cmorran123)
]]>I have posted a recent circular conversation I had with a Comcast Tech Support person. It went on & on for what seemed like hours, and I could tell from the start that it was going nowhere....
http://daisybrain.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/my-conversation-with-comcast/
]]>That said, you do raise a lot of valid points. The Call Centers are structured in a manner where the bottom-rung employees (the people who actually handle the calls) have all their hands tied in a manner where they simply can't fix a problem or get the information the customer (and the employee) needs.
Sure, I could walk you through what cable goes where, having you remove one of your three switches which all feed into computers acting as bridges to your Xbox which can't get online, I can walk you through your TCP/IP settings blindfolded to make sure you have it configured correctly.
When it came down to issues with a technician and his/her ETA I was completely and utterly worthless to you. Why? Because it's *designed* for me to be useless. If I call over to a "supervisor" to get an update on the tech's arrival (over half the people who are on the supervisor line aren't supervisors, BTW) before the appointment window closes I get the good ol' "have them call back later once we're late" line and a ding on my record. If I call over there when they are late I've already been yelled at by a customer upset that the tech isn't there and the last four calls didn't get her anywhere (thanks to the "supervisors").
On top of a flawed communication system, the vast majority of the people in the call center are completely worthless. They've either been there so long they're completely numb to getting yelled at and just don't care anymore or they're too young and naturally don't give a rat's ass about things.
Once I was formally out of training within a week I had people who had been around for years coming to me for help with problems regarding customer problems. I was stunned that they'd be coming to the new guy for help, generally it's the exact opposite.
A place like Comcast is absolute hell to anyone actually qualified to work there and also has a sense of self-worth.
Are there worse places to work for? I'm sure there are, somewhere. All I know is that when I gave them my notice I had not one but two true supervisors ask me repeatedly to stay, and those same supervisors usually encouraged people to quit immediately without notice, escorted people to the door, and slammed it in the former employee's face. So, I figure I must have done something right in my time there. Too bad for them they offered zero reason for me to stay.
]]>Just ask for credit towards services not rendered due to them NOT fixing the stated problem. Wagons circle and excuses fly. My favorite: Unless a tech is sent we cannot confirm your outage! HEY FOOL we called you and replaced FOUR modems! None worked.
HOWEVER wiggling the wire on the pole out front would get signal. Perhaps it was that crack job the installer did with the electrical tape on the pole holding the wire up? Maybe after 8 years it came loose? Broke the mount at the repeater from the wind whipping the wire around? Funny how fixing that ended the problems.
How did I as a customer get it finally fixed? I had to stand outside with a 200ft extension cord with THEIR modem plugged directly into the splitter at the base of the pole. The conversation went: "yes its plugged in, no the computer isnt having a problem, no its directly into the line at the base of the pole, no the wiring in the house cannot be at fault as there is not house involved, no really Im right here at the pole. oh let me wiggle the wire, oh you see it now let me wiggle it oh its gone go figure."
After 3 months they finally sent a line tech. I can even send pictures of the other Bright orange cable they had coiled up in the field down the street that they forgot to bury for 7 years. (Its coiled up and hung on the pole now.)
Fios cannot come fast enough to the neighborhood. And no we did not get a credit for the lack of service over a 3 month period, We felt Comcastic about it.
]]>Citibank was the worst. Janus was the least bad. But they all suck. Do well in school girls and boys or wind up in a sucky call center job!
DOWn, baby, DOWn!
]]>You'd be amazed at out how ineffective talking to a supervisor is, in terms of getting an agent in trouble. The most that I have seen happen to an agent is that their supervisor talks to them, tells them to be nicer, and puts a little comment in their personal file. There are people working there who get many complaints per day.
]]>Again, it is most likely that an outage has not staged in the reporting tools used by the agents. There really isn't anything they can do at that point in time. The way the outage tool works is this - customer calls in, agent fills out a ticket going down a specific line of questioning. Once enough tickets in that LOQ are submitted, an automatic outage is staged. If not enough people call in, it is up to the engineering department to determine if there is an outage or not. The agent has almost 0 control over this issue because they are unable to communicate with the engineering department.
]]>Indeed this can be the case if you are not an experienced customer service agent. I worked as a professional phone operator for over 14 years until last year when my company downsized. What people don't realize when you go into the job of a phone operator is that you cannot gauge the customer's mood or intent easily over the phone at first. You can have a customer totally firm with you on the phone, but really in a good mood. You can mistake that for an angry customer. Or, you can have a customer speaking fast on the phone and mistake that for them being in a hurry, rather it is because they are from a part of their region that speaks faster than most.
As CSR's you are trained to smile when you talk on the phone, as the "Smile shows in your voice." Some of us would actually have a mirror and we would smile into the mirror when talking. I never did that, but found it to be the most effective method for some people and winning customers in sales and/or customer resolution. For me, I found that being an ACTIVE LISTENER (I emphasized for a reason), and Addressing the customer's issue like it was my own personally, helped make the customer happy faster than giving a run around.
]]>And I am not at all doubting your anecdotes or anyone else's, but I am really beginning to wonder why I never have these problems with telcos or the cable companies on issues that seem to cast others into consumer pits of hell. I'm not an especially tactful person, I don't think I do anything other than go through the motions, I don't live in an area that would be known for its stellar work ethic. I honestly wish I knew why I don't have the drama everyone else does, because I'd love to share the "secret" with everyone else.
]]>no matter how many simpler ways you try to explain a problem, they don't listen. like with my brother having time warner cable internet and because they did not do a good job installing it, they have many splitters on the outside of the house which cant handle the NY weather and become rusty at around 2 months, they refuse to just redo the installation or use a splitter that wont rust out. and each call leads to a lot of wasted time of them blaming the connection problem on the users computer or browser settings. they don't understand if you explain to them that the problem happens around every 2 months and the fix is always the same and no matter what is done to the browser, it will not fix the problem.
then after hours on the phone, you finally get them to send someone to fix the problem, then when the person arrives, you explain the problem to them that the splitters rust out after around 2 months and if they can redo the installation to make it so the splitters are not exposed to the elements or at least use a better splitter and they only pretend to listen and just replace the splitters and then leave only to come back and replace them again
]]>True, except that a) we (Comcast customers) don't care, and b) to us, the agent *is* Comcast, so the agent becomes the target for complaints.
Increase the training to 11 weeks, 26 weeks, 52 weeks...it doesn't make a difference, if the agent can't *fix* our problem when we call. That the agent can't do so due to internal Comcast issues is an indictment of those internal problems, and should be an indicator of where Comcast should be investing resources -- not in some "feel-good" training classes that gloss over the real problems.
]]>Phone bullies gaming the system have no right to affect and ruin your personal real life at home, nor to ruin their employer's reputation.
]]>And that is EXACTLY what is wrong with customer service today. The "consultants" that make millions of dollars designing (and outsourcing) call centers with this race-to-the-bottom mentality shouldn't be paid millions of dollars, they should be in jail cells rotting.
The ASSumption that going the extra mile is not only undesirable but punishable is repugnant. So are the metrics nazis that judge an analyst simply by numbers and "beating the clock" percentages rather than being a smart technician who cares about the customer and really fixes things.
I know when I call or have a tech come over, I want them staying until it is FIXED. For them to tell me "sorry I have to disconnect you now" or "sorry I have to leave" when the problem is not fixed, not because they have to escalate, but because some stats nazi decided beating a clock is more important than serving me is a f*cking insult and a disgrace.
]]>So I waited 30 minutes before I clicked submit and guess what?
What to do? I'm sure this will suck another few hours of my day!
What is this, V for Vendetta?
]]>Twice in the last few years I've called their broadband tech support to let them know that I couldn't connect to the internet. Prior to calling I made all of the checks to make sure it wasn't on my end. and both times I've been told it's my equipment because, now get this, no one else has called in to complain. I asked, both times, didn't someone had to be the first to call, and why couldn't it be me? I never go an answer. As it turned out it was an outage both times.
How stupid can someone be if they can't realize that someone has to be the first to complain about an outage?
]]>@Laura Northrup: It's a special, refined kind of incompetence that takes Craptastic 11 weeks to teach.
]]>remember if a ISP can get you to pay 1 month of service and only provide you with 15 days of service, they make a lot more money than usual.
There are ways to give an ETR for an outage though, depending on the type of outage. If it is a simple node outage (the most common), those can generally be resolved between one to three hours. Also, the reporting tools that Comcast uses generally provide an ETR which is usually pretty spot on (+/- 1 hour).
If the outage is someone taking out a pole, sadly you are correct. Cable companies must wait for electric and then telephone companies to show up and resolve their issues before being allowed to do any work.
]]>To most of the responses here - It is not the agents fault.
Agents are constantly given mixed information, provided with very little support, and have limited access to utilities that have needed information. The techs you talk to can't provide you outage information if the people who work in engineering are slacking off (they constantly do, and fail to update outages, or provide any useful information to people at the bottom rung).
If an agent does not follow a set list of procedures (it's not really a script, but an outline for how they are supposed to structure a call) then they are dinged on performance. Even if you KNOW that resetting the modem is pointless, you must do it anyways or fear being written up.
As for issues with tech communication, floor agents are not allowed to call technicians. If they ask for a number to call them, they are told that it is not part of their job, and that they should fill out a form in an online tool (that is generally down, with no ETA). Agents can only go off what the tech told dispatch, who then only sometimes notes the work order, usually with abbreviations and jargon the agent has no idea how to decode.
As for agents blaming the customer for issues... That is what they are trained to do. Unless one of the near useless automated systems says it is a problem with the network, a node, or the headend, it couldn't possibly be (sarcasm!). Looking into an issue for a customer costs you valuable time which ends up reflecting very poorly during your performance review.
Yes, I will admit that there are horrible agents. I've known some of them, I've had to deal with their fuck ups. They don't get fired though. It's nearly impossible to get fired, unless you swear/scream at a customer, or happen to be constantly late. Hell, I know a few agents who violated federal law, and when their supervisors were informed of said issue, nothing happened.
I spent three years working for them, it was almost never fun.
]]>I called verizon to report the problem and the support worker did a "line test" which came back fine so they blamed the problem on my computer. it took hours each day to finally get someone on the phone who was willing to listen to the problem and transfer me to a manager who then transferred me to a "network specialist" who eventually set up a appointment for a worker to come out and fix the phone line in front of the house
one of my friends have comcast and he received a faulty modem (it seems that they don't give new stuff) the modem would never fully boot and sometimes it would not turn on at all. The support blamed the problem on his internet explorer settings and after a while on the phone of him then me talking on the phone to try to explain the problem as simply as possible to hopefully convey the meaning of faulty modem, nearly 2 hours later they were able to schedule a replacement
My brother has time warner cable internet because in his area, verizon fios is not available. every 2 months or so the cable connection fails because the splitters on the outside of the home completely rust out and each time they fail, it is hours on the phone trying to get them to understand that the web browser has nothing to do with a rusty splitter and it is a common problem.
I currently have verizon fios and have not had any problems yet but I am sure that when I do, I will end up spending hours on the phone.
]]>Most cable modems can be reset if they are online, if a rep asks you to pull the plug it's because the modem isn't online. I also know that Comcast has certain proactive monitoring solutions in place that can declare an outage within minutes of the drunk loser taking out the telephone pole. If no outage is declared, then STANDARD troubleshooting steps should apply. Many times there's MUCH more going on behind the scenes while the rep is walking you through clearing the cache.
If there's an outage, there not any way to give an ETR. Sorry, but there's not.
]]>@SBR249:
Well said. Not to mention the complete lack of relevance.
]]>I am also high suspicious of the "11 weeks" being training. I'm a utilities CSR and we're trained for only 6 weeks and when we finished we take a test or laid off if we fail. The test consists of knowing how to do everything from starting service & collections procedures (with Tariff knowledge) all the way to understanding how the grid works and such forth.
I doubt a cable company does 11 weeks of training for a csr, that just seems like way too much investment for what appears to be the results...
no matter what problem the user reports, be it a damaged cable line or a faulty modem, the problem is still the users computer and clearing the internet explorer history and cache will fix it and if it does not then blame it on the user not following your instructions properly.
The purpose of the first level of tech support is to get you off the phone, they will give you the run around, provide useless info and be very unhelpful in hopes of you giving up
remember if a ISP can get you to pay 1 month of service and only provide you with 15 days of service, they make a lot more money than usual.
]]>Why is there no CLTV HD? it can be in the csn+ HD slot to make it the same as CLTV SD that is shared with the part time CSN+ SD.
And why does CLTV have to shared with CSN+? why can't they have there own slots?
Why do need a full cable box at $5+/m to get CSN+ sd? when just need a DTA for csn sd?
Why is fox movie channel in the sports pack?
Why do some systems (but not all) in the area have speed in the sports pack? out side of chiagoland land on comcast it is in Analog / digital expanded basic?
Why is sci-fi in comcast digital preferred / classic?
out side of chiagoland land on comcast it is in Analog / digital expanded basic.
Why are the hd channels # just lumped in with the old analog to digal moved number channels (from a few years ago) with the ota sub channels as well. Why are not all the max, hbo, show, stars HD cahnnels # not next to each other? Other systems have there hd # better grouped. NFL Network sd and hd are right next to each other?
why does the web site list 285 as Comcast Info Channel HD the but the on screen guild lists it as csn+ HD?
csn+ hd is Comcast SportsNet Chicago + HD.
]]>1) "We don't know if there are any problems in your area",
2) "Let's reboot your cable modem", and
3) "I don't have access to that information"