Comcast Empowers Customer-Care Crews

Listening to Front-Line Employees Leads to Bottom-Line Satisfaction Gains

By K.C. Neel -- Multichannel News, 7/12/2010 12:01:00 AM

Comcast, the biggest U.S. cable company, has had some well-publicized customer-service incidents in recent years: the YouTube video of a technician asleep on a customer’s couch and the ComcastMust- Die.com Web site stand out among them.

Company executives recognized improving Comcast ’s image and reality was a priority, and three years ago began a series of initiatives that continue today.

One was deploying new software — “Grand Slam” — that gave customer-service agents and field technicians the ability to recognize and diagnose problems in every device in the customer’s home. The software also lets technicians and customer-care agents determine whether the problem is isolated to one customer or is more widespread, enabling Comcast to fix a problem before more complaints roll in, senior director of corporate communications Jenni Moyer said.

Comcast also introduced a 30-day moneyback guarantee and gives customers a $20 rebate if a technician misses an appointment. If Comcast needs to roll a truck more than once to solve a problem, it provides an “appreciation credit” of three free months of a premium service of the customer’s choosing.

It’s also communicating with customers via social media outlets.

Cumulatively, the company’s efforts led ComcastMustDie.com to declare recently that the MSO “has finally seen the light.”

THE NEXT STEP
With infrastructure and customer-interface issues addressed, Comcast last year looked inward to employee training and empowerment, something other cable companies, including Insight Communications, have also realized (“Better Service Through Coaching,” June 21, 2010, page 28).

“We had a solid foundation and the tools in place to better serve our customers,” said Tina Waters, senior vice president of human performance, national customer operations. “We realized we needed to amp up our employee focus and training. We focused on our supervisors. Based on their input, we created MOSS — Make Our Supervisors Successful.” This program, introduced last fall as a pilot project in an undisclosed cable territory, gives supervisors of customer-care agents and technicians special training and a new focus as employee coaches.

Early results were encouraging, according to Donna Perkins, vice president of customercare operations. During the three-month trial that ran until the end of 2009, she said, escalation calls (when a customer asks to speak to a manager or supervisor) fell off by 33% and incremental sales picked up 10% in the region that included the MOSS territory.

MOSS is designed so that 60% to 70% of a supervisor’s time is dedicated to coaching and empowering front-line employees to be more successful, Waters said.

Supervisors undergo an extensive training process from Comcast University to better develop leadership and coaching skills, as well as expertise in time management.

“We have 20 regions, and it’s really important that senior leaders listen to their employees,” Waters said. MOSS, she said, “is a culture change, not a leadership program. We need open communication in both directions to make this work.”

Case in point: Front-line call-center staffers told Waters and her team they didn’t want to jump through a bunch of hoops or have to transfer a customer to another agent to solve a customer’s problem. They wanted the power to solve the problem themselves.

“That’s how the money-back guarantee and $20 credit were created,” Waters said. “They are empowering for both the CSRs and techs and the customers feel they are being taken care of.”

‘MOSS’ MOVES ON
Comcast is now methodically rolling MOSS out to the rest of its 20 regions around the country, following the three-month trial.

Waters said Comcast plans to introduce MOSS in eight regions this year, and in its remaining territories rest next year.

This article was corrected on July 12. The original version misidentified Tina Waters as Tina Powers.

COMCAST’S TAKE

COMCAST CITES SOME STATISTICAL EVIDENCE THAT ITS CUSTOMER-SERVICE EFFORTS ARE PAYING OFF.

• Its American Customer Satisfaction Index score improved 3.4% year-over-year in 2010, a second consecutive year of improvement. The score is up 13% since 2008.
• Its internal surveys say 80% of customers report the company resolved the issue on the first call and 94% report a technician arrived on time when one was needed.
• Its internal surveys say customer satisfaction is at least 12 percentage points higher for customers who are aware of the Customer Guarantee as compared with those who are unaware of it.
• Its internal surveys say customer satisfaction is at least 20 percentage points higher for customers who have received a credit under the guarantee.