It's Getting Better

Today Dish Network announced it’s 2nd quarter numbers. To me the numbers were not all that surprising. My take is if your looking at the drop in revenue you can see that the money was going from Dish Network to Dish’s cousin Echostar. Dish Network stock price has shot up on todays news.

After reading the numbers I then dialed in to the Dish Networks 2nd quarter earnings confrence call to listen to what the Dish guys would have to say about the last quarter.

The talked about how things were looking up and how they feel they gained ground because of the digital transition, the smart card swap and the new marketing.

While everyone knows my feelings on Dish Network’s marketing department, I do agree with them on one thing that we hardly talk about here in the Satellite Dish and that is Dish Network’s customer service.

They noted on the call how much progress they have made in the customer service area and I said back and thought about it for a few moments and said my god they are correct!

At one time Dish Network had the best customer service anywhere, in fact they won the JD Powers award for customer service a few times, then one day something happened the world class customer service seemed to be gone, calls going to friendly us based operators were now being answered outside the country. It was obvious that for many of these operators that English was not their primary language.

Since moving over to foreign-based CSR’s the online forums started filling up with customers upset with Dish Networks new support system.

I can remember a few times on these earnings calls where Dish Network CEO said that improvements needed to be made to their customer service.

Sometimes trying to save money might cost you more in the long run and I believe that this was the case here.

Gradually over time, Dish Networks customer service has indeed gotten better, so much better that a majority of the calls answered by Dish Network are now being answered here in the United States. And in a change Dish Network CSR’s are spending more time on the phones helping to educate their customers.

I have dealt with Dish Network customer service a few times over the past few weeks and after each session I was happy with the way things went. I honestly never gave it a thought about how much things have improved.

It wasn’t until they talked about how much they improved their customer service on today’s earnings call did I really think about it, and now that I think about it they are right customer service has improved at Dish Network.

While its not up to the level to win them the JD Powers award again, they are getting really close and if things keep improving like they are that award will be theirs again in the near future.