Comcast's customer satisfaction leaps
The Twittering for customer troubles, little cards apologizing for missed appointments, and discounted bills for lost TV service are paying dividends for Comcast Corp.
The Twittering for customer troubles, little cards apologizing for missed appointments, and discounted bills for lost TV service are paying dividends for Comcast Corp.
The American Customer Satisfaction Index, a nightmare for Comcast in recent years, shows a surprising surge in customer satisfaction for the cable giant. The new annual results are being released today.
"It's a huge jump. We rarely see big moves like that. But of course it's coming from a low base," said Claus Fornell, the director of the study and a professor at the business school at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The university's influential study questions 80,000 people on products and services.
Comcast remains near the bottom of the cable-satellite group with an overall satisfaction rating of 59. But that rating was up from 54 in 2008. The highest rating is 100. When a rating drops into the 40s, Fornell said, customers stop buying the company's products or services.
A national story
Comcast's 2009 rating ties Time Warner Cable Inc.'s and is significantly higher than Charter Communications Inc.'s rating.
The heavily indebted Charter, a cable company, filed for protection from creditors in Bankruptcy Court this year. Charter's rating was 51.
DirecTV Group Inc., a provider of satellite TV, with 18 million customers, has the highest rating in the category - 71.
Comcast's customer-service problems became a national story when discontented customers took matters into their own hands with Web sites, such as Comcastmustdie.com, and other actions. An elderly Virginia woman busted numerous items in a Comcast office with a hammer in 2007 because she could not get her phone problem fixed.
'Making a difference'
The Philadelphia company has invested in improving its network reliability, hired thousands of customer-service representatives, and now even monitors the Internet for people chatting about trouble with their Comcast service. One of the monitored Internet sites is Twitter, a social-networking application.
If a Comcast cable guy misses an appointment, the company offers the customer a $20 credit.
"It's early, but we hope the improvements we see are an indication that our efforts are making a difference," said D'Arcy Rudnay, senior vice president.