

Comcast training materials require a "sell" phase, even in support calls - hashx
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/leaked-comcast-employee-metrics-show-what-we-figured-sell-or-perish/

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joekrill
I'm not sure you could have ever called Comcast support and not been aware of
this. It's quite obvious. And I'm not entirely sure it's even all that
interesting. Plenty of companies do this sort of thing. I've had a credit card
company pressure me to buy some additional protection services when I called
to activate my card. Just the other day I was chatting with an Adobe support
person because I had a question about licensing, and they were absolutely
incessant about getting me to buy something right then and there. I don't
think this is really some scandalous thing that they're doing. Don't get me
wrong -- Comcast is a pretty horrible company. But I just don't see this as
being some outrageously over-the-top thing they are guilty of.

~~~
mikeash
It all depends on the details. Bringing up possible additional services as
part of a support call is fine. If done well, it can be a good thing for both
sides. Maybe you actually _do_ need additional services, after all. However,
it needs to be brief, to the point, and they need to immediately take "no" for
an answer. If Comcast is excessively pushy and isn't actually trying to help
you by getting you additional services you actually want, that would be bad.
The article doesn't contain enough detail to know which category it falls
into.

~~~
Natsu
It's very pushy and obnoxious, but it's also well known, so I agree that this
is quite a non-story as far as that goes.

My worst experience with an ISP, though, is Megapath. They used to be
Speakeasy which had absolutely incredible techs once upon a time.

Once bought out, it was slowly ruined. When trying to cancel, they "lost" my
cancellation and the cancel web form (the only way they accepted
cancellations) mysteriously failed to work until I was on the phone with a
supervisor. Only the fact that the expiration date on my card had changed gave
me enough leverage to finally force them to cancel, as I pointed out that I
would not authorize any charges until I had absolute confirmation that I was
cancelled.

~~~
mikeash
Note that a company can't dictate the way in which you communicate with them,
although they might pretend to.

Send them a certified letter saying you're canceling their service. If they
charge you after that, it's fraudulent. Since you sent it certified, you have
proof. If they don't listen to _that_ (which they probably will), let your
card company to reverse the charges, or take them to court, or whatever.

Not that this helps you with your old ISP, but if it comes up again....

~~~
Natsu
Yeah, looking back I should have kept better documentation and they knew to
call me on it, so I used the threat of not letting them charge me (as the
card's expiration had changed) to get out.

If I knew to expect shenanigans like that, I would have played it differently,
but they had always been good to me prior to that, so it blindsided me. I was
only leaving because their DSL offering was no longer remotely competitive and
I had already kept it longer than made sense. They simply didn't have a
product to offer me at that point.

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exhilaration
Very much worth reading for the magic phrase that will stop the upselling:

 _There are a few things customers can do, per the document, to avoid the
sales plays: one of them is to flat-out instruct the agent to not attempt to
sell you services. "Customer volunteers a 'Don’t sell to me' statement" is
explicitly listed under the section titled "Transition to Offer is Not
Applicable in the Following Scenarios."_

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dchuk
I'm assuming AT&T has this exact same protocol, because a few weeks ago I
called them to get my modem fixed because our internet was down for a day and
after talking for 45 minutes and assuring them that yes, I have reset the damn
modem, the customer service person tried to sell me more channels on my TV
service. Which was hilarious because I don't have TV service with them
anymore, only internet.

I let him know that it's not appropriate to try and upsell someone on a
support call, when the customer's current services aren't even working, much
less trying to sell them an upgrade on something the customer doesn't have in
the first place.

Pretty amazing how well they set their reps up for failure. A little bit of
training could go a long way, but I guess what's the incentive if most
customers are basically locked into specific service providers depending on
their address.

~~~
misingnoglic
Once I called AT&T for a support issue and they showed me how I could save
money on my bill and get more data by switching to a new family plan, that was
nice :)

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taber
My roommate was recently employed (he quit) at a Comcast branch south of San
Francisco. His responsibilities included helping customers with their
technical issues, but the only metric of his success was his ratio of sales to
customers seen. As a result, he was ranked lower than other employees who saw
less clients, solved less problems, but had more sales. I can't think of a
better way to discourage customer support and encourage up-selling.

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Klinky
The things most companies fail at when it comes to customer service are:

\- Effectively training employees to fully understand the product they are
supporting.

\- Enabling communication channels between departments that lead to timely
resolutions.

Often you're talking to someone who doesn't know how to fix your problem,
isn't sure why things are messed up, has to use a bunch of internal tools that
only partially work, may have to communicate with other departments who might
as well be black holes and then has to halfheartedly sell you products
unrelated to your call.

Companies should be using metrics to help guide decisions, but all too often
companies are working for metrics instead of having the metrics data work for
them them. Instead of diving deeper into the overall customer experience to
figure out if they're even measuring the right things, companies often focus
success on driving a narrow spectrum of metrics ever higher, at the cost of
everything else.

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chadgeidel
I worked tech support at Gateway (computers) for a short time in the 2001
timeframe. I quit when they based our bonuses on selling upgraded equipment to
customers.

Worst part? Most techs would _lie_ and tell the customer their blue
screen/crashing problems were because they didn't have enough memory (or
similar). Tech gets bonus for selling, I have to install the memory and
troubleshoot and fix _the actual problem_ , and I get dinged...

Comments to management of course went into the recycle bin.

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rdl
I hate services which require a phone call or other work to unsubscribe,
beyond other changes. There is some argument for higher level security
validation for certain service changes, but it shouldn't be done for revenue
protection reasons.

(I tend to let American Express cancel services for me if the site makes it
very difficult.)

