The ongoing Comcast saga

I blogged and tweeted about issues with Comcast and Vonage. Comcast responded via twitter, tested my line, found a problem, and said they needed to get a tech out. When the tech called, he tried to sell me Comcast voice service instead.

So now you’re all caught up.

Frank Eliason (@comcastcares on Twitter) followed up on the issue and found the rep that called had a different story. You don’t say. My notes—typos and all—from all my calls with Comcast thus far are after the jump below.

Frank managed to get someone to call me back. It was the same guy who had called that morning and tried to get me to switch to Comcast Voice. This time, however, he was much more professional and simply arranged an appointment. A Comcast tech would be at my house this morning between 8am and 10am. Al the Comcast rep told me that they’d be calling in the morning to confirm and that I needed to answer the call or they wouldn’t come.

At 8:30, caller ID announced an incoming call from 866-Comcast. I answered on the second ring and was greeted with the click of the caller hanging up. At 10am I tweeted my disappointment.

Within minutes, I had a reply from @comcastbill offering to look into the problem. Nice, they’re monitoring Twitter for mentions of Comcast. An hour later, I’d still heard nothing from Comcast and left to run some errands. When I got back a little after 1pm, I sent a tweet to @comcastbill and asked what was going on.

Bill had earlier escalated to some managers, but this didn’t elicit any responses. So after my second inquiry, he emailed a Comcast VP. Within an hour, I had a call from the Comcast executive offices. They tracked down a tech and had someone at my house in under half an hour.

He’s outside right now installing a new cable. I still don’t know if the changes will solve my Vonage issues, but at least they’re working on it.

Tara recently pointed out how fantastic Twitter was at resolving a UPS problem. Through her Twitter network she was indirectly connected to a UPS VP and they completely solved her problem.

That’s sort of what happened here, too, and it’s great that Comcast has someone watching for these sorts of problems and working to resolve them. But it can’t scale. There’s no way that a couple of individuals at Comcast can possibly resolve every issue. And the fact that they had to escalate to a VP to get a problem resolved points to another scaling issue.

Not everyone knows a startup CEO that happens to have lunch with a UPS VP like Tara did. Not everyone is going to know that tweeting @comcastcares will connect them to Frank. These companies need to improve their regular communication channels and train, educate, and empower their customer service agents to resolve customer issues without having to get a VP involved.

All this service via social media is very cool. Forward thinking early adopters heading off problems using social media can only go so far if the execution on the ground is shoddy.

Incidentally, I wonder if @comcastcares and @comcastbill were hired by Comcast as social media customer service or if they simply showed some initiative and did it on their own?

Update The tech that came over left his cell phone number in case more problems arise. Syed from the executive office called back about an hour after the tech left to check and make sure he’d come by. Syed also left me his number in case I need it. And Frank (@comcastcares) tweeted to make sure I was being taken care of. Frank’s on vacation, but is following Twitter anyway.