Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Training Materials Leaked
WheezyJoe writes: The Verge reports on leaked training manuals from Comcast, which show how selling services is a required part of the job, even for employees doing tech support. The so-called "4S training material" explicitly states that 20 percent of a call center employee's rating for a given call is dependent on effectively selling the customer new Comcast services. "There are pages of materials on 'probing' customers to ferret out upsell opportunities, as well as on batting aside customer objections to being told they need to buy something. 'We can certainly look at other options, but you would lose which you mentioned was important to you,' the guide suggests clumsily saying to an angry customer who doesn't want to buy any more Comcast services." Images of the leaked documents are available on the Verge, making for fun reading.
... for pirating their upsell "do you want fries with that."
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The grabbing hands, grab all they can...
Why is this a surprise? Or even 'newsworthy' on slashdot? This is just good business. When I go to a store, any store, they try and sell me more stuff. Ask me if I found everything I need. Have I tried this new brand of drink? When I have a meal in a restaurant they ask me if I want coffee or dessert. If you don't want it, just say no.
This is totally normal for ISPs. up-selling, attempts to retain customers at any cost. At comcast it was pressed on our call center tech support guys fairly hard but moreso on customer service reps in the billing/accounts department. at AT&T there was literally a whole department called "the save team" who got financial incentives to retain customers. if you called to cancel, you would be put on the line with the save team. they could get credit for a save if they could transfer a customer back to technical support "oh, our tech guys can fix that problem for you and your service will be fine, plus i gave you a month credit" (or something to that affect). and then the tech staff would get this transferred call about how their printer didnt work. completely unrelated, and after being bounced around and on hold, then being told "uhhh. we cant help you with that", they got right pissed and demanded to cancel again. the save team rep, already got a notch on their saved belt but the customer still quit. it was a corrupt system right to the core :)
That's just the thing, the customers have no choice. As they maneuver to buyout Time Warner, Comcast themselves state plainly, "Comcast and TWC do not compete against each other in any area"
I worked tech support for Time Warner about 5 years ago. We were not 'required' to sell, but we were most certainly pushed to. We were reminded constantly, and people who did sell a lot were praised while the rest of us got the 'why aren't you more like this guy?' treatment. Our calls were randomly selected for review, and if there wasn't 'sufficient' effort put into selling, we were criticized heavily. In these reviews, it seems selling was weighted more heavily than whether we actually solved the issue properly or according to procedure, since nobody really gave you guff for failing to satisfy a customer's tech needs as long as you didn't piss them off. You would think that sending onsite techs out to jobs that could have been solved over the phone would get you in trouble. But as long as you sell, sell, sell, you got a gold freakin star. You ever wonder why you are on hold for so long? Because techs are trying to sell shit after they fix the customer's problem instead of hanging up the damn phone and taking the next call. Multiply that by 30+ calls per tech, 3 or so minutes per call, and you see what a giant waste of time that is. I left that horrible job after six months. I spoke with one of my old coworkers who lasted a little longer than I did, and he said nearly half of the 'veteran' techs left shortly after I had, some of them quite spectacularly. ID badges were thrown, "fuck this sales bullshit" was heard often. These bloody companies have dedicated sales staff, why load down techs with this shit?
Does anyone have a script a customer can stick to when dealing with Comcast?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Why does capitalism reward leaches so lucratively?
I'm assuming this is a joke, because a lot of people cannot afford to just up and move because they don't like what a utility company is doing.
I used to work for Fedex tech support - we were supposed to: - Have the call answered by the second ring - Not up sell anything - Be polite and courteous at all times - Troubleshoot anything that is wrong with the computer - the job started back in the day before all software had TCP/IP, and we had to dial in, Oh and Win95 was supported. - All our calls were to be logged and notes made for helping the next guy if they ever called in again. In the same building we had AT&T WorldNet, they had to: - Not answer unless the customer was on hold for at least 1/2 and hour - Priority was given to new customers setting up - When they closed for the night - all calls were left in Que and answered in the morning, if still there. For some reason AT&T always had openings?!?
Of course it's a joke. Because it's nowhere close to a free market - all utilities use public "rights"-of-way to make a profit. That legitimately exposes them to regulation. If a real free market is desired, then they would all have to negotiate rights-of-way with every property owner along their routes. And that includes the public (government), from which the price is regulation.
Even under a system similar to that in place (access in exchange for regulation), unless those rights-of-way are made available to all providers, there is no free market competition. There is no "free market" unless all competitors can compete in every market (location).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm not surprised at this, it is par for the course for many telephone support agents. I used to do telephone support for Hewlett Packard, until they let me go because I couldn't meet the sales quotas. Not because customers disliked me, not because I couldn't fix customers pc's, but because I couldn't meet a goal of $80.00-$100.00 average revenue per call. Most companies treat their support departments as a revenue drain, since the price of support is no longer built into the purchase price of the item sold in the race to reach the cheapest prices to gain market share. In the case of Comcast, it's pure profit since they overcharge on the services anyway.
And has been for decades. Every customer contact is a sales opportunity. EVERY contact.
After the dot com bust (the first one), I had bills to pay, so I ended up in a call center for the local cable company. It wasn't quite the low point of my life, but it was in the running.
The call center was brand new, and the high speed data side was briefly allowed to operate normally, but soon company politics pushed out the (technical) director, and replaced him with a MBA (and EEOC-bingo winner).
We were all trained to sell, instructed to sell on every call, and evaluated on selling. This was policy from day one, but widely ignored in my department until the MBA took over.
I earned a reputation for solving problems. Incompetent or uncaring employees would fail to fix things over and over again, pissing off customers. After months of continuing problems, they would call to yell. Usually, they'd end up getting more excuses and empty promises. Sometimes they'd get me (or one of a handful of other fixers).
I'd mute my microphone until they were done venting, then I'd figure out what the hell was wrong, and get it fixed, often with a generous service credit to appease them for the months that we'd dicked them around.
Over a few months, I solved hundreds of problems (some going back for many months or years), probably prevented at least a couple of suicides (monopoly, it was us or nothing) and maybe a mass shooting or two (yes, some of them really were that angry).
One thing I know for sure is that none of those problem calls wanted a fucking sales pitch. "Mr. Smith, now that I've fixed the problem that has prevented you from using the service that you've been paying for these last six months, and you've put your guns away, can I upsell you into a premium package?" Yeah, right. Maybe they'd be interested in an upgrade in a few months, after we'd re-established a bit of trust, but not right away.
One of my randomly selected evaluation calls happened to be one of my problem calls. The recording followed the call through our system, so it started with 20 minutes of him yelling at one of the sales girls, then her calling me in tears asking to transfer the call, then him yelling at me, then me figuring out the problem and fixing it, then him thanking me, almost in tears himself.
I had an awesome score on that call, but still failed the review because selling was mandatory. I told my supervisor that he'd better screen my review calls from then on because I had no intention of following the policy. He could either run interference for me and keep me around until one of my interviews panned out, or he could write me up for my second and third strikes as they came up.
I was gone before my next review came up, so I have no idea what he decided.
I kept in touch with some friends, and still lived in their service area. The call center went downhill from there. They switched to a voice attendant, so even the people that were happy when they dialed their phones were pissed off by the time they managed to talk to a human. I know I always was. (At first they had a backdoor, swearing three times would get you to a human quickly, but word got out and they disabled that feature.)
Moving to a non-monopoly town (three[!] fiber lines in my yard! 75 meg up/down for cheap!) was the wisest move of my internet life.
See that "Preview" button?
I've worked in the telephone tech support business for 10 years. I have performed tech support for fortune 500 companies you would instantly recognize.
towards the half-way point of my stint, upselling became a *required* part of the job, a metric on which your performance was measured.
First incentives were put in place to weed out those who didn't upsell: shift bids started being held every 90 days instead of "as the business needs dictated" with top sellers given first picks. This caused those who didn't sell to get terrible shifts, requiring many to quit due to life obligations.
Then those who failed to sell were given bad reviews, causing them to lose out on annual salary increases.
When I left poor sellers were being written up, put on notice, and eventually terminated.
Note, that positions these people were initially hired for were inbound technical support jobs with no mention of selling anything. These people would be manning the technical support lines for major corporations that you have heard of, and no one calling any of them would expect to be given any kind of sales pitch.
No, those rights are not available to other providers, that is part of the problem. Typically the local governments grant a monopoly to one provider and keeps out all others, in exchange for some consideration from the cable operators. This is one reason why Comcast and Time Warner don't directly compete in any areas.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Except in a VERY few instances (essentially, housing developments), there are no exclusive franchises or right of way agreements in the US. They're (again, with a very small number of exceptions) prohibited by law (see 47 U.S.C. 253(a)). Comcast and Time Warner cable don't compete with each other because, again, it's a terrible business model. The standalone operators (RCN being the best example) who have tried it have almost universally gone bankrupt in the process. The only ones who have done it/are doing it (i.e. Verizon with FiOS, Google with Google Fiber) are either (a) not making a return on their investment (i.e. if they were a standalone business, they'd have gone bankrupt), or (b) have been able to negotiate very attractive terms without things like citywide buildout requirements, allowing them to cherry-pick areas where the service can be profitable.