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Study in Comcast branding
What's more likely to change your opinion of the Comcast brand... an expensive ad campaign, costing millions to produce and force onto TV networks?
...or this video, made and distributed for free by customers?
One costs a ton, promises very little, and hooks on a meaningless phrase - "It's Comcastic" - that tries to be the brand.
The other is free and (meaningfully) shows the reality of one customer's experience. The customer experience doesn't try to be the brand, because it already is the brand.
What's a better investment: an exercise around a meaningless phrase that costs a ton and delivers ambiguous results, or a meaningful exercise (fixing the customer experience) that both treats customers properly and improves the entire business?
It's extremely saddening, because all that someone like Mr. T will see is the money from the ads.
When he does see that man on the couch, the proverbial fan shall get hit.
(Thanks to gamekid for not putting "first" in his post)
I haven't ever heard anything good about Comcast. I am in an area served by Time-Warner, and have been pretty happy with them.
I tried, at one point in the past, to get DSL, prior to getting Road Runner, and the experience I had with Verizon was, to say the least, broken.
What I do not understand is how it is, now that there is competition for television, telephone and internet service, that lousy customer service can possibly continue.
Unbundling, by the way, is possible. A lot of the telcom providers won't tell you that, (and in some cases the CSRs don't know it), but you can order just telephone or just internet from the cable company. Evidence of this is in that my television is currently fed by Dish Network, while I am sending this on unbundled Road Runner service, and the phone next to me is connected to Verizon. I let each of the three services go the the company that seemed to do the best job of it for my needs.
All books and courses on branding will tell you that brands are made (and broken) by customers, not the companies themselves.
But somehow this never dissuades companies from spending money on the cosmetics instead of the fundamentals.
I think that's just because it's easier and lazier and produces quicker but shallower results (e.g. the VP get a bonus, vs. the customer experience improves).
I pity the fool that signs up with Comcast.
Comcast bought the only cable provider in my area and prices immediately went up 50%. Then they would not bundle internet and cable, so, for me, the Comcast brand is something to avoid.
Back before I knew anything about routers and home networks, I asked Comcast how to use my cable modem with two computers. They told me the only way was to pay for an additional ip address. Even when we tried this they couldn't get it to work. Fortunately I later got a router never listened to the Comcast people again.
I don't understand how companies can see videos like that and think, "ok, we just fire/reassign that guy and move on". It seems that no one really takes the initiative anymore to say, "hmmm. something might be wrong if ANY of our techs think its ok to do that." I believe it's the same with the Geek squad, where management apparently doesn't care if they need to format your machine in order to fix it. I'm not saying they necessarily are bad to everyone, I'm just saying that the lack of concern for any given customer's satisfaction in lieu of 'if people are still paying us, we must be doing ok' is really disheartening.
I really like the music in the fan-made video.
On a different note, I use Prodigy. Never had a problem to this day since we signed up... I don't know... five or six years ago.
What happened to the link to the video? That's bad experience!
I agree with Connor - The amazing thing is that these VPs are customers as well. I'll bet they would never accept being treated to such a poor experience.
Fyi: The music is "I Need Some Sleep" by EELS
Had nothing but good experience with Comcast. -- Their 6Mbps broadband is worth the $45/month I use to pay. I'm sad that I moved to a town that isn't serviced by them.
In fact, due to a glitch, I was getting a higher cable package then I was paying for for 3 years.
The only time I talked to Tech Support was to confirm an outage or when I KNEW my modem was bad and wanted them to send out a new one. -- While hold times I think were around 10 minutes, other then that, everything was fine.