Outsource your system integration to your customers? Brilliant!

I've got to hand it to Comcast (a.k.a. Comcrap). They figured out how to save millions in system integration. They chose not to do it and then force their customers to act as bridges between the groups and systems. How slick is that?

So after giving up on Comcast ever making a compelling bundle offer that doesn't contain at least $50 in hidden extra monthly fees (cable modem rental, HD upcharge, extra box fee, DVR fee. HD+DVR fee) I decided to call AT&T to try the U-verse bundle. I couldn't actually get U-verse, as it is not available in my area yet, but the bundle was still available with NO extra fees with DirecT
v.

Once everything was setup, I called Comcast to cancel my service and hit a series of obstacles that highlight how brilliant Comcast management is.

1. Organizational Fragmentation - Comcast customer service is totally separate from the organization that retrieves the equipment. They had no ability to schedule the pickup. They had no ability to transfer my phone call. They had no ability to email me the phone number. They had no ability to pass on a request to them. In other words, it was now my job to integrate the customer service and logistics teams.
2. No Continuity - After I successfully memorized and dialed the phone number (I was in the car but not driving), I scheduled the equipment pickup which was no picnic either. They refused to give me anything other than a four hour window and would not take a note for the driver such that I could leave the equipment in my screened porch. This is another stroke of genius by Comcast - when you make it as inconvenient as possible for people to end their service there are bound to be a couple of people who just give up ans stick with it out of some form of Stockholm Syndrome.
3. No Tools - After the equipment recovery person missed his window and showed up 1 hour late I happily handed all the equipment over to him. Choosing to be frugal and not give their employees wasteful tools, the equipment recovery person collected the two set-top boxes, manually captured the serial numbers on a form and gave me a copy of the paper receipt.
4. No Follow-through - Where other companies might blow a whole bunch of money and time actually tracking their operations, a brilliant analyst at Comcast noticed that actually not tracking returns was in the companies interest! If a former customer is upset at being charged for equipment they already returned, they'll follow up and hound us. If not, who cares! And given that equipment recovery is not integrated with billing they'll hound the customer by phone 3 or more times a day anyway to provide a "legitimate excuse". Genius I say!!!
5. Contemptuous Attitude - Start the calls off right! Comcast calls with an auto-dialer and shows blatant contempt for customer time by having the auto-dialer ask customers to hold for an "important business call". This sets the tone just right to make everything be coherent around the core brand message - "your time and money are not nearly as important as ours".
6. No Accountability - Narrative, Narrative Narrative! The Comcast team has it down! The only way to make policies and decisions like these stick is to be completely unapologetic and obtuse on the phone and make the customer wrong on every level. The phone reps had the story and they stuck to it - it was my job to track the repair, my job to prove that they had picked the equipment, and it was even my job to call the billing department to get the erroneous charge for "not returning the equipment" changed. Why on earth should it be Equipment Recovery's responsibility to close the loop? It is this narrative which enables a phone rep to be legitimately upset with the fact that customer's are upset or frustrated. When an employee does not acknowledge that they are "representatives" of the brand or of the corporation then, clearly, the customer is the one who is rude for being frustrated!
7. Plausible Deniability - Make sure your phone systems are easy to blame. Calls with Comcast were never pleasant in terms of the discussion, but what makes them even worse for the customer is that the auto-dialer is in control and calls would drop almost at random. As always, this serves the greater objective - now Comcast reps can honestly say: "I did not call you, the auto dialer did!" and "You keep hanging up on us!". i.e., "It's not Comcast's fault we keep calling you, It's the auto-dialer! It's you!"
8. No Empathy - By hiring barely literate people with chips on their shoulder who are unhappy with their jobs. The message will really be sent - "You are not a customer anymore. You are not worthy of respectful communication or empathy. Being upset that you are called incessantly early in the morning, or late at night and being asked by a machine to hold without telling you who is calling is not our concern - even if we picked up the equipment already. We will just keep calling you for weeks. We will choose not to listen. We will choose not the enter the receipt number into our system because you were frustrated or the call dropped after we got the number but before we said we were done with you. We will hang up on you because you are audibly frustrated - but don't worry, we will call back and start all over again!!! You will comply sooner or later! Resistance is futile! You will integrate us!"
9. Universally Low Expectations - Hire people who are in alignment with your brand. Make sure that they are ignorant of common business conventions. Make sure they are not accountable for their actions. Make sure that they are not grateful to be of service. This orientation will enable people to bluster on and hold forth on clearly specious arguments where precision and crispness of service delivery are of no importance at all. This false sense of self importance will further enable the phone reps to take personal offense at former customer frustration and will further solidify the organizations will to impose the company's responsibility onto the former customer.

Rating time:

Disgustingly contemptuous policies and decisions that force former customers to be accountable for Comcrap's organizational fragmentation - CRAP

Myth: It's only fair to pay for quality first-run movies. Fact: Most movies shown on cable get two stars or less, and are repeated ad nauseam."

The Long OW!

Brandon Schauer, one of my past Sapient co-workers, now works at Adaptive Path and is relatively well known in UX circles for his thought leadership. One of my favorites is The Long Wow. In brief, "the long wow is a means to achieving long-term customer loyalty through systematically impressing your customers again and again."

Well, true to my nature, I feel compelled to point out the flip side, which I call the long OW. In brief, the long OW is a means to achieving long-term customer hatred through systematically disappointing your customers again and again.

Where long wow companies like Apple and Nike continually look for ways to express to customers how much they appreciate them through phenomenally well designed, user-centric products and services. Long OW companies like Blockbuster, the cable companies and phone companies seemingly look for ways to contemptuously exploit their customers through products and no-service processes that are equally well designed, except that the products and no-services are dollar-centric.

I understand the mindset and organizational culture that drive the long OW companies to make decisions like these. Like many American cultural aspects they are all focused on $ tomorrow. What they fail to see is the long term lasting hatred consumers have for them and the taint these business practices have on their brands that can't be washed away.

Blockbuster is the perfect case study for this. I know, I know... I pick on Blockbuster quite often... But THIS IS EXACTLY THE POINT! Neither I, nor other consumers have forgotten the YEARS of gouging we suffered from the late-fee nazis in Blockbuster management. Even when Blockbuster's Click & Mortar offering is VASTLY superior to every online only offering - people still choose netflix. The people who still patronize Blockbuster do it only begrudgingly and silently hope for the day when a online & meat-space combo retailer will offer something better so that they can stick it to the man REAL GOOD!

Cell phone companies and the Cable companies have paved the way for this type of business model for decades! The Cable companies were first. Having regional monopolies, the combination of easy money and little competition has created crappy behemoths of companies who really could not give a rat's ass about how much consumers hate them. Maybe instead of focusing on churn, they should focus on the root cause - the legacy of contempt they have shown for their customers.

How can the leaders of these companies not get it? Consumers generally feel that all the options suck it's up to them to choose the one that least sucks for them and their lifestyle.

My recommendation for these purveyors of contempt is to either:

1) Go for a "truth and reconciliation" approach in which you actually try to make legitimate amends with people who despise your organization. If you decide to do this one, you have to do more than say "sorry", you have to show you mean it. See my past blog entry on this topic for more information.

-OR-

2) Prepare for an upstart with a clean reputation to come and eat your lunch.

Rating Time:

Long Wow companies - Like them.

Long OW companies - Garbage.

Tell em' Large Marge Sent Ya!