Why we hate cell phone companies cable companies, and Internet providers.

More than 30% of you say the service you receive from them is 'poor.' 

 By Karen Aho

reprinted courtesy of MSN

May 28, 2008.

Communications companies, here's a message for you:

Your customers are ticked.

From cell phones to cable TV to Internet providers, Americans are not happy about the service they receive, a fact made clear by the ranking of those companies in MSN Money's second annual Customer Service Hall of Shame.

The MSN Money-Zogby International survey asked consumers to rate the service of 10 cell phone providers, and, on average, more than 31% of customers rated the services of those companies as "poor." For cable TV companies (and their satellite competitors), the average was 35%. Both averages could have put the entire categories in our Hall of Shame.


So what's the deal with communications companies? Are the services difficult to deliver? Are customers too demanding? If a cable customer screams and the cable company doesn't have a competitor, does anyone hear? Do the companies simply not care?

The experts agree on one point: Sooner or later, these companies will pay for angering their customers.

"They need to be providing good service, or those consumers who can find good service will leave," said Sally Cohen, an analyst with Forrester Research, a technology consulting company. "Twenty percent of consumers who have Internet service say that they would leave their Internet provider based on poor customer service."

Nature of the beast?
Analysts grant that these companies provide heavily used, complex and often highly technical services to huge numbers of users. Take a look at the numbers from the companies:

Comcast, the cable company, is also the largest provider of home broadband Internet service and fourth-largest phone provider. It has 24.1 million customers and talks to an average of 1 million of them a day, by phone, at retail centers or in homes. ("Out of a million interactions a day, there is that subset that don't go well," spokeswoman Jenni Moyer said.)

Time Warner Cable, like Comcast, provides bundled cable, Internet and digital phone service. It has 14.5 million customers and takes 12 million to 13 million calls a month. Last year, 63% of those calls were picked up within 30 seconds, spokesman Alex Dudley said. Customers use their Time Warner products an average of 10 hours a day.

Sprint Nextel, which became the third-largest wireless phone provider in a 2005 merger, had 54 million subscribers in 2007.


The fierce customers of 'now'
Many customers operate as if they can't live without these companies' services even for a moment. Rich Honack, an assistant dean, chief marketing officer and adjunct professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, calls these "nanosecond customers." And they're rife in today's nanosecond culture, he said. Studies have shown that people are far less patient than they were a decade ago.

"If my wireless goes out, I need it fixed now," Honack said. "And don't tell me I have to wait. If you tell me I have to wait two hours, I become an angry customer."

The problem builds when customers have nowhere else to turn. There might be another Internet provider in town, but that won't get the computer back online in the here and now. The same with banks and phones: It takes time and money to establish a new account.

"If people are in a situation where they're kind of hung up with no options, that's when they get frustrated," said Craig Johnson, the president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consulting firm. "It's a loss-of-control thing."

Look at the companies that often get good marks for customer service, Johnson said. Many are grocery stores. If you eat a lot of peaches but can't find them, you can just drive a few blocks to another store. It's so easy to fix the problem that people barely have time to get annoyed.

The only worry falls to the stores, which become motivated to improve service, Johnson said.

The phone-help death spiral
It hardly helps that the services themselves have become increasingly complex.

Telecommunications providers, in particular, not only offer choices within each service, but they also bundle those services. Consumers often don't know how the technology works or how it ties together their digital phone, Internet and cable service, Forrester Research's Cohen said.

"Providing service around a service that a customer doesn't really understand in the first place is challenging," she said.

For instance, a customer may call to report his phone isn't working. He uses the company's one-stop number and is routed to the phone desk. What the customer doesn't know is that the phone problem, in this case, is actually an Internet problem.

Making matters worse, the customer service agent also doesn't know. In many cases, agents' computers don't provide them the information needed to diagnose a problem. It is not until after a detailed conversation that the agent knows to send the customer to another department, where, faced with another agent with another inadequate computer, the customer starts all over again. With each transfer, the customer becomes more irritated.

"The service providers today are sort of working on this problem as best they can," Cohen said. "It is happening, but it is slow and, in some cases, piecemeal."

Great expectations
Customers subconsciously compare experiences. A good experience with Amazon.com subsequently alters expectations with the cable company, even though the latter's services are more complex.

"Some things are hard because they're hard," said Michael Maoz, a research vice president for Gartner, an information technology advisory company. But it's no excuse, he said. First, the complex technology of the products is not single-handedly overloading customer service agents.

"How often have you lost your cell phone coverage?" Maoz asked. "Does that really happen to you? When's the last time your cable TV blew out on you? Can you remember?"

Maoz said the companies hide behind the idea that the technology is difficult when the real problem is "their episodic approach to customer service." The technology does exist to improve customer service platforms in these complex arenas, Maoz said.

Fee fatigue
Then there's the bill.

When was the last time that Whole Foods, which scores well for customer service, charged customers a "transfer fee" at the checkout? By contrast, communications companies are notorious for "nickel-and-diming strategies," said Michael Shames, the executive director of the Utility Consumers' Action Network, a California nonprofit that monitors business practices.



Companies' efforts to slip in extra charges under the radar are a constant source of complaint, he said.

"They all incorporate these hidden fees in their bills, and what you finally end up paying is much higher than what you thought you were going to pay. It's a consistently irritating factor," said Praveen Kopalle, an associate professor of business administration at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business.

The companies also tend to offer better deals to new customers and those who switch from competitors, which leaves existing customers feeling betrayed.

It's worth noting that not every company in these industries rankles customers. In the MSN Money-Zogby survey, wireless provider Verizon scored a 19% "poor" response, compared with Sprint Nextel's 39%.

DirecTV scored a 21% "poor" response, while Time Warner Cable received a 31% “poor” rating and Comcast garnered 42%.

"They like to blame the service, but when you give a customer ready access to a knowledgeable and empathetic employee, many times the customer will come out of it and say, 'Wow, things happen, and I feel better about it as a result,'" Shames said.

MSN`S HALL OF SHAME

1. AOL

2. Comcast

3. Sprint Nextel

4. Abercrombie & Fitch

5. Qwest

6. Capital One

7. Bank of America

8. Time Warner Cable

9. HSBC Finance

10. Cox Communications

Published May 28, 2008

This article reprinted with

Special thanks to MSN.

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