These days, calling a customer service number and getting connected to an actual human rather than an automated answering machine can seem like a novelty. But sometimes it can turn into a nightmare — as proven by tech journalist Ryan Block's call to Comcast on Monday, during which he was berated by the customer service rep when he called to cancel his service.
Despite Block's simple, calm request to end his Comcast service, the rep refuses to do so, instead repeatedly demanding a reason for his cancellation. The rep also forcefully insists that Comcast is the top-rated service in the country. Listen for yourself:
Comcast issued a statement yesterday apologizing for the behavior of their rep (whom Block declined to name to the public), assuring that "the way in which our representative communicated with [Block and his wife] is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives."
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However, today Block dug up a fascinating Reddit thread detailing Comcast's incentives programs that seem to in fact encourage this type of relentless behavior. The thread's poster, who claims to have worked for Comcast Corporate for nearly nine years, reveals that Comcast's so-called "retention specialists" are paid in accordance with how many customers they do — or don't — save.
From Reddit:
Comcast uses "gates" for their incentive pays, which means that if you fall below a certain threshold (which tend to be stretch goals in the first place) then instead of getting a reduced amount, you get 0$. Let's say that if you retain 85 percent of your customers or more (this means 85 percent of the lines of businesses that customers have when they talk to you, they still have after they talk to you), you get 100 percent of your payout — which might be 5-10$ per line of business. At 80 percent you might only get 75 percent of your payout, and at 75 percent you get nothing. The CAEs (customer service reps) watch these numbers daily, and will fight tooth and nail to stay above the "I get nothing" number. This guy went too far, you're not supposed to flat out argue with them. But Comcast literally provides an incentive for this kind of behavior. [Reddit]
And with that, we wish you good luck in your next customer service call.
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