One of the issues with [the recorded call] is he actually did his job, just went WAY overboard with it. According to our retention handbook, he did not violate any of the things that can end your employment. Eighty percent [of our training] was sales training.
From time to time they would pull us from the phones for in-depth training on how to sell. Eventually, selling became part of tech support and billing. There would be such frustration from tech support. We would tell our supervisors that our customers are upset. Why would you sell them something? A lot of reps were so worried because the management put too much stress on sales. There were incentives for making sales.
The last months that I worked there, there was a constant push to ensure that at the end of every call you make an offer for a new service, or premium channel, or whatever. I think there was a honest emphasis on customer service.
There was almost no offline time to work. We were coached on three things mainly: explaining their self-service options, showing empathy, and the number one was pitching products and services. We were coached that, regardless of [the customer] wanting to cancel, or being declined after a pitch, we had to offer at least three rebuttals.
Now when we open a call, we are supposed to push for an account number so that we have them authenticated on the call to make changes, and then offer something on every call. A good average call time is between and seconds.
Imagine how much a 40 minute call affects your metrics. Overcome objections Close the save Confirm details End on a positive note Following each guideline — from greeting the customer clearly to avoiding "trap words" like "disconnect, downgrade, cancel" — earns the specialist more points.
Other actions, such as forgetting to perform a credit check or failing to attempt to save the customer, are "auto-fail behaviors.
It's pretty standard call center stuff, but Comcast throws in some of its own tactics. If a customer is calling to cancel cable because they only watch Netflix, the rep is directed to push an internet speed upgrade. If a customer who says they're moving declines to provide a new address, Comcast warns the rep to "ask probing questions" because the customer "may instead be planning a move to a competitor. Reps are also encouraged to build rapport with customers with lines like, "Enjoy Game of Thrones tonight.
Reps are also encouraged to build rapport with customers with lines like, "Enjoy Game of Thrones tonight". Comcast has stock responses for every reason customers might want to cancel: bill too expensive, competitive offer, promotion expiring, don't use the service, technical or customer service issue, move, rate increase, or extended vacation.
You mentioned you had a wife and children. The biggest takeaway for customers may be on pages 11 and 12, where Comcast outlines the scenarios in which it is not possible to save the customer. If you're having trouble canceling your service, one of these lines might work. Just shows that the offers all depend on who you get and if they feel like helping you. Also helps if you always pay your bill on time.
The agent noted my good customer record before agreeing to the deal. Silly games we must play for this monopoly. Wish I had other choices for Internet but I dont.
The game is to tell you that they are going to reduce your bill by x-amount, but mysteriously the reductions never appear on your bill. They simply keep charging whatever they want. I have spoken to them several times in the past where my bill was to have been reduced significantly afterwards — never happened. Another thing is I use my phone for a home business and have to have call waiting fully disabled.
With the sky high prices Comcast charges, do you think they have this feature available as a customer-controlled feature? You actually want the proverbial door to hit them smack in their thick heads, so they can somehow get the point, hopefully sooner rather than later! Here is a copy of the transcript from my recent online chat with Comcast. They would not help me and directed me to call online. This is my online chat who would not help either.
I am going to FIOS. This is an automated email. Please do not respond to this email address as it does not accept incoming email. You : Hi Chris, a customer service representative directed me to the online chat to get a better triple play package promotion. Can you assist me with this? Chris : Thank you for being a Comcast customer!
May I please have your address and zip code to assist you better? You : We like the HD service. We enjoy the movie channels too, but they are not essential. Currently, only 1 has HD hooked up. The other 2 are connected with Digital Adapters. Smart TVs, laptops, tablets and smart phones are hooked into our Wi-Fi.
Chris : Based on the address you have shared, there are multiple results showing. May I ask for your First and Last Name? Just to clarify, are we looking at having your monthly bill lowered? You : They will give me a full year of HBO gratis too. Can you help me get something in that ballpark? Chris : I completely understand that you want to lower down your monthly bill.
However, I can only assist you with adding services or upgrading here on this website. They will be able to access your account information and see what options are available to you. You : Honestly, Chris I feel frustrated because no one wants to help me. I am looking to upgrade to a Triple Play. Are you not able to assist with that? Chris : I completely understand. However, we are unable to offer you a cheaper rate than what you are currently paying right now.
You : What do you have to offer? Chris : I completely apologize, however, only our Customer Care can assist you further in lowering down your bills.
Is that not something you can do? Chris : I would recommend that you contact our Customer Care for them to assist you better in getting your bills lowered. Please note that we have different offers here online and via phone.
There might be offers here that is not offered via phone. You : No. They told me you would have the offer I just quoted. Thanks for your time. Chris : As an online specialist, I can only assist you with adding services or upgrading here on this website.
We are unable to offer you deals that does not apply to you. Just got off the phone with Comcast. Thanks for the tips! About 7 years ago. Maybe I am grandfathered in. Theyhave been calling lately to offer a bundle.
No thanks. I have Triple Play through Comcast. I have over the years negotiated with them for better rates. This time around, I shopped Direct TV. I contacted Comcast to undergo my ritual negotiation. I currently subscribe to the HD Premier.
I originally got the plan at a new customer rate after having Cable TV and Internet only. I did the Internet chat but they could not help. Will try again when this contract is up. I can't keep doing this. We are going to cut land line and just use our tracphone, and I am going to try to do your approach for the other two, we also use their modem.
Thanks for such a refreshingly hope-inspiring article. I wanted to offer some knowledge and background, as I spent 3 years working for the local phone company Verizon, before it sold to become Frontier. They have more latitude than we all think. You can resist, then they increase the intensity of asking and give you tier 2 nicely discounted.
My experience is that whatever your target monthly bill is within reason, there is every single possibility they can help you achieve it. What the heck? That is acecptable to me. My current package is an HD one. When I truly examine my viewing habits, I only use: on-demand, starz itself, and ion televison for reruns. So, TV has to go or be cut.
So, any inflated price has to go! Internet is tricky. I need it for work, but do not run a business. My career is in gaming now. I am having a very, very difficult time trying to figure out if this is really even being used… or what my minimum needs are for the heavy, heavy-duty gaming I do. I will make my call today, and make sure I pay attention to the little asterisks, if you will, that tricked people like Lori above as well as myself.
There are no contracts with Comcast unless you physically sign your name. That is true. The average lock-in period or guaranteed rate is either 6 or 12 months. Only retention disconnect queue agents can assign that long of a guarantee, by the way. I appreciate the article, by the way, about getting your own cable modem. Right now, you can NOT change lower services using the online chat.
You must call in to downgrade at all, or discontinue service. Of course, if you want to upgrade, you can do it all online. Hi, this question is for anyone to reply ……. I have not seen any comments even mention initiating a recording on our end. I think the law in those states do not even require the recorder to inform the other party of the ongoing recording.
The laws are different and stricter for face to face recording. I have heard of free apps for smart phones for recordings. PS cannot wait for Google Fiber to be in every major city. I want mbps Comcast service and 2 STBs with the channel lineup, would it be better for me to order the package on the website and then talk them down or should I try to get the discount right away by trying to add TV?
If you can live without some of the channels in Digital Preferred, and go with Digital Starter, you should be able to get that bundled with internet for I just did. Initially it was going to be just 25 mbps internet, but I balked, and poof — upgrade to Blast. But not worth the extra we were paying for Digital Preferred.
Yeah, I got my dreaded Comcast bill last night with a big bump. I knew it was coming. I initially spoke with a rep in Mexico and then asked for my service to be discontinued. I was given the option to downgrade my cable to 55 channels and keep my Blast internet speed. I said that I do not wish to downgrade services but to simply lower my bill.
My first call was to an account rep who said she could do nothing for me. After reading through all the comments I decided to try another call. This time I went with the option to cancel my service. That was agreeable to me. Thanks for the helpful tips. They do work. Just got off the phone with them. New deal: Pref. Live in Portland, OR where it is pretty competitive and Google fiber hopefully coming in a few years.
Well, they may not be cheap, but neither is running a network of fiber optic lines. Comcast is reliable all the time, and I always seem to come back.
I guess I will pay the price for that. They never go down. I think Comcast and other cable companies should have a senior discount. Who needs 50 channels anyway? We remember when T. Step up to the plate Comcast and be the first to do something. God knows you make enough money off of your customers and we still have to watch commercials which pay for air time.
Loyal customers are the ones who pay the most on the scale. Can the other providers be any worse? I always get the 12 month price guarantee.
Secondly, whether you are in a 1 or 2 yr contract or a 1 yr price guarantee agreement you may always upgrade or downgrade to any service. Very nice! We have had every problem you can think of but my favorite is when some asshole told me I just wanted HBO for free, something for nothing according to him. I never wanted it to begin with, they through it in one time!
I tried to report him and, naturally, Comcast did nothing about it. Now I just remind them of this jerk every three months and ask the status of my complaint? Asked for retroactive and got that too. I stated I would be traveling and would have a house sitter, so I wanted to cancel. I can picture myself calling in again around May of next year to get another discount? Was told nothing they could do. Googled and found this page, read it, called and asked to disconnect service. Worked just as it was written about.
Explained that I wanted to figure out way smartest way to terminate my service because bill was too high and I was going to go to Verizon FIOS. Called today and went directly to Cancellation department. This was a very helpful article. I called and immediately went to cancellation. The rep a very pleasant woman went right to work with my request to change my plan. Ended up with exactly the same service minus one of the TVs and the phone. It took 35 minutes. Thanks for these stellar tips!
Our bill is a bundle package of internet, phone, cable and home security. All in all a big win. Now I just need to be sure to make this call once a year! When I said I would have to check out what Verizon is offering, she just asked if there was anything else I wanted to ask her.
I was rushed today, so I will try again, maybe checking what Verizon is offering first. What you were told about HD is incorrect. I have a package now where HD is included free for the first year but after the first year I have to pay extra for it.
We recently moved within the same city 1 mile away. A Comcast rep showed up at our house and asked if we would be interested in getting Comcast service. The trick is to find a local Comcast sales rep in your area. The individual reps that go door to door have better rates and can give you exactly what you want.
The downside is that you have to cancel your old account and start a new one. I was able to move my phone number over along with my email accounts, but it took a lot of effort on my part. Slightly incorrect info there but you are right about the sales rep! Door to door salesman have to have an upperhand at rate codes so that they could actually make a sale. But you got HD free for a year because we just simply have it available to give.
Thank you for this article. Thank you again — very helpful. I said I was leaving for Dish as the price has just gotten too high. Thanks to you I just saved 50 bucks a month for the next year for the same package I currently have.
Called customer service and found out that my 2 year contract had expired. Not a huge difference, but you gotta nip escalating costs in the bud, right? Selecting 4 immediately forces the customer to play defense whereas getting transferred puts the customer on offense, a far better place to be.
I really like the package I have and I want to keep it. Can I get the same package for the same price? So you thought! You people need to stop following nonsense because you gonna get ya feelings hurt like i be doing to people lol.
They just did that to me in my second year of the two year contract. Thanks mate! Just hung up. I had a super nice lady in the loyalty dept.
If you wanna downgrade to lower your bill sure no problem. But to keep what you have hell nah. Pay that bread or go to someone else. Thanks so much for this advice, I had spoken to Comcast Customer Service before I searched for additional comments. I was told that the account promo had expired and even though there has been quite a bit of trouble with internet bandwidth and prior to that voice quality that I should be happy that I had never been charged for a tech to be dispatched to diagnose the Comcast network problem.
Needless to say, I was appalled at this approach from customer service. Your recommendation worked perfectly, I contacted and indicated that I was considering disconnecting the service. I found this helpful. Mind you all programming came through on a 10 year old receiver only capable of standard definition programming. Anyway, called them up and said I was going to cancel — so they sent me to the retention department.
We went back and forth for a bit, with me prodding to see if I could get anything else out of her. So I cancelled. I scanned through some of the responses and it seems that this thread could benefit from some of my insight. Also at the bottom I will vent — so read at your own risk. For those of you who get nowhere with negotiating with the reps on the phone could be either; 1. Speaking with a billing agent not a retention specialist. You may already be on some kind of promotional rate. Now before you start crying about the cost, look at your statement and see if there are any line item deductions for your services.
Ten bucks may not be the deal for you hence the reason for the call , but if those codes are still on your account, for some reason their system will not display any better offers to the retention specialist their hands are tied.
There is a way around this however. You can ask them to put you in a full price package without any discounts. Now a little bit of perspective to those who moan and groan about this process, and expect them to just keep the prices low; You need not fool yourself.
Cancel and go elsewhere. Who are you to say that they can afford to charge less for the services? Are you the CFO, do you know how much it costs to negotiate broadcasting agreements and then parse out the per subscriber cost on a NATIONAL level, all so you can drool on your couch and stare blankly at the ever-so-important Honey Boo Boo and Little People of LA episode that you think is so important you cannot live without it? You need internet and Comcast is the only option? Cancel them.
Go take your laptop to a Starbucks and your public Wifi. Comcast like any company provides a service for cost. They clearly disclose the full cost of the various packages — find it online or on your monthly statements. What a concept! So there you go. Hopefully this was useful to some — this last part was more of a therapy session for me.
TL,DR: Former Comcast employee concurs with the author of this article about useful methods of lowering your bill. Thanks for your informative message. It was very frustrating because the lady had an accent I could barely understand, but did figure out she was unable to help me. So a few days ago I tried once more and think I got the first lady again. She told me to check on line for promotions for current customers the same thing she said the first time. I told her I had checked and could only find deals for first time customers.
She started trying to tell me about how deals change every 2 weeks, but the first time she said they change the first of the month. Nothing made any sense, so I thanked her for her time. This is why I am so frustrated! We started with Jones Inter Cable in and Comcast bought them after just a few years. I have my bill automatically paid by AMEX, so it has never been late…therefore I consider myself a good customer.
It takes me several days to get up the courage to make a call that I think will probably turn out like the others. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for your time of explaining the way Comcast does business…and for taking time to read my thoughts.
You can take your political statement and hike, however. Capitalism is about fair competition, and no, there is no other option for the vast majority of us, and very soon there will be only 3 cable companies in all of the U.
We despise them because they manipulate the government to prevent fair competition. And we are angry, resentful, and unforgiving about it. This is about the gun pointed at our head. Interesting, but a lone individual against a massive company is not a fair fight. Internet, phone, etc. So, what we need is government regulation to even the playing field. If you feel competition between the little guy and huge companies is good, good for you.
You need to really learn about actual cable monopolies. Go online immediately after and open a new acct. Inform them you have a router from a previous acct and would like to use it. This is crazy. In that time span I always replaced my motorola set top boxes with smaller X1 boxes I assume to continue to receive HD channels. What if anything did you do to reduce your bill? I had Blast Plus cable, Mbps internet with a non-promo rate for a while. Ok, just went through the script.
Thank you for your help. Thanks for posting this script. Followed script, lowered internet from After reading the script, I tried the Comcast chatline, saying it was too expensive and was looking at other providers. Thanks, G. You must either be inept when it comes to technology or just stupid in general.
How else do they soft disconnect your internet service DA. But Comcast is increasing fees for broadcast television, local sports, TV boxes, and remotes -- charges that are often just a few bucks or less but together drive up the overall bill. And as customers flee pay-TV for cheaper online streaming, Comcast is increasing prices for many of its high-speed internet plans, too.
Two fees, in particular, have skyrocketed in recent years. Comcast blames rising programming costs to carry content from local network affiliates and other broadcasters. The company says it absorbs some of those costs, but the rest are passed on to consumers.
0コメント