Changing the Perception of Cable Company Customer Care By Richard Batenburg, Cable Management Expert

www.askbatmann.com

1) Enhance Field Service Automation

Back office systems still used by many companies today are decades outdated and were designed for a single product offering. The systems that worked for the simple "cable or no cable" world are simply incapable of supporting the multiple product lines and packages available today. That´s leaving the front line resource of today´s cable company-the service and installation technicians-in a no-win situation.

2) Eliminate Late Arrivals

Survey after survey shows that customers are unhappy- no, make that furious- about being treated poorly by the cable company. Our customers have had it with missed or late appointments, unqualified technicians and poor attention to detail and quality on installations. Think about this-what if a customer asked a cable company for a specific appointment time, or a call 30 minutes before a technician was to arrive. Think about how much frustration and anger would be diverted by not having the customer wait all day for technician, and even worse if they didn´t show up after taking all of that time out of their day.

3) Ask the Customers What They Want

There are a few things we can learn from waiters that can help with this cold shoulder affect that the cable companies can have-eliminating negative feelings toward the entire cable industry. Each of us face requests from our customers nearly every day that we may not be able to fulfill, but the answer isn´t to simply ignore the request. We can provide an incentive such as free pay-per-view coupons and briefly survey how we can help in the future if we are unable to help them with the current request at hand.

4) Be Open to Change

The biggest threat to an industry is being stuck in the past and therefore stuck in a rut. If the cable industry embraced change instead of being petrified of it, it will open up a whole new set of possibilities that never existed in past practices and allow new resources to help them with hurdles that are lingering. Unfortunately we have seen that the cable industry would rather brush the problems under the rug and hope they will go away than fix it.

5) Avoid Repeat Service Installations

Changing the expectation of the customer and delivering on the promise of service is the main thing standing in the way of cable´s return to the top of the convergence heap. It doesn´t have to be that way. The solutions now available in Subscriber Management Systems, Customer Relationship Management systems and advanced field service applications, processes, and procedures are many and varied and can only improve upon this promise.

www.batmannconsulting.com