{"id":9169,"date":"2014-07-17T15:06:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T19:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=9169"},"modified":"2021-05-30T15:30:19","modified_gmt":"2021-05-30T19:30:19","slug":"why-your-comcast-rep-is-yelling-at-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/17\/why-your-comcast-rep-is-yelling-at-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Your Comcast Rep Is Yelling at You"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrianne Jeffries<\/a>:<\/p>

The man who spoke to Block is a “retention specialist,” a position Comcast describes<\/a> as “equal parts detective, ally, troubleshooter, and negotiator” in job listings. Comcast’s retention reps are paid a low hourly wage supplemented by a monthly commission that depends on how many customers they are able to drag back into the fold.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In other words, the incentive structure is really about punishment. Reps start out the month with a full commission, but every canceled product deducts from that amount. Once reps fall below a certain threshold, they get no commission at all. That means a rep could get all the way to the second-to-last day of the pay period only to have a customer cancel four products. Suddenly the rep is below her goal, losing $800 to $1,000 off her paycheck.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reminded me of Joel Spolsky’s Measurement<\/a> article from 2002. (Spolsky cites a book<\/a> about Amazon customer service by Mike Daisey—yes, that one<\/a>—and parts of the book have since been shown<\/a> to be exaggerated<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Update (2014-07-23): Chris Morran<\/a> (via John Gruber<\/a>):<\/p>\n

A week after the posting of the neediest customer-retention call in Comcast history<\/a>, the fallout continues, with the company’s Chief Operating Officer telling Comcast employees in a memo leaked to Consumerist that the incident was “painful to listen to,” but that the rep “did a lot of what we trained him…to do.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update (2014-07-29): Adrianne Jeffries<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Dozens of current and former Comcast employees told The Verge<\/em> they had to constantly push products, even if they worked in tech support, billing, and general customer service.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adrianne Jeffries:The man who spoke to Block is a “retention specialist,” a position Comcast describes as “equal parts detective, ally, troubleshooter, and negotiator” in job listings. Comcast’s retention reps are paid a low hourly wage supplemented by a monthly commission that depends on how many customers they are able to drag back into the fold. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2021-05-30T19:30:22Z","apple_news_api_id":"87e28127-16b9-4667-b4b2-b36375d4aeeb","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2021-05-30T19:30:22Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Ah-KBJxa5Rme0srNjddSu6w","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101,777,2076],"class_list":["post-9169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-business","tag-comcast","tag-internet-service-provider-isp"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9262,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions\/9262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}