We Should All Thank Comcast For Teaching The Importance Of Culture

[solman]

By now you may have heard the story of Ryan Block and his humorous/tragic attempt to have his Comcast internet service discontinued.

Ryan Block isn’t “real life” famous, but he most certainly is “internet famous”. Just check out his twitter handle:@ryan. (There is no surer way to confirm Silicon Valley cool kid status than to see a twitter account that is simply a first name – their real first name. And his wife?@veronica.) Not that any of this really matters for the story at hand, but it explains why the story got real legs. Ryan told the internet, and the internet went nuts.

The Backstory

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here is the nutshell version…

Ryan and Veronica wanted to cancel their Comcast internet service. As any of us would do, Veronica called the Comcast customer service number. And, as everyone expects these days, she was immediately shunted to “customer retention”. After 10 minutes of frustation, she handed the phone off to Ryan who went an additional eight minutes – but he recorded it.

You don’t have to listen to the whole thing, 30 seconds is plenty. The rest is more of same. (...and sorry SoundCloud, LinkedIn doesn't like your embeds, hence the YouTube rip off)

 

This call makes me believe that, when J.J. Abrams and Tom Hanks eventually make the HBO mini-series of Dante’s Inferno, there will be a Tenth Circle of Hell reserved for cable company executives.

And, lest you think this is a pushy-American thing, I had, basically, the exact same call with a Rogers rep in January.

The Aftermath

As of this morning, that SoundCloud clip has over 3.3 million plays and has resulted in stories on The Washington Post, The LA Times, Good Morning America, and Huffington Post, to name just a few – not the kind of publicity that a corporation trying to execute a merger that the public largely opposes is looking for.

The Response

Comcast would like you to know that they take this situation very seriously. In fact, Tom Karinshak, SVP, Customer Experience, Comcast Cable, released this statement:

We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and Ms. Belmont and are contacting them to personally apologize. The way in which our representative communicated with them is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives. We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.

[solman]

http://youtu.be/EUkKN8Yu0us

[MeetFriendz]

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