F...My Cable Company!

I'm in LA and Adelphia sucks donkey. Customer service??? What's that?? They are almost as bad as Dell computer but not quite. I can sort of understand the spanish dialect at the cable company's "office", but at Dell, I just can't pick up the eastern Indian accent...

But why does customer support suck so much?

Why does customer support suck so much at any company? It's usually a highly stressful, low-paying, heavily-monitored and virtually thankless job. Trust me, I know. When I first got out of college, I had a couple of customer support jobs in the ISP and software industries.

Because companies that provide high-maintenance products such as cable service are required to keep such a large customer support staff on hand to handle high customer call volume, they can't afford to pay much money to each individual support rep. This means the people they hire for those jobs aren't exactly holding advanced degrees. It also means the people they hire for those jobs generally don't stick around very long. I lasted all of about 3 months on my first job as a technical support rep for a dial-up ISP. On my second job, as a customer support rep for a software-maker, I lasted about six months. And trust me, I'm not the exception. The turnover rate for these kinds of jobs is exceedingly high.

Why? Imagine being the most pissed-off you've ever been about any product or service you've ever bought. You call in to give customer support absolute hell. But because there are 500 other customers trying to call in and give customer support hell at the same time, you have to wait on hold for 10 minutes. Now you're REALLY pissed! By the time you actually get to hear a human voice, you're just bursting with fire and brimstone. Who gets to handle all that hellfire? Some guy just trying to get by, who has the unenviable position of having to handle about 100 to 150 more people just like you before he gets to go home and think about doing it all over again the next day. Most folks can't tolerate that kind of life for very long. Those that can-- or don't have any choice, like I did-- usually become pretty jaded, cynical and desensitized early on in the process.

That leaves you with basically two kinds of support reps: inexperienced, naive and sensitive (like I was); or jaded, cynical and desensitized. None of those qualities are really what you want in customer support representative.

Good point, I was just giving you crap because I'm naturally a jerk.

I don't know if DTV offers this, but DVR is the greatest thing I've ever had.

How does it compare to a new or used hooker?

...and yes, I do work for the cable company! :)

I had that figured out by your second paragraph ;)

That leaves you with basically two kinds of support reps: inexperienced, naive and sensitive (like I was); or jaded, cynical and desensitized. None of those qualities are really what you want in customer support representative.

I was jaded, cynical and desensitzed BEFORE I went into customer support.

I lasted all of about a year - had some good times with callers though. One woman asked me what in the world the red button (the mouse) in the middle of her IBM keyboard was and if it was safe to touch it. I warned her in a very serious, stern manner that the button was only to be pressed in extreme data management emergencies, as it was the self-destruct for her laptop.

To this day I'm not sure she ever caught on - she just used the trackpad instead ;)

Cable is a good example of why government having close oversight of an industry causes more problems than it is worth. A lot of the problems in the cable industry stem from badly conceived regulations and non-sensical enforcement. That being said I do get the distinct impression that cable companies are doing very little the remedy the situation.

Any company should want to compete in a market that allows them flexibility to achieve their best profits. Because they are essentially granted monopolies(you can call them what you want. they still get a market to themselves.) they have no incentive to change pursue change within the industry to create a more competitive market that would in turn reduce cost and increase customer satisfaction.

I do think a lot of the issues aren't in the cable companies control but I think what gets informed customer sos mad is that cable companies dont seem to care that everything is screwed up.

I work for Cablevision here on Long Island and I agree totally with what Joe said. Everyone hates the cable companies but no one understands what the cost's are to run one. VIVA CABLE!!

I work the The Cable Company and for $50 I'll juice ya up. Then maybe we could hang out, I'll buy you a Heini!

Well here ya go:

House OKs bill to make subscription TV market more competitive (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/09/MNGQPJBHQE1.DTL)