Don’t ever let an email or voicemail go unanswered.

So, since Comcast (NasdaqGS: CMCSA) has always performed very well for me for both TV and Internet for many, many years now (and because I’ve heard really good things about their phone service), I decided to look at them as a replacement.

How They Lost a Longtime Customer

Strike 1 – June 16

Obviously since I would be using all three of the services they provide, it probably made sense to go with one of their Triple Play bundles.  Which one, though?

The “HD Starter Triple Play” includes “over 80 digital channels.”  The next level up, “HD Plus Triple Play,” includes “over 150.”  Wow!  That’s a big difference!  Let’s see what extra channels I get…

I click “See All Features.”  Hmmm.  Not there.

I click “Programming.”  Hmmm.  Not there either.

I spend 5 minutes searching the site and finally decide to enter Live Chat.  How hard can it be to get a simple list of channels in each package?

Strike 2 – June 16

I enter Live Chat and am immediately greeted by a nice customer service rep.  Things are looking up!

Ooops.  Not for long.

First, there’s clearly a language barrier, but it’s not terrible.  We can work through that.

Second, though, it quickly becomes apparent that she doesn’t know how to find which channels come in which package either.  She leads me through several steps that all have dead ends.

Finally, she signs off with “Shane, I am not quite sure what comes with each packages Shane [sic].”

Shouldn’t this be one of the most basic pieces of information?  Yet neither the website nor an actual customer service rep can tell me.

Strike 3 – June 16/17

Remembering a Twitter response that I got a few months ago, though, it hits me that there’s no doubt that @ComcastCares can answer an easy question like this!  Here’s our full exchange:

Me: @comcastcares Why isn’t it easy to compare channel lineup in Triple Play Starter vs Triple Plus? Customer svc. rep can’t even find it.  7:47 PM Jun 16th

Me: @comcastcares “Shane, I am not quite sure what comes with each packages Shane.”  7:48 PM Jun 16th

ComcastCares: @ShanePike It should be on Comcast.com select programming > TV Lineup. If incorrect let us know!  9:17 PM Jun 16th

Me: @comcastcares There’s nothing on that page that tells me which channels are in the Triple Play Starter package and which are in the Plus.  7:58 AM Jun 17th

I got nothing after that.

Strike 4 – June 19

After two full days of waiting for a response, I decide to try the email address posted on @ComcastCares’ Twitter profile.  I write:

The Triple Play Starter package includes “80 channels.”  The Triple Play Plus package includes “150 channels.”  Why is there nowhere that lists exactly which channels are included, though?  70 more channels is a huge difference.  Even the customer service rep couldn’t help me.  Here’s what she wrote in the online chat after much searching: “Shane, I am not quite sure what comes with each packages Shane.”

Thanks,
Shane

Here’s what I got back just an hour later:

Did you try the listing on Comcast.com.  Just enter your address.  Then select a package Type to view the channels.

https://www.comcast.com/Localization/Localize.ashx?Referer=%2fCustomers%2fClu%2fChannelLineup.ashx%3farea%3d0

Excellent response time, but yes, I had tried that.  Apparently she hadn’t.

Strike 5 – June 22

Monday I write back to her to let her know that there’s nothing labeled “Triple Play” on that page and send her a list of what is listed.  Maybe if she’s just picking from a list…

Here’s what I get back:

The triple play includes digital starter. if I’m not mistaken. On your statement there should be a section that list what tv service is included in your specific package.

Okay.  Number one, shouldn’t you have checked first?  And number two, I know what channels I currently get.  That’s not what I’m looking for.

Strike 6 – June 22

I start to get a little more assertive:

I don’t have the Triple Play currently; I’m looking into getting it.  It’s baffling to me why I can’t see a simple list of what 70 additional channels are in Triple Play Plus vs. Triple Play Starter.

Here’s what she sends (again, very promptly):

I will try to locate a listing for you and forward it to you by no later than tomorrow afternoon. Is that okay? Can you send me your full address?

She definitely gets big points for diligently (and quickly) trying to answer this question, but are things so screwed up at Comcast that she would have to mail me a channel listing?

Hit! – June 22

In the midst of that email thread, another customer service representative jumps in:

Most triple plays come with Digital Starter, but you can upgrade to any of the other cable packages.  Starter is the Digital Starter below and Plus is the Digital Preferred Plus.

Let us know if you have any further questions.

See!  That wasn’t hard!  Simple question.  Simple answer!

But why did it take 4 days and 4 different customer service reps to answer it?

Still, I have my answer so I place my order the next day for Triple Play Plus.  Installation on the 29th.  Just 6 days away!  Perfect.

Little did I know the worst was yet to come…

Strike 7 – June 26

It’s 3:45 on Friday afternoon — just 75 business minutes from my 8 am Monday install time — and I get this voicemail from Comcast:

AT&T wants to know if you want to keep your second number.  Call us back at 404-266-2278 and let us know.  Your installation has been rescheduled for July 9.

What the WHAT?!  You’re supposed to be here first thing Monday morning and you call at the last minute to let me know you won’t be?!

Strike 8 – June 26

No, I didn’t want to keep my second number.  If I did, I would have listed it on the form.  You’re going to go ahead and cancel my appointment before you confirm that?!

Strike 9 – June 26

And the soonest you have is two more weeks away?!

Strike 10 – June 26

I call back within 90 seconds to tell her, “No!  Don’t cancel!”  But did she give me a number where I could actually reach her?  No.

Well did she at least give me a number where I could reach the people who rescheduled my appointment?  No.

Instead, all I get is the main Comcast number and I have to figure out who can help me best since none of the options have anything to do with installation.

Strike 11 – June 26

I finally find my way to someone who lets me know that “It’s a great day at Comcast!!”

I’m glad it’s a great day somewhere, I guess.

He’s no help, though.  Even though they apparently just canceled my appointment, somehow that appointment is no longer available.  The soonest one is July 2.

“Is there nothing that I can do?”

“Hold on a second and let me check…”

On-hold music…

On-hold music…

On-hold music…

On-hold music…

I hang up because everyone is waiting in the car on me and I can’t wait any longer.  I’m sure hoping he gets this resolved and they show up Monday like they were supposed to.

Strike 12 – June 29

They didn’t.

Strike 13 – June 29

I jump back into Live Chat and make it clear to the nice customer service person (without being ugly) that I am Not Happy and that I might very soon be a Former Comcast Customer if they can’t get me on the schedule for the next day.

She “does understand me” but she “tried checking the soonest schedule and this is the soonest so far.”

I respond: I would suggest you get me to a supervisor who *can* help, or I may very soon be a former Comcast customer.

She replies: I understand, Shane. However, just to set your expectations, the supervisor will tell you the same thing as there is no sooner schedule.

I leave her with: There is always a way to get someone here sooner. It’s just not a high enough priority for you to retain a customer.

Why You Should Care

Why should you care about this if you’re not Comcast?  Three reasons.

First, acquiring a customer is very difficult and very expensive.  It’s way easier to keep a customer than to win a new customer to replace them.  The people doing customer service for your business should understand that, be able to identify when you’re on the verge of losing one, and know what to do to keep it from happening.  If you don’t, you could spend all your time getting people in the front door only to see them walk right out the back.

Second, there are all sorts of businesses where the vast majority of customers are unhappy with every business in it.  You’re always looking for a competitive edge, and that’s it!  Make your customers happy!  If you don’t know how, just read Mark’s blog.  This is a huge advantage!

Finally, guess what happy customers do.  They tell people!  Lots of people!  Especially these days.  When people have a good experience, they tell people about it.  If Comcast fixed some of these customer service problems, they might not even need Shaq and Ben Stein.  We’d all tell our Dish and DirecTV friends how crazy they are for not “Ditching the Dish.”

But look what we’re doing instead…

Virtually all the sites I’ve worked with have been U.S. sites that marketed nationwide, but I’ve worked with a handful who were only interested in marketing locally.  Here’s what I’ve learned with those clients.  Your mileage may vary, but I think at least some of it will be useful.  I’d love to hear any other suggestions (and corrections) you guys might have as, again, I’m not an expert here.

Not a Magic Potion

I talk to a lot of people who think the Internet is the answer to all their problems.  It’s not.  In fact, it may cost you way more than it could ever pay you back.  When you’re marketing locally, there are often way more effective ways to spend your time and money — especially if you’ve never done any Internet marketing before.  Don’t believe the hype.

Take Care of the Basics

That said, there’s no reason not to do some basic work to give yourself a decent presence online.

Have a Great Design

This is absolutely essential.  People will judge the excellence of your business by what your website looks like.  That’s probably not an accurate indicator even 50% of the time, but it’s what people do.  A great design can be had at 99designs for less than $1,000, so you have no excuse.

Submit to Local Business Directories

Go to Google and search for Atlanta dog sitters or any other local search you can think of.  Chances are, the first thing in the search results is Google’s “local business results.”  You want to be in that list and any other lists like it.  Three places you need to be sure to submit your business to:

• Google’s Local Business Center
• Bing’s Local Listing Center
• Yahoo! Local

Or you could just use GetListed.org.

Basic SEO

Be sure your site follows basic SEO principles.  It’s not rocket science.  You might not see much traffic from search engines, but you’re sure to see none if you don’t at least take care of the easy stuff.

Network… Network… Network…

I’m not talking about offline, though that’s a great strategy too.  I’m talking about online networking.

Blogs

Be a regular, quality commenter on blogs that a) are written by people in your geographic area or b) are about topics related to your business.  Use your real name and don’t comment just for the link.  Genuinely add something to the conversation.

Forums

Same thing here: find and participate in forums that are local and forums that are about your topic.  The advantage of forums over blogs is that you can automatically include a signature on each or your posts that tells who you are and advertises your business a little bit.

Here again, though, you have to genuinely add to the conversation.  Being a valuable member of the community is why you’re there. The publicity for your business is just a side effect of how well you do that.

Twitter

Join Twitter and start posting quality stuff.  Don’t post commercial stuff, and don’t reply to others with a sales pitch.  That will do far more harm than good.

Once you’ve been on for a week or two and have some quality stuff, start following people in your area.  You can find them using Twitter’s advanced search.

And one more time for good measure: add value to the conversation.  You’re not there to market your business.

Get Noticed

Everything up until now has allowed you to interact with people who were already looking for your business (or one like it) or who already had something in common with you.  If you limit yourself to only those people, though, you’re missing a huge segment of the population.

Be Newsworthy

What can you do that is newsworthy?  Newsworthy things get into the news (thus the name).  People read the news and find out about your business.  Pick up your local paper and see who’s in there and why they’re in there.

Be An Expert

Sites like Examiner.com give you a forum to be a local expert on a very wide range of topics.  Take advantage of that.

Or, better yet, write Examiner-worthy content on your own site.  That way you own the content and you get all the publicity (and links).  Select a topic from their application form and take a look at the questions they ask in order to get a feel for what kind of content really draws readers — then get writing!

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Finally, take a look at PPC advertising — particularly with AdWords (because of the much greater reach and much better tools).  For the people who are searching for what you’re offering, you can be front and center and control your costs down to the penny.  Start slow, though.  You can spend a lot of money in a very short amount of time if you’re not careful.  Once you get your legs under you, though, PPC is an incredible tool.

Yes, I know.  All the cool kids use Gmail.  I use both, but I still much prefer Yahoo! Mail.  Maybe it’s the more traditional method of replying to emails and tracking threads.

The reason I wouldn’t want to live without it is because it’s so great to have what is essentially a throw-away email address.  I never publicly give out anything other than my Yahoo! address because I don’t want my personal email addresses overwhelmed with spam.  Yahoo! can take all the spam that anyone can throw at it (and I get a lot) without cluttering your inbox with it.  And if that ever changes, I can delete the address and move on with little pain.

LogMeIn is absolutely invaluable to me.  Think GoToMyPC, but 100% free.  Wherever I am, I can work as if I’m right at my PC at home with nothing more than a web browser.

This should go without saying.  I left IE years ago.  If there’s ever anything that requires IE, I just use the fantastically useful IE Tab.

WordPress can be used for so many things other than blogging.  That so powerful a package is available absolutely free is one of the greatest things about the Internet.

It’s not perfect, and I know some people refuse to use it because they don’t want to clue The Google into what they’re doing, but Analytics is amazingly powerful and useful for a free package — plus the stats are invaluable when it comes to selling a site.

I know most people like to keep their stats close to the vest, but I believe in full disclosure.  If you’re building a site of real value, you should be willing to be transparent about just how much value is there.  Quantcast makes that easy, plus you get some really cool stats on the demographics of your site’s visitors that I haven’t seen anywhere else.

So much of success is based on knowledge, so you need to always be reading — books, magazines, and blogs.  Nothing makes blog reading as easy as Google Reader.

Google Voice (née GrandCentral) is huge for me.  I work out of my house, so it was always great to have a public phone number that I could give out to just anyone and then control if they could actually make one of my phones ring or not.  I would have recommended it for nothing more than that.

When they launched the new site, though, they also added voicemail transcripts (HUGE) and the ability to actually call out with your number, not just receive calls (even MORE huge).  Google Voice may be my favorite thing on this list.

I’m normally a command-line guy, but sometimes you just need a visual FTP client.  FileZilla is great for this, plus it’s actually better than applications that I used to pay for.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve needed to convert something to a PDF.  CutePDF makes that easy.  You just print whatever it is to the CutePDF Writer.  Done.  The PDFs are actually just one big image — not true, searchable text — but it’s still tremendously useful.

This is the only one on the list that isn’t technically free (the free version is only for non-commercial use), but I’m a huge fan of AVG.  Does everything you need it to do without acting like your computer’s last hope and getting in front of everything you do like I’ve seen Norton and McAfee do.  I just want something running in the background protecting me from problems.  That’s exactly what AVG does, and it’s why I gladly pay for it.

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Alright, what have I missed?  Anything on this list that you use?  Anything that you didn’t know about?

Part of that is recognizing when a project is an outlier and will take a disproportionate amount of time and effort to be a success compared with other projects that I’m working on.  I have one of those now, so I’m looking to pass it along to someone who can make it fly.

The site is a social news site for healthcare professionals, built on a customized version of Pligg.  It has an outstanding domain name, professional design, established base of 1,000 registered users, and voting buttons on 20 different healthcare sites already — including the very largest nursing blogs and one of the largest physician blogs.

I’m looking for offers of at least $10,000, and for that you’ll get personal support from me, all the website files, the design, and the domain name.  This is a business where the really hard work of establishing a strong foundation has been done.  Now it just needs someone who can take it to the next level.

If you’re interested, please contact me for a full prospectus.