The Service-Oriented Enterprise: A Parable

Mona Shaw found just the tool to register her complaint about service, or lack thereof, at Comcast's Manassas office. (By Richard A. Lipski -- The Washington Post)


When customer service is critical to an organization's mission and sustainability, it ought to be managed as a commercial function, reporting to sales, marketing or the CEO. If organized as a cost center reporting to operations it is likely to starve and fail.

The case of Mona Shaw, as detailed in the Washington Post (Taking a Whack against Comcast) illustrates how a seemingly law-abiding citizen turned to vigilante justice at her local Comcast office to get the attention of a company whose practices echo Lily Tomlin's Ernestine: "We're the phone company. We don't care. We don't have to."

Ms. Shaw, 75, had put her trust in the local cable utility to provide her household with television, telephone and internet services. Her experience--missed appointments, unresponsive bureaucracy, incomplete installation, inaccurate and incomplete documentation and general inattentiveness--appears not to be unusual if one can believe the posts to website ComcastMustDie.com. After a series of attempts to get her service installed, Mrs. Shaw made a special trip to her local Comcast office to talk to a supervisor. Following a two-hour wait she was told that the supervisor had gone for the day. When she returned with a hammer a few days later and started smashing office equipment, she got the attention of Comcast, the local police and the national media.

Our own experience with Comcast revealed a number of structural issues, systems inadequacies, unfortunate policies and inappropriate behaviors that ought to trouble the company's stockholders. In brief, somehow the cable line to our home had been cut. Over a two-week period Comcast sent three technicians out to the house to examine our television sets before they sent anyone out who could reconnect the outside line. Oddly, none of the technicians seemed to have any of the details of the previous visits. In fact, neither of the first two techs turned in paperwork, and by Comcasts rules, which apparently are more hard-wired than the network, a lineman can not be dispatched until a home service tech notes that one is required. Customer service reps and their supervisors were empowered to do nothing more than offer apologies and a few free channels for a few months. Not surprisingly, getting a credit to the bill for the two weeks without service required another call to the accounting department.

However one feels about Mrs. Shaw's approach, my own experience with the company's record-keeping leads me to question Comcast's comment on the Shaw incident:

"Truly a unique and inappropriate situation," says Beth Bacha, a vice president for Comcast. She says company policy forbids disclosure of clients' records, but did say their files note that the service record wasn't exactly what Shaw has indicated. Besides, "nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior."

Comcast stockholders (stock ticker CMCSA) must be concerned that the company's local monopolies over wired television service are being threatened by AT&T's new IPTV offerings, which will provide digital television service to subscribers over the DSL network. It will be interesting to see how well AT&T can integrate its expanded offerings and service performance at the household level.

National Public Radio's Madeleine Brand interviewed Ms. Shaw. (Click hear to listen.) "Woman Hammers Comcast -- Over and Over"

See also Comcast's more detailed comments on their service in a letter by Comcast Senior Vice President of Customer Service, Rick Germano to Ad Age on December 17, 2007 (requires reqistration). That letter is reprinted by Bob Garfield in his December 12, 2007 post, Mea Culpa.

See The Essential Guide to Telecommunications by Annabelle Z. Dodd (Prentice Hall, 2005) for an overview of emerging and competing technologies in telecommunications

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