How not to do customer service: A lesson from Comcast after aggressive clip goes viral
A business which makes its money from the internet might be expected to understand how the internet works – specifically, that customers like to complain on social. Not Comcast, apparently.
The US internet service provider has been doing its best to fight an internet firestorm after a recording of a call between an unnamed employee and a customer went viral.
The employee was recorded repeatedly and aggressively questioning Ryan Block, an AOL staffer and former tech blogger, about his reasons for wanting to cancel his subscription to the service, and asking: "Help me understand why you don't want fast internet" and "I'm trying to help you. You're not letting me help you."
In the eight-minute clip, which Block began recording 10 minutes into the call, the Comcast representative continually harrasses him to tell him why, in response to his repeated requests to cancel.
The responses sound like they are straight out of a training handbook for how not to do customer service (and the incident is likely to be a staple of them in the future).
Listen to the so-crazy-it’s-funny clip:
Comcast apologised in a tweet to Block and said it was embarrassed about what happened.