COMCASTrophic (n): Poor “denial-of-quality-service” to paying customers. Disregard for customer’s time and patience.

Here’s my 2-part rant. Customer Pain & the Marketing takeaway.

Customer Pain:
Against my better instincts, I decided to upgrade to Comcast’s Digital Silver Package! And ended up wasting my entire Saturday afternoon, trying to jostle my schedule to accomodate three visits by two technicians and the problem is FINALLY resolved. Eight hours of my weekend wasted trying to get my cable fixed!

The Marketing takeaway:
1. Customer Touchpoints: All points of product/service delivery need to be as perfect & customer-friendly as possible, because your brand is only as good as your customer service rep or technician. If they screw up, basically YOUR BRAND is screwed. After a little investigation I figured out that the technicians who visited me yesterday were contractors who’re paid by the # of jobs and the in-house technician today was paid by the hour and so was willing to spend an hour trying to sort things out.

As Hank Brigman, President & CEO of TouchPoint Metrics rightly points out:

Whether an ad, Web site, sales person, store or office, Touchpoints are important because customers form perceptions of your organization and brand based on their cumulative experiences.

For an introductory & fascinating look at Customer Touchpoint Management or CTM, take a read of this iMedia article: “Defining Customer Touchpoints“.

2. Match the Hype w/ Service: Hiring the best minds in advertising and delivering crappy customer service does not further your brand image but rather works against it. Esp. since these customer touchpoints are priceless in stressing the quality of the brand and maintaining that relationship.

Advertising’s gotta evolve. Keep it real in your advertising and your audience is going to respect and trust you for it. Look no further than the recent spate of Dove ads that emphasize reality with their self-explanatory “Campaign for Real Beauty“.

Summary: Best Advertising Campaign of the Year, One Comcastic Exec, and a sampling of 1.06 million + 1.8 million + …. disgruntled users (on Google alone). And you call that Comcastic!

My $.02: Cut the hype, Walk the Talk, and Start a Real Conversation w/ Customers.

(Hint: Start a Business Blog in each of your service areas/zip codes)