How to Use an Agent to Quit Your Cable Service
Don Peppers
Customer experience expert, keynote speaker, business author, Founder of Peppers & Rogers Group
When a customer calls in to the service line at a company, the hassle can be enormous. And when the customer calls in to reduce or cancel their service, a lot of companies make these particular kinds of transactions especially difficult to execute.
Subscription companies often aren’t eager to simplify any process that might involve giving up a profit, so they put all sorts of bureaucratic obstacles in front of customers to make sure it’s not easy. These obstacles might involve requiring needless documentation, or transferring the call to another department, or using strong selling messages to try to dissuade the customer from quitting the service or reducing their business in the first place.
I once talked with a former data executive at an online subscription company renowned for bullying customers who wanted to unsubscribe from their service. She confided to me that one of the company’s tactics was actually to disconnect a customer’s call as soon as the subject of quitting their subscription came up! (She soon left the company.)
What if you could hire an agent to call in to a company on your behalf, just to avoid this kind of hassle? Your hired agent would endure all the bureaucratic hassles and obstacles involved in making the call, navigating through the voice-mail robot, sitting on hold while waiting for a real person, and then listening to and rebuffing all the company’s counter-arguments.
Well that’s exactly what Airpaper now offers to customers. A startup trying to make money by helping people deal with highly bureaucratic or cumbersome processes, Airpaper plans to take on tasks ranging from registering for a parking permit in San Francisco to procuring a visa to travel to China.
But apparently the very first (and so far only) service that Airpaper offers is helping Comcast customers disconnect their service. And they charge $5 to do this. I kid you not.
This year Comcast topped the list of ten “Customer Service Hall of Shame” companies put together by the financial news and opinion company 24/7 Wall Street. And disconnecting from their service has been known to involve arguing with representatives who will doggedly try to persuade their customers not to go. One exasperating example of such an argument was posted online by a tech journalist last year.
Well, now you can subcontract this task to Airpaper for $5, and your “agent” will contact the cable company on your behalf. I predict demand will soon rise to apply this disconnection convenience to a number of other difficult companies.
(Disclaimer: I am a Comcast subscriber myself, and I’ve had no problems with the service.)
Seattle
9 年Nice.
If you really want to cancel a service that you are not contractually bound to: 1. Call and state cancel service on xxx date to a representative - it is recorded. 2. Don't pay until you get your final bill based on above date of cancellation. 3. Dispute anything billed beyond date of cancellation in a single call (recorded). Basically, keep the ball in their court! Why should you have to do all of the work when you are the actual paying customer? If you are in a contract, well then, that is a different story all together...
Marketing Manager @ 18x Diamond Certified Residential Contractor
9 年Customer Service is a CREATED PERCEPTION by many companies...
I show you how to maximize returns and reduce taxes by using creative methods such as installment sales for notes and dividing land into smaller parcels to increase yield. Have a need then let's talk.
9 年Kind of like hiring someone on Fiverr. Which by the way I have good luck with.