Back when I worked at Convergys in 2005, I was a customer service rep for AT&T Wireless during the transition to Cingular. Our calls were nightmarish and customers gave very poor reviews of service since so many issues were just FUBAR. But in the call center floor right next to ours were the reps who dealt with the Charter Communications account.
At the time, Charter was just a regional cable provider centered, I think, in the Midwest. From the tales of terror in the lunch room cafeteria, they had it so MUCH worse. For us on the AT&T side, we at least had the well-known and trusted name of what was then one of the foremost companies in the country. But Charter, then, and still to this day, are known for some really abhorrent customer service practices, and our fellow Convergys reps felt the full brunt of it with each and every bitter call.
But arguably, over the subsequent decade, the dour reputation of Charter, somewhat due to it being a smaller company and itself becoming absorbed into others, was absolutely dwarfed by the Big Bad Daddy of them all, Comcast. There are literally thousands of social media posts, forum dialogues, transcripts, audio and video recordings. etc. of incredibly abusive and downright evil practices of Comcast as implemented upon their customer base by their customer service personnel.
Yet this afternoon, I called about my own account with them and, guess what? It wasn't only NOT horrible, it was actually quite positive! A far cry even from my spoofed experience I created a YouTube video on (that went somewhat viral, BTW) that was my call into Brighthouse Communications.*
(*Then a spin-off of Time-Warner Cable and now a rebranded division of Spectrum, a Charter Communications brand.)
Did any of this have anything directly to do with my recent resignation from Results CX working on the Hulu account? Not really, other than I'm more-than-ever concerned with minimizing my monthly expenses as much as possible now, again, having no income. Although, reviewing both my past experience and the current state of customer service, in particular in the television provider field, reinforced my decision to quit even more. The interactions I got from my very short stint this week were mostly positive but there was the implication of impatience. Plus, add along the aforementioned attitudes of my bosses, coaches, co-workers and what would eventually have been all the multitudes of angry customers feeling like their precious fucking TV was being messed with, I think I most definitely took the right path, for all people around me, my liver and my very sanity.
Here's a little video I made of my (unexpectedly) pleasant call I had today with a Comcast customer service rep: