Boy Did I Get a Wrong Number!

By the PHANTOM

That was the name of this Bob Hope flick of the mid-’60s, in which Bob calls his wife on the phone, but accidentally gets a French movie star who has escaped to the U.S. As only Hope can do it, one thing leads to another and Hope finds himself in a hilarious pickle. Well, the movie was kind of a symbol of a much less entertaining goof I made last year. It was about nine months back that I was urging you to pat yourselves on the back for shepherding the industry through “the worst, and officially the only, pandemic in a century.” Can you believe, I actually spoke of the pandemic in the past tense? Hasn’t exactly worked out like I thought it would. I hadn’t anticipated the emergence of a couple of Greek letters, one engineers use to represent a change, and one this engineer had never used before, about the same as the modern “O” in our alphabet.

So as of this writing we’re still in the pandemic battle. Are we ever gonna get rid of this thing? Beats the heck out of me. Some people are saying that we may learn to live with it, just like we have learned to live with colds and noisy neighbors.

Developments are still surprising people. One of them is that there is a drop-off in the rate that folks are signing up for new high speed Internet connections. Duhhh, do you think you can always keep signing up folks at the pandemic-fueled rate of the last year? Once you get just about everyone signed up and folks have sort of gotten used to the “new normal,” whatever that means, where are you going to find new customers? We just read this morning of one poor schmuck whose stock had fallen after reports circulated that he was not likely to sign up as many new customers in the next year as he had signed up in the last year. The writer seemed perplexed that he couldn’t keep up the pace after most all of the customers had been spoken for.

So we enter once again a period in which you have some low level of churn from people hopping from one data provider to another, maybe looking for a better deal or maybe taking advantage of multiple “first year introductory” offers from competing carriers. There are a few new people entering the data market as they move out of their parents’ house and set up their own, and there are a few people dropping service, either from moving or getting too old to need their own service. It tends to become more of a static or slightly growing market, at least until some new event comes along to change behavior.

How do we handle this “new normal” (assuming we’re entering such a stage now)?

Well, here is where the rubber meets the road, or maybe where the photon meets the fiber. Some providers will do better than others, and you want to make sure you are on the “better” side. Fortunately it’s a great technology hand that we’ve drawn, with advanced DOCSIS and fiber at our disposal. But that is not enough in and of itself. The average Joe out there couldn’t care less about our technology. All he wants is fantastic service at a great price. “Better, faster, cheaper,” as they say. That’s how we keep wind in our sails, with good, old fashioned competition. We’ve gotta think every day how to give our customers the greatest experience they can ever hope for, and then some. Be your own toughest competitor!

No matter what your job, you can do your part to make a better experience for each customer, so that they don’t have a good reason to look toward the competition for service. If your job has you directly contacting the customer, then you ARE the cable company to them. Show them that they are the most important customer your company has. Make sure they have a good, no, a great, image of your company, through courteous fast service for whatever you provide. If you don’t contact the customer directly, rest assured that in some way shape or form you still can influence him to stay with your outfit. Every connection made is the best you’ve ever done, improving system reliability. Equipment is installed so that it is easy and fast to service and runs cool, minimizing failure and making recovery faster when it does fail. You get the idea: Figure out how to do your job better, and the customer gets the benefit, making it harder for him to leave you.

Remember the two rules of customer service: Rule #1: the customer is always right. Rule #2: if the customer is wrong, see rule #1.

The Phantom
the.phantom@youwontfindmeanywhere.com

You never know when The Phantom is standing right beside you. Sometimes he is in a meeting with you or walking the floor at your favorite cable show. Sometimes he’s hanging with the suits and other times with the front liners. But be assured, The Phantom sees all, The Phantom knows all and, most importantly, The Phantom tells all.

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