Similarly, as companies do roll out new services, they need to prepare consumers for what might be unusually long installation times, Doriot said. While AT&T and Verizon have both said they are working to reduce installation times, they remain higher than normal, often because technicians are required to do some internal wiring to get all TVs, PCs and other devices hooked up within the home.

“Some of these installations are taking eight to 10 hours,” Doriot said. “Are consumers prepared for a technician to be in their home that long? I think it is much less of a problem if they have set the expectation for the customer, which is easy enough to do by building a phone script into the ordering process. The agent could have the consumer walk around to see what kind of outlets they have and make an educated guess on the ordering end. Then the agent can say, ‘We may need your whole day here.’ I don’t think any of them do that.”

Instead, Doriot said, too often orders are taken at one call center for everything from basic phone service to high-speed Internet to IPTV. “Service providers have not thought things through well enough or slowed themselves down enough to do a good job of this,” he said. “A realistic expectation would go a long way. Do you want someone in your house for eight hours on a work day? Probably not, but at least if you are warned in advance, you can be prepared.”


The cable industry isn’t doing any better, Doriot added. A year ago, his analysis of research data showed the telecom industry had a great opportunity to recapture customers who were disillusioned by the customer service they were getting from their cable company. But both cable companies and telcos are in such a rush to sell bundles, they are overlooking some customer service basics, Doriot said. When sales peoples’ incentives are based almost totally on final sales, some steps are being skipped over, and that can come back to bite the service provider.

“They need to stop long enough to consider the customer’s viewpoint here,” Doriot said. “How are they going to interpret the behavior you are going to exhibit or the services you are going to push on them? They need to build systems or communications plans from the customers’ perspective so you don’t confuse or tick off your customer base. That does require more planning or time out on occasion or piloting things in a more systematic way. It may seem to cost more and slow things down but to the extent that they do it, there’s a longer term sustainable impact. Better customer service can positively and significantly influence the company’s financial performance.”