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 ·Comcast
| reply to Network Guy
Re: Someone needs to fire PR department said by Network Guy:Xfinity makes me think of the movie Toy Story, not a triple play bundle from a cable company. Stupid people So you would rather they do *nothing*?
I'm actually just hearing about the rebranding today, and it actually started internally *last year*; Xfinity was the internal name for the entire transition of which Project: Cavalry was a part (two other parts were the simplification of Comcast's product catalog at the CSR/CAE end and rollout of DOCSIS 3.0; like Cavalry, both are ongoing). Cablevision did the same thing with Optimum (did they come in for the same amount of scorn?) over a decade ago. Some of you remind me of so many ostriches (or worse, Luddites); you would much rather things not change (or worse, you'll actively resist a company's attempts AT change), even if it's nothing more than a rebranding.
I actually *like* the rebranding. |
AVonGaussPremium
join:2007-11-01
Boynton Beach, FL | reply to PGHammer
I'm personally indifferent to the name change, but I doubt readers here are the target audience for the name change effect. The name change by itself will do nothing but cost a lot of money, so I hope there is a lot more than just a name change in the works. The ironic part is my view of Comcast at the moment is rather positive for the most part, with my impression being the HSI and CDV are good products - the anchor in my opinion is the antiquated cable TV model still in use.
Without even changing their name, in my opinion, they could help their TV business compete by doing the following:
1) Simplify the TV pricing model nationwide. The customer service representatives get confused by it at times and most of the customers get blurry eyed trying to understand it.
2) Nationwide uniformity in billing practices and non-programming costs. Programming costs differ per market, but other costs such as receivers and when/if/how outlet fees are charged should be uniform across all markets. A receiver in South Florida costs absolutely no different than one for Kansas. If it does, you have a bigger problem.
3) Lower the receiver cost to be competitive with other providers - yes, I'm sure it looks good on the books, but you really want subscribers to have real receivers. If an executive does not understand this or why it is important, fire them.
4) Kill the triple/quad/duo plays. Take the lesson learned, people want more price competitive services and create a model that is sustainable. Right now, you acquire that triple play customer and you have just started the clock as to when the customer is going to be unhappy, perhaps extremely unhappy, when you have to decline to extend that offer for another year.
5) This isn't really going to help business a lot probably, but a personal pieve - what is so darn hard about maintaining a consistent national channel lineup? Every market may not have the same stations, I understand that, but they really need to have different channel numbers too?
6) This is a reoccurring theme, but you're a national company, to the customer - present yourself that way regardless of any internal organizational layers. I don't go to Google and type in Comcast of South Florida (or probably Palm Beach in my case), I type in "Comcast".
7) I haven't seen it personally, but based on my experience with service calls you really need to re-do the backend system that is used to manage trouble calls. The piece of paper I sign from the technician includes a SMS sized portion to describe the problem and where's the history? Yes, it will list the last couple of visits - the date of the visit - what about what was done, why, readings, etc, etc, etc... Maybe the techs have a real trouble ticket sheet I just never see and this could be ignored.
To get ahead of the game...
1) Break the mega tiers up, what is going to drive me to cancel the TV portion is I am quite simply tired of paying for crap I never watch or care about. Give a base package (locals, plus a sampling of others) at a reasonable rate and let me add groups of channels with similar interests at a decent rate. If a content provider wants in that base package, then they ought to price it accordingly. Keep the base package price consistent as you have with HSI and for the most part CDV even if that means moving a channel to a tier or dropping a greedy provider when necessary.
2) Standardize the set-top boxes used to a small number or even possibly consider a single standard design driven by Comcast. This can be looked at as an extreme expense or as a possible opportunity to both save costs long-term and also present more interactive services. Yes, people get content off the Internet and even will watch content on laptop screens if the price is right (read free or low cost) but what they really want is still to watch TV on that TV they purchased.
I could write more, but I've already rambled more than I intended, so I'll shut up now...  |
