Steve Rose 

Comcastic: the excruciating customer services call that went viral

Steve Rose: Ryan Block called his internet provider to cancel his account, but the resulting conversation was painful to say the least – listen to the recording here
  
  

Comcast HQ in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Comcast HQ in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images Photograph: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“Your call may be recorded for training purposes.” There can be few more depressing phrases in modern life. In just two days, a recording of a call that’s likely to be used for training purposes for decades to come has been listened to more than 4m times.


It’s a conversation between tech journalist Ryan Block and Comcast, his internet provider. All Block and his wife wanted to do was cancel their subscription. The Comcast representative had other ideas. After 10 minutes, in which the rep had become “straight up belligerent”, Block began recording. What follows is eight excruciating minutes of Block repeatedly attempting to disconnect, and the Comcast representative demanding to know why he should want to.

“I’m just trying to figure out here what it is about Comcast’s service you’re not liking,” the rep demands. “This phone call is actually an amazing, representative example of why I don’t want to stay with Comcast,” Block replies. And so on, in myriad permutations. At one point Block even asks: “Are you punking me?”

Block subsequently posted the recording on Soundcloud, and the story has spread like wildfire across Twitter and news networks, immolating Comcast’s reputation in the process. “This was Guantanomo-Black-Ops-site-style verbal waterboarding!” wrote one Twitter sympathiser, while other comments praised Block’s restraint, and testified to similar experiences. Now Comcast has contacted Block directly to issue a cringe-inducing apology: “We are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.”


Block has kept the employee’s identity secret and asked that he keep his job, but the episode lifts the lid on the dynamics of “retention departments” – the places where calls from departing customers are routed. The “retention specialist” on the other end is invariably paid according to performance. The more customers they lose, the lower their pay packet. It’s a thankless, low-paid job that inevitably generates tedious, adversarial encounters and a general increase in global misery. If you feel sorry for the caller, imagine what it’s like for the guy on the other end having to do that all day, every day. As Block put it:

But now, at least, the issue is out in the open – thanks to the same technology that caused all that grief in the first place (with a little help from its human custodians, admittedly). And there’s nothing like really, really bad publicity on a global, viral scale to change company practice. What the episode also teaches us is how faceless corporate behemoths can have their weapons turned against them.

So next time, before you engage in phone combat with your truculent service provider, remember to state clearly and robotically: “Your call may be recorded for shaming purposes.”

 

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