Video sales may stumble on customer service woes

Telecom service providers in a rush to sell new video services could stumble badly if they don’t work harder to properly set customer expectations and do a better job of helping customers make the transition, a customer service consultant is warning.

Phil Doriot, partner at CFI Group and head of its telecom practice, sees customers being disillusioned at the outset by things such as eight-hour installation processes. Unless telecom players begin to share more information with their customers to better set expectations, they may find consumers less thrilled by the new product offerings, Doriot said. The same problems can plague the deployment of smart phones and iPhone-like devices in the wireless industry, Doriot added.

“The telecom industry in general continues to go in a direction that is not particularly pleasing for their customers,” Doriot said. As technology gets more complex, he added, customers need more assistance and less confusion – and they may not be getting either one.

Doriot personally witnessed the kind of disappointment other consumers have suffered when AT&T began installing equipment to support its U-verse IPTV service in his Atlanta neighborhood, and then abruptly stopped.

“We were supposed to get U-verse – AT&T came and dug holes in my neighborhood and then disappeared,” Doriot said. “I’m just a naïve little customer looking out my front window, like everyone else, and when I saw them digging, I went out and asked a technician in front of my house what was going on. He told me the neighborhood was on the map to get the IPTV product by fourth quarter 2007.”

That never happened, Doriot said, because, as it turned out, some older areas of the neighborhood were not cost-effective for a fiber retrofit. But meanwhile, a lot of customers were waiting in vain without any information from AT&T. “I’m sure a lot of people like me walked out or called,” he said. “We are still kind of waiting.”

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