Evaluating Customer Stupidity

As electric utilities and ISPs vie for long-distance customers, cable service providers resell wireless, and CLECs challenge the wired Baby Bells with wireless local loop, here's something to consider: How stupid do we think the customer is?

Not having conducted any quantitative research into the obtuseness factor of the consumer market, I'll admit that I don't have the answer to that question. For all I know, the success of convergence hinges on an uninformed public blinded by its desire for one invoice, one check, once a month.

Although I suspect that the readership here is of higher-than-average intelligence, thus skewing any results, let's go ahead and conduct our own multiple-choice investigation. Keep in mind that you're answering these questions as the average (well, let's say above-average) utility customer.

The scenario: MegaloTelecom-TVLink (a joint venture of NorthAmElectric and SunnyVision Cable) has been established to offer you more of what you've asked for in a telecommunications, entertainment and electric service provider. The age of bundled utilities has arrived. As a result of new FCC regulations governing a practice called slamming, we are required to ask a few simple questions about your future service with us.

ABOUT YOUR BILL Minimize hours of accounting drudgery! From now on, you need write only one check for everything (except your mortgage, gas, water and trash -- and we're investigating ways to provide those services soon). Check one:

* Plan A ("The Eyestrain"): MTTVL will detail all long-distance (5 pages average), local (9 pages), high-speed data (1 page), cable (1 page), wireless (4 pages) and electric (1 page) charges. Now isn't that easier?

* Plan B ("The Don't-Sweat-It"): Trust us to check the facts. You receive a postcard with your charges detailed by service type.

HERE TO SERVE YOU We're building a quality team of utility service experts, and we want your input. Check one:

* I prefer a single point of contact. Please match my unique utility needs with one customer service representative who has expertise in local and long-distance programs including value-added services, Internet troubleshooting, wireless voice and data, and cable entertainment options as well as what to do if a circuit-breaker blows.

* I'd prefer to talk to the experts who really have the answers. Send me your helpful booklet, the MTTVL Corporate Directory, which provides all of the phone numbers I need.

WE HATE TO SAY GOODBYE If you're ever unhappy with any of MTTVL's offerings, we want to make things right. In the unlikely case that you decide to terminate service, you must adhere to one of the following options:

* Your individual service rates are based on participation in the bundled program. Cancellation of any single service will really confuse the billing package we have developed for you. Please allow six to nine months to re-tailor your bundle.

Withdrawal from two or more services results in automatic termination of electric utility.

And please note: Excessive complaining about quality of wireless service may result in similar problems with cable TV access.

A NEED TO COMBINE "There's a tremendous intellectual need to combine all products into one. That's not where the market is," said Motorola's Jim Page at last month's PCS '98. He was talking specifically about wireless, but I think the same holds true for the public utility business at large.

At the same event, FCC Chairman William Kennard summarized the wireless industry's future success in three categories: competition, community and common sense. Fierce competition continues. At the same time, service providers are forced to adopt programs that benefit the community at large. But this push for convergence lacks common sense. Not only are convergent efforts tardy (if they were ever going to happen successfully), but they are motivated by the kind of greed that assumes customer stupidity: "If you've got your customer for more than one service, your customer is less likely to churn!"

Don't you think the customer has figured that out?