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Cable Customer Service Examined

Comcast and its cable brethren already have a bad customer service reputation. In fact, Congess held hearings with cable execs! What did they find?

Cable is over-charging customers and training agents to avoid accepting cancellations (following the AOL procedural manual probably). Plus cable is tied with health insurance companies for the worst customer service. And yet people still buy from them. (Case in point, I have Bright House or Charter/Spectrum now.)

“In its latest competition report, the FCC estimated that about 61 percent of U.S. homes only have the choice of one cable company or the satellites if they want to watch television.” [source]

Now that they are consolidating and debt is increasing, cost cutting will become Job 1.

DSLR has a story about Altice’s first moves as owner of Cablevision. There is going to be some cost cutting because “Altice has told New York regulators it won’t reduce customer-facing jobs for four years,” per the WSJ. Altice is taking over Cablevision just six months after taking over SuddenLink – spending $26.8 Billion to buy the two MSOs.

“We believe that investing in service and delivering a best-in-class service experience is the most important factor in driving long-term customer growth,” testified John Keib, Time Warner’s former executive vice president and chief operating officer for residential services. You want to believe them, but since FCC or Congress haven’t fined them, why would they fix anything? You only fix what affects your Wall Street numbers.

Rackspace is offering fanatical support for AWS. Maybe companies will pop up to offer fanatical support for resold cable modems.

Interesting side notes:

Frontier and Charter are suing each other in Connecticut for false advertising!

Disclosure from ARS: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns about 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.

Tags: cable, cableco, congress, customer service, politics
Related tags: customer service, advance publications, fanatical support, cable, customer, service

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Related Entries

Europe Invades American Cable – May 21, 2015

A Big Shift Coming to Telecom – Jul 05, 2016

Game Over: Comcast and Amazon! – Mar 21, 2016

The Butterfly Effect of Cord Cutting – Nov 30, 2015

TV is Moving to the Internet – Oct 27, 2015

The Cable Triumverate – Oct 04, 2015

The Cable Dominance Push – Sep 19, 2015

The WalMart Effect on the Duopoly – Jun 17, 2015

3 Cable Stories That Are Good Reads – Jun 02, 2015

Phone Companies, Channel and Other News – May 29, 2015

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July 6, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

Cable Customer Service Examined

Comcast and its cable brethren already have a bad customer service reputation. In fact, Congess held hearings with cable execs! What did they find?

“In its latest competition report, the FCC estimated that about 61 percent of U.S. homes only have the choice of one cable company or the satellites if they want to watch television.” [source]

Now that they are consolidating and debt is increasing, cost cutting will become Job 1.

Rackspace is offering fanatical support for AWS. Maybe companies will pop up to offer fanatical support for resold cable modems.

Interesting side notes:

Frontier and Charter are suing each other in Connecticut for false advertising!

Disclosure from ARS: The Advance/Newhouse Partnership, which owns about 13 percent of Charter, is part of Advance Publications. Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica.

Tags: cable, cableco, congress, customer service, politics
Related tags: customer service, advance publications, fanatical support, cable, customer, service

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Twitter Profile

Related Entries

Europe Invades American Cable – May 21, 2015

A Big Shift Coming to Telecom – Jul 05, 2016

Game Over: Comcast and Amazon! – Mar 21, 2016

The Butterfly Effect of Cord Cutting – Nov 30, 2015

TV is Moving to the Internet – Oct 27, 2015

The Cable Triumverate – Oct 04, 2015

The Cable Dominance Push – Sep 19, 2015

The WalMart Effect on the Duopoly – Jun 17, 2015

3 Cable Stories That Are Good Reads – Jun 02, 2015

Phone Companies, Channel and Other News – May 29, 2015

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July 6, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

UC Tidbits #2441

So many pieces of news about the UCaaS and UC&C segment that I just wanted to cover the highlights (with links) for your perusal.

New ReportsWeb Global UC&C study:

“The global market is gradually experiencing the transition from legacy telephony services and messaging platforms to new UC&C services and platforms. We expect more number of global deployments of UC&C in coming years, driven by growing popularity of applications, such as rich collaboration, mobility, video conferencing, and telepresence.” Key word is gradually.

“Business process integration and social media communications have become the primary focus of enterprises. Companies seek low-cost solutions, such as BYOD and web real-time communications (WebRTC) to deploy UC&C solutions.” BPI or BPaaS – it isn’t stand alone products. It will be an integrated platform to run business process that happen to include comms. (At least at the enterprise level)

And of course the growth guess: “Global unified communication and collaboration market expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.3% from 2016-2020,” says a report by Technavio.

The news seems to miss that the different sectors of the marketplace are migrating from legacy for different reasons – like cheap dial-tone replacement, simul ring, etc.

The market is buzzing with Skype Integration news from RingCentral, MegaPath, BitTitan, even Yealink and others.

Master agencies are seeing a way to grab the attention of Cisco partners. First, AVANT teamed with Cisco to accelerate sales for Cisco Powered Providers.

Next, MicroCorp amped up its “relationship with IntelePeer, in order that certified Cisco partners can earn monthly recurring commissions on voice services for those selling the Spark and Meraki MC platforms.” Cisco wants partners to get used to selling cloud and voice, because Spark, ya know.

RingCentral teamed up with Google for Work to chase enterprise. Having also integrated with Skype, RC is hedging bets or wants to be all things to all people, which never works.

Windstream, after showcasing Mitel and Avaya, teams with BroadSoft to bring customized Virtual PBX to the hospitality market. So WIND has Mitel, Avaya, BSFT, Allworx and Metaswitch. Yeah, that is cost effective.

As if there weren’t a large number of service providers in the space of UC&C – from Fuze, RC, the Cloud Comm Alliance members to the LECs to the other numerous ITSPs. Now softswitch vendors have decided to become service providers, too. Broadsoft BroadCloud; GenBand Nuvia; Alianza Cloud Voice Platform; and Metaswitch MetaSphere Cloud Services are all competing with their customers and making it easier for new entrants into the already bloody ocean of Hosted VoIP. (Now even enterprises can be an ITSP).

Not to be left now. Cisco and Microsoft have jumped into the fray to compete for UC&C customers with Spark, HCS, Office365+Skype4B. The PBX vendors like NEC, Unify, Avaya and Mitel are in the mix and feeling the pinch to have a cloud component. Not only a cloud component but contact center too. Oh, how complex we must make it.

Everyone is pushing up-market, but Cisco recently did a study on small businesses. The study found “on the IT front, a majority of small companies (86 percent) are considering the use of cloud-based unified communications (UC) systems as a possible solution to their communications needs, replacing their more traditional premises-based counterparts.”

Yealink has phones for Skype4B. One of the reasons that you see Jabra, Plantronics and Sennheiser at VoIP shows is because bluetooth headsets are becoming common in the call center space and more UC&C users are choosing to dispatch the deskphone.

“Yet unified communications as a packaged service, despite its relative maturity, remains far less than universally adopted, particularly outside of larger enterprise accounts. A recent survey of more than 400 enterprise and SMB IT decision-makers, performed by UBM Tech for XO Communications, found that only one-third of organizations had fully embraced UC. On the other side of the spectrum, a separate survey performed by Osterman Research for ConnectSolutions found that about as many IT decision-makers (26 percent) and business deci-sion makers (39 percent) are either “somewhat” or “very fearful” of migrating to UC. Nearly half of those surveyed admitted that they don’t fully understand the full impact UC would have on their organizations. These fears and trepidations come despite the fact that 71 percent of those surveyed by Osterman believe there are “significant” or even “enormous” benefits that can be realized from the deployment of UC.” This is a part of
a nice piece that Martin Vilaboy at Channel Vision magazine wrote on UCaaS demand and adoption.

The role of SD-WAN in UCaaS HERE.

Good read on Churn from a former BSFT exec on LINKEDIN.

A look at UCaaS service delivery by AVNET.

Tags: broadsoft, cisco, deployment, hosted pbx, metaswitch, microsoft, SDN, smb, UC, UX, WAN, windstream
Related tags: mitel avaya, cisco partners, decision makers, business process, makers percent, cloud

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It Will Be an Outsider That Kicks Your Butt – Feb 22, 2016

Cisco to Spark Some BroadCloud Competition – Dec 28, 2015

UCaaS Tidbits #2440 – Jul 05, 2016

Selling UCaaS as a Solution with Velis4 – Jun 17, 2016

The Gist of ITEXPO – Jan 29, 2016

Uh Oh, Microsoft is Closing the Gaps – Jan 15, 2016

Unified Hope for UCaaS – Dec 16, 2015

As A Service – Oct 09, 2015

What the Studies About UC Say – Aug 25, 2015

UC Trends in Q1 2015 – Mar 24, 2015

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July 5, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

UC Tidbits #2441

So many pieces of news about the UCaaS and UC&C segment that I just wanted to cover the highlights (with links) for your perusal.

New ReportsWeb Global UC&C study:

And of course the growth guess: “Global unified communication and collaboration market expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.3% from 2016-2020,” says a report by Technavio.

The news seems to miss that the different sectors of the marketplace are migrating from legacy for different reasons – like cheap dial-tone replacement, simul ring, etc.

The market is buzzing with Skype Integration news from RingCentral, MegaPath, BitTitan, even Yealink and others.

Master agencies are seeing a way to grab the attention of Cisco partners. First, AVANT teamed with Cisco to accelerate sales for Cisco Powered Providers.

RingCentral teamed up with Google for Work to chase enterprise. Having also integrated with Skype, RC is hedging bets or wants to be all things to all people, which never works.

The role of SD-WAN in UCaaS HERE.

Good read on Churn from a former BSFT exec on LINKEDIN.

A look at UCaaS service delivery by AVNET.

Follow me:

Twitter Profile

Related Entries

It Will Be an Outsider That Kicks Your Butt – Feb 22, 2016

Cisco to Spark Some BroadCloud Competition – Dec 28, 2015

UCaaS Tidbits #2440 – Jul 05, 2016

Selling UCaaS as a Solution with Velis4 – Jun 17, 2016

The Gist of ITEXPO – Jan 29, 2016

Uh Oh, Microsoft is Closing the Gaps – Jan 15, 2016

Unified Hope for UCaaS – Dec 16, 2015

As A Service – Oct 09, 2015

What the Studies About UC Say – Aug 25, 2015

UC Trends in Q1 2015 – Mar 24, 2015

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Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

July 5, 2016 , On Rad's Radar

A Big Shift Coming to Telecom

Our sector – telecommunications – of the marketplace is about to undergo a change. Yeah, we have been in a shift for a good while, but more is coming.

We went from TDM to VoIP to Hosted PBX to UCaaS to UC&C.

We went from T1 to cable broadband to Gigabit.

The consolidation of cable will tighten the market in 15 to 18 months. (It takes that long for integrations to take hold.) Now if the integrations are not a big fail, then cable – New Charter/Spectrum, Comcast, Altice – will ratchet up the competition in the small business market for triple play.

“Cable/MSOs are the fastest growing providers in the business services market, with much of their recent success in the mid-size business space,” reported MarketResearch. Think about this: the mid-sized space – not just small business.

Of the $104 Billion businesses spent in total on telecom services in the US in 2014, AT&T had the largest share (33%), followed by Verizon (22%) and the rest of the LEC band of brothers (Level3, CenturyLink, Sprint, Windstream). MSOs have more than $12 Billion of that pie, with the lion share – $5B – going to Comcast coffers alone.

SIP anyone? 54% of business cable subscribers also use cable for voice, the report states. That means less than half the businesses using cable are buying voice from another provider. That is a shrinking opportunity for the 2000 Hosted VoIP players in the US.

“Last year the Cable/MSO share of businesses with 100+ employees rose to 17%, reports TNS. “The main driver behind this growth was a heavier reliance on internet service and the need for greater bandwidth; two areas where larger cable providers excel.”

Telco broadband has not kept pace with cable in speed and price. Egged on by Google Fiber – and a declining market share of businesses – ILECs have started tentatively rolling out faster fiber based broadband – 100MB to 1Gigabit depending on the ILEC (Windstream versus CenturyLink or AT&T).

The ILECs have made a tremendous CAPEX investment in TV – just as OTT TV is hitting its stride. They spent big to supply triple-play, when they could have spent the money on FTTx projects for faster bandwidth. That was just uncreative thinking.

All of this will stress ILECs, some CLECs and even some OTT VoIP players. When cable takes about 35% of the SMB market, there won’t be much room left for anyone else.

In March of 2016, “During the fourth quarter, Verizon reported that total broadband connections dropped to 2.1 million as it lost more DSL subscribers after losing 94,000 DSL customers,” according to Fierce media.

Verizon is betting on mobile ads (AOL acquisition and Yahoo! bid); 5G fixed wireless broadband replacement; and IoT (including connected cars) to add to its coffers.

A point I make often is that the debt that the ILECs carry is crippling with flat revenues.

[photo credit]

Think about this: Vonage has taken $800M worth of voice revenue. Twilio’s gets $240 million in voice revenue. This is revenue that typically would go to Level3, Verizon and AT&T (and it probably does terminate to them for a percentage of that money).

WebRTC is being used in so many apps to allow for video and voice calls – bypassing the traditional voice network.

Then, we have Cable is beating Telco in bandwidth. Always has in fact. Gigabit fiber will be the real winner if the telcos decide to pursue that route for real (versus in just press releases).

We have telco getting in the data center – and now we have telcos looking to get out of that business without embarrassment.

There is a Talent problem, too. There are too many musical chairs. Not only can’t you set a strategy when you shift personnel that much, you can’t execute on a strategy either if the cogs are constantly being replaced. (And I don’t mean cogs in a bad way. It takes a lot of talent to keep the wheels spinning.) The talent drain has also resulted in a domain knowledge drain as well.

Let’s face it, for many companies that started with an A Team, they are now running with a B or C team. Why? As Steve Jobs said, “A Players hire A Players, B players hire C players. Get it?”

People move from company to company. The same routine and team may work once, but it is not often a repeatable experience. There’s a reason the Cavaliers recruited LeBron back to Cleveland – and didn’t hire the whole Miami Heat starting line up.

The telco organizations harbor stifling factors: monopoly mindset, legacy systems, federal accounting and regulations, departmental silos and competing internal interests. These factors do not lend themselves to attracting more A Players.

There is also a surprising lack of talent for the new services and skills needed for omni-channel marketing; omni-channel customer service; cloud, managed services, migration and integration. This lack of skill will choke growth and brands.

We see outages and hacks every day. The worry is on getting a customer. There is little concern for retaining that customer; data security; or a resilient network (4 Nines is good enough).

Many people are choosing smaller organizations to work for. The reasons are numerous but I would think that impact and voice play a major part. In smaller businesses, any one person can have a voice and can see the impact that they are having on customers, culture, and the company. That isn’t the case in larger organizations.

Flat organizations (and smaller companies) have less meetings, fewer silos, maybe more transparent governance.

Most financial experts are predicting an economic slump in 2017. It won’t matter which candidate wins the Presidential election, a slump is coming. We have under-employed; increasing number of freelancers; and a stagnant wage. None of these components inspire an economic engine that is fueled by consumer spending.

ARPU for cellular, cable and VoIP segments have been fairly constant over the last 4 years worth of data I could find. Bandwidth and voice revenues are actually shrinking. Total telecom spending from 2013 to 2014 shrunk $6 Billion dollars according to MarketResearch.

Growth will be hard to find. We are seeing a price war in cellular accompanied by escalating customer acquisition costs. Hosted VoIP is experiencing a similar war that is increasing the cost of customer acquisition. Rising SPIFFs and other compensation are being used to grab both market share and channel partner attention.

PBX vendors are NOT crashing and burning as many had stated. Premise PBXs are still being sold and installed by a robust band of vendors – Mitel, Shortel, Avaya, 3CX, Fonality, Zultys, Panasonic, NEC, Siemens and more.

We are half way through 2016. No big winners. The Twilio IPO was a surprise. Vonage spending all of its acquisition money for the year on Nexmo, Twilio’s competitor, seemed strange, since there were Broadsoft clients they could have picked off instead to take a big step forward in the race. Slack and all the Skype4B hype are little surprises.

2016 is half over – and so many companies have either done M&A or played musical chairs that I expect nothing magical to happen in the rest of 2016. And I look at all of this and wonder what 2017 holds.

ASIDE: telco versus cable consumer data.

Tags: arpu, broadband, broadsoft, cable, cableco, ilec, mso, talent, UC, unified messaging, voip
Related tags: total telecom, market share, share businesses, musical chairs, customer acquisition, cable