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Finally, the cable guy is getting with the program

Finally, the cable guy is getting with the program

P> "It was nice because I wanted to go leave the house and go walk with a friend," she says.

Those all-day vigils for the cable guy are becoming rarer. With cable companies facing increased competition -- satellite companies are stepping up their offerings and phone companies are increasingly providing Internet and TV service -- many are trying to step up their customer service. And they are focusing on improving the often-challenging in-home appointment.

For example, Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable provider by customers, with 24 million, has phased out all-day waiting and narrowed appointment times to two-hour or four-hour windows, depending on technician or customer availability. In some areas, it has also added appointments starting as early 6:30 in the morning. Cox Communications Inc., another leading provider, offers two-hour time frames and has tested waiting windows as small as 45 minutes in its New England market. And Time Warner Inc.'s cable division has been expanding its "call to meet" appointments, whereby the technician calls a customer while he or she is en route to the home so the customer doesn't have to wait around.

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Cable companies are hoping to burnish their images in cranky customers' minds. Cable and satellite companies garner a high number of complaints to better business bureaus compared to many other industries. In 2005, there were 8,054 complaints against cable and satellite companies, placing them at No. 17 out of 3,000 industries surveyed, according to the Council of Better Business Bureaus, based in Arlington, Va. That's up from No. 23 in 2000, when cable and satellite companies generated 3,720 complaints. The complaints include issues such as customer service, rates and reception quality, the council says.

Now, sophisticated appointment management technologies are making some improvements feasible. Historically, cable companies have faced challenges in estimating times between in-home appointments due to unexpected problems at prior appointments or even basic issues like traffic and bad weather. Mergers within the cable industry, as well as companies' efforts to keep up with demand for new services like phone service, have strained installation crews and call centers. All this can add up to customers spending many minutes on hold or waiting at home for hours.

Companies like Cleveland-based TOA Technologies are creating software to make appointment scheduling easier, and the growing availability of global positioning technology can route technicians more efficiently. Cox has put global positioning systems in about 1,000 of its vehicles so far and plans to equip all of them in the next few years. Both Charter and Bright House Networks LLC, which has 2.3 million customers nationwide, have started using scheduling programs that track technicians' progress and whereabouts and assign them accordingly throughout the day, making estimated arrival times more accurate.

"If you keep customers in the loop, it makes for a much better experience," says Kena Lewis, a Bright House spokeswoman.

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Companies are also giving employees more specialized training in the hopes that this will help them provide better service. Charter is in the process of moving all of its customer-service employees to facilities devoted exclusively to specific areas of the business, such as repair, billing or sales. Comcast has also stepped up technician training, including a focus on customer relations through body language -- teaching employees to not look down or shuffle their feet, for example, when dealing with difficult customers.

The two companies are also aiming to prevent service appointments in the first place: in 2005, Charter began instituting a monitoring system for high-speed data transmission that alerts the company to problems before the customer may notice. Comcast recently updated its phone system to automate more calls relating to Internet service, and the company says that last year the new system allowed about 7 percent of calls to be handled without the customer needing to talk to a representative. Comcast also is moving to create more technical support online.

Some customers who prefer to speak to a live person, however, may not see the new automated systems as improvements. "I hate 'If you want to do this, press one, if you want to do that, press two,'" says David Blythe, a lawyer from Montpelier, Vt., who was so frustrated with the customer service of his former cable provider a few years ago that he decided to get high-speed Internet through his phone company. "These phone systems are defensive devices."

And despite upgrades across the industry, service can still vary from market to market and depend on the type of repair or installation a customer needs. Depending on the provider, some customers may still have to wait at home for a large chunk of the day: Time Warner and Charter, together comprising nearly 20 million customers across the country, still generally have four-hour waiting windows.

When Shane Elliott went to add Internet to his cable service several months ago, he set an appointment with Time Warner Cable on a Saturday between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. The technician never arrived, so Mr. Elliott, a Los Angeles actor and writer, called the company and spent a total of 45 minutes on hold -- eventually rescheduling the appointment for the following Tuesday morning.

Again, the window came and went and nobody arrived, Mr. Elliott says. He called, and a technician showed up late in the afternoon. Only after the technician left did Mr. Elliott discover that the email address associated with his new service was spelled wrong. (A 't' was missing in his last name.) When he called, the company said he would have to schedule yet another appointment to fix the spelling.

"Can it get any worse?" asks Mr. Elliott, 30, who decided to avoid using that email account instead of waiting for another visit.

In Mr. Elliott's case, Maureen Huff, a spokeswoman for Time Warner, says the problems stemmed from a complex transition from Comcast to Time Warner Cable last fall in Los Angeles. She said the company gave Mr. Elliott two $20 credits for the missed appointments and "generally has much higher standards for customer service."

First Published: January 25, 2007, 5:00 a.m.

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