Tucson call center to help repair Comcast's image

Comcast formally picked Tucson last week to host a new customer support center and the 1,125 jobs that go with it.

Company officials talked about the area's favorable geographic and time-zone location, as well as the presence of Spanish-speakers who can help with Comcast's efforts at better reaching that segment of consumers.

They also repeatedly noted the company's desire to reinvent the customer experience, which could be interpreted as corporatespeak for, "We get it."

That's because Comcast is also trying to repair its corporate reputation after taking several high-profile hits.

The company was hammered a year ago on the Internet with an eight-minute audio recording of one of its workers trying to prevent Ryan Block, a customer who happens to be an executive with AOL, from canceling service.

The Comcast worker insisted on extracting a reason Block wanted to cancel. Even as Block grew increasingly irritated, the demand for a reason continued. At one point, the worker said, "Being that we're the No. 1 provider of TV and Internet service in the entire country, why is it you don't want the No. 1 provider?"

Among Block's many responses to the many questions, he said, "This phone call is an amazing representative example of why I don't want to stay with Comcast."

Comcast officials apologized for the incident, which has been played on YouTube at least 230,000 times. A similar call from another customer drew another 24,000 views.

Muckrock, an online resource for government transparency, reported that the Federal Communications Commission had received 16,000 complaints over a five-year span about Comcast and Time Warner Cable, the company Comcast tried to buy last year.

"Criticism of Comcast" has its own page on Wikipedia. That entry notes that Comcast finished last in the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Twice. It finished below even the Internal Revenue Service.

But Comcast didn't invent the hard sell or poor customer service.

Noting the infamous Comcast customer call, Time magazine put it this way: "If Dante's Inferno had been written today, an extra circle of hell would be dedicated to dealings with cable providers."

The customer satisfaction polling found that cable providers as an industry finished last for customer satisfaction.

And, for the record, AOL has faced its own service issues. In 2007, the company paid $3 million in a settlement with 48 states over customer complaints.

Tucson's take on the economy

Tickets are available for $45 each to University of Arizona Eller College of Management's Mid-Year Economic Update Breakfast. The event is scheduled from 7 to 8:30 a.m. June 3 at the Westin La Paloma Resort in Tucson.

Speakers include George Hammond, director and research professor at UA's Economic and Business Research Center, and Roberto Coronado, assistant vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' El Paso branch.

To reserve tickets, visit www.eller.arizona.edu/breakfast. For more information, contact outlook@eller.arizona.edu or call 520- 626-9137.