Dish Network admits it. TV service providers — itself included — have plenty of room to improve their customer service reputation.
On Monday, the Douglas County company begins a customer listening campaign, which includes a “spokeslistener” who stars in TV commercials and an advertising campaign. The company will also roll out a new feature on its web pages to gather comments and complaints from customers.
“We’re in an industry that’s not known for listening to customers. But the easiest way to find out what customers want is to listen to them,” chief marketing officer Jay Roth said. “We have a saying here that the most powerful tool we have is our ears.”
While gimmicky, Dish says this is a way to point out what the satellite TV company has been working on and try to win back customers and attract new ones. Many cable and satellite TV services are struggling to stop the subscriber shrinkage.
But it could be a long battle. Cable and satellite TV companies continue to have some of the worst reputations of every industry — three of 12 “most hated” industries in America were subscription TV providers, according to financial site 24/7 Wall St. (It’s apparently a sensitive topic. A few cable industry organizations declined to be interviewed for this story.)
Subscription TV services saw a 3.2 percent improvement on consumer satisfaction, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index report in June. But subscription TV was still among the lowest-ranked industries the organization tracks for customer satisfaction.
“Who does well? Coke and Pepsi because they know it’s very easy to switch,” said David VanAmburg, ACSI’s managing director. “If you look at industries at the top versus the bottom, those that tend to do the best overall tend to be those where there is a strong degree of competition.”
And for entrenched cable TV providers that laid cables in the ground long ago, customer satisfaction continues to be low on the list, along with government agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (“where there is no choice to not pay your taxes,” VanAmburg said).
However, in ACSI’s latest report last week, government agencies scored a 68, a 6.4 percent improvement from last year. That’s one point better than Dish and three points better than the subscription TV industry. Comcast came in at 62.
For some context, Apple’s iPhones scored the highest satisfaction among cellphones at 81, the top internet news site was FoxNews.com at 76 and the highest-rated search engine, Google, scored 84.
Subscription TV providers are responding to low satisfaction by borrowing technology tools like live chat from retailers, VanAmburg said. Quickly responding to customers can go a long way, he said.
“Those kinds of technological improvements can go deeper in improving pretty abysmal satisfaction ratings. When the bar is that low, every little thing doesn’t seem so little anymore. ‘Wow, they responded. Maybe they do care,'” VanAmburg said. “Is it going to turn the low- to mid-60s (score) into 80s? Not anytime soon but it could definitely create a three-, four-, five-percent point improvement.”
Other pay TV companies also are investing in a reputation turnaround. After a customer complaint went viral, Comcast’s CEO publicly apologized in January 2015 and pledged to work harder at customer service. Later this year, Comcast plans to open a 600-person customer service center in Fort Collins. It already has one in Colorado Springs.
In October, Dish began a new four-week “Base Camp” training program that immerses employees in every aspect of the business that customers care about. One week focuses on installation.
“If you can believe this, me, the CMO, I can actually install a Dish in 6 minutes,” Roth said.
Two weeks of the program are devoted to customer service.
“We want to make sure even corporate employees understand the front-line experience and what our customers are dealing with,” Roth said. “As a result, corporate employees are not disconnected with field agents and customers.”
Roth, who said Dish has a program that interviewed 200,000 customers for feedback last year, pointed to a number of features Dish has already implemented, such as its DVR’s ability to skip commercials.
Last summer, Dish added its Flex Pack to give customers more choice in what channels they want — or don’t want to pay for because they no longer watch them.
There is also its spin-off Sling TV, offered to customers who just want to stream favorite channels from the internet.
And instead of an ambiguous block of hours for an installation appointment, Dish now gives customers a 75-minute window, plus access to an app that shows a photo of the installer and a digital map of the installer en route, much like ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft.
On Monday, the company launched new online feedback forms.
If you want a response to your feedback, you’ll have to share your e-mail address. There’s no deadline on when you’ll get a reply, but Roth said, “Of course, the intention is to do it as quickly as we can.”
