A day (two actually) without the intarweb

Tuesday, May 26th was one of those really frustrating days where nothing seemed to go my way. This badness started in the morning when I figured out that something had gone horribly wrong with my high-speed internet connection. I could connect to the internet and every now and then I could open a web page, but I could not send email and most of my IM’s wouldn’t go through. Worse was the fact that my home phone didn’t work, since it is a Vonage phone and depends on my cable modem from Comcast to function.

This is not a situation that I have had to deal with extensively in the past, with only 2-3 days without a network connection in the past 5 years (barring hurricanes where there was no power for multiple days). That’s a pretty good track record and a testament to the general reliability of the cable service in my neighborhood. I am also quite meticulous about having every piece of electronic equipment in my home on either a UPS or a quality surge protector. That includes all of the networking gear, so that I don’t lose network connectivity if the power goes out briefly. In South Florida, a good rain storm will cause brown-outs and brief power outages, and I hear the alarms on my various UPS’s go off about 3 times a week.

What was interesting about this experience (besides scouring Google Maps on my iPhone for a Fedex Office or Starbucks location with Wi-Fi nearby) is that I actually had an opportunity to test out Comcast’s customer service and tech support for myself, after reading about their recent surge in CSAT scores and focus on Twitter as a service channel.

I began by calling their main toll-free number and waiting in queue for an agent. This took about 15 minutes, including the wait time and the discussion of the reason for my call. I was told that a tech would come to my house between 11am and 2pm. Surprisingly, they had someone available to come to my house on the same day my issue was reported, and within a 4-6 hour timeframe. This was actually good news as far as I was concerned, since I had expected to wait until later in the week for the service call. Then, to my further surprise, the Comcast tech showed up earlier than they said on the phone. He spent 30 minutes testing my cable and talking about my problem, and then said that the cable signal was fine and that he couldn’t do anything more to help me.

This is when I turned to @ComcastCares on Twitter. I have read so much about the Twitter presence for Comcast and it seemed a perfect opportunity to try it out for myself. My first message was just an open musing that was not a direct message to Comcast, or a reply to them. I just posted my thoughts to my Twitter stream to see what would happen.

Oh @comcastcares, what happened to my high spd internet?dslreports says upload is 24Kb today. Can’t work. Called cust svc. Please DM me.

My mere mention of Comcast via Twitter was answered almost immediately with what seemed like a generic response:

ComcastBill @andymahaney can i help?

What followed was a series of Tweets giving further information, followed by a request from @ComcastBill for some information via direct message to confirm my identity. Ultimately, Bill recommended that I replace my existing Linksys cable gateway with cable modem and he recommended a couple of brands. I took a trip to CompUSA, bought the modem, set it up, and my problems seemed to be resolved.

This “resolution” was only temporary. Within a few hours my service was down again and remained down until after 1am on Thursday, May 28th.

I resumed Twittering to @ComcastBill and @ComcastBonnie about my dilemma. Neither of them would confirm any specific problems in my area. They even shrugged off my repeated tweets about the multitude of Comcast-branded vehicles roaming my neighborhood. It was apparent to me that other people were having problems too. Maybe they can’t see that sort of thing easily or perhaps it’s policy to only reveal the scope of an outage after a certain number of people report issues. Maybe they just didn’t want to speculate. I can’t say.

I doubt that my cable modem had anything to do with this issue, but I am not planning to return the new modem because I have been gradually replacing the various components of my home network over the past few months, upgrading all my routers and switches to gigabit devices.

Where does that leave me with Comcast? Let’s review:

1. For whatever reason, my service was down for 2+ days. Can’t say if it was weather or Comcast to blame. I’ll assume the weather is the culprit. Since this is Florida and hurricanes are on the menu, Comcast should have their infrastructure designed to handle some rain. -1 point
2. I waited on the phone for a total of about 40 minutes over 2 days. Not the end of the world, but not good either.  -1 point
3. Comcast sent a tech to my house on the same day I reported an issue. He showed up early (wow!), took his time, was very nice and knowledgable. I was really impressed. +1 point
4. Comcast was highly responsive through Twitter. They seem to “get” this channel and I appreciate that they were able to provide me with some assistance.  +1 point
5. I am now finding out that the help I got from Comcast via Twitter and via phone was really not terribly helpful and it likely had nothing to do with what eventually solved my problem. It also cost me $50 for a cable modem I didn’t absolutely need.  -1 point

So there you have it. 2 of a possible 5 points. I think Comcast did a great job offering options for customer service. Their customer service was “worthless but very pleasant”. The interactions on Twitter clearly show that Comcast is committed to social media in a way that most companies still have not pondered and only a handful have mastered. Comcast seems to have mastered the channel, but they need to work on resolving the problem more quickly and accurately on the first try - or at least be better at recognizing a cluster of reported issues and linking them together to form a more comprehensive picture of the outage. First interaction resolution (rather than first call resolution) is equally important, regardless of the interaction channel.