Comcast admits customer service rep was doing what he was trained to do

Now in a leaked internal memo dated 7/21/14 Comcast admits that the customer service rep from the infamous call that went around the internet last week was doing what he was trained to do, but his tone came across as insensitive to the customer's needs. Well, duh! When you incentivize retaining a customer no matter what, this is the kind of customer service call that you get when the customer wants to cancel. The poor rep didn't want to have that cancellation counted against him. Their bonus structure is probably built on the number of retentions they get. He would rather the customer hang up and call back and thus have the cancellation go against another rep's numbers. When you put someone in that situation he's going to look out for his job and certainly doesn't want to lose his bonus. I've also heard horror stories from reps of not being able to put the customer on hold because even that counts against them. So while the rep is doing something that's going to take some time to get done, such as rebooting his computer, the customer just has to wait, listening to small talk or background noise from the callcenter, all because putting the customer on hold for anything is forbidden. Company policies are creating customer service nightmares but the companies fail to see it.