"The pay was great and everything else about the job was a nightmare. I remember when a 90-year-old woman called to add phone to her account and my boss told me afterwards, 'She was probably senile… but you should have upgraded her cable. I don't think you are going to be sitting in this seat for very long.'" — From an interview with a Comcast employee who worked in the sales department from 2011-2014.
The fallout from Ryan Block's recording of an argumentative, bullying Comcast employee keeps getting worse (or better, depending on how you look at it). The Verge asked former and current Comcast employees to share their stories of what it is like to work at the company. It sounds like a horrible place: "customer service has been replaced by an obsession with sales, technicians are understaffed and tech support is poorly trained, and the massive company is hobbled by internal fragmentation."
Even the customer support troubleshooters are pressured by their bosses to try to sell customers new services. One customer account exec says that the call center he worked in had a "whiteboard with employee names and their RGUs, or revenue generating units."
A former billing systems manager says employees are fed scripts to boost their RGU score.
The name of the game is RGUs (revenue generating units). Even if the subscriber disconnects cable, maybe we can keep them on internet or voice. A script pops up on the screen, and then another one comes up, then another one, every single one you're eligible for. "Is it too expensive? You don't use it? Maybe I can downgrade you to something if you're only home once a week. Or maybe I can upgrade you. What if I gave you all the channels for a year and you're still only playing $90?"
