How to be Terrible at Customer Service - Copy Credit Card or Cable TV Companies

I don't think I'm alone in having had terrible customer service experiences with my credit card and cable TV providers.  I'm not talking about one time, either.  I'm talking about nightmares that have occurred repeatedly over the years with a number of different providers of each type of service.

I've switched around in response and I'm still looking for a provider that really understands what excellent customer service means and how to deliver it.  

Here's the main thing that each of them do wrong.

Credit card companies lure you in with offers of low interest rates.  They run promotions to get you to transfer balances to their cards at low interest rates.  They do all they can to get you to run up a high balance on their cards.  Then, they lower the boom.  They find an excuse to jack up the interest rate by an astronomical amount.  Maybe one of your payments arrived two days late.  Oops.  You've violated your agreement and opened the door for them to raise their rates. This is just plain sleazy and I hope our new Congress finally addresses this abuse.  All of a sudden that manageable balance at the original interest rate becomes an impossible to pay off balance at the new interest rate.  GOTCHA!  

If any of the existing credit card companies would swear off this practice, they'd either immediately dominate the market or force all the others to follow them.  If a customer's credit standing dictates a higher interest rate, make that new rate apply only to new balances incurred AFTER they have been notified of a rate hike.  Allowing these companies to retroactively apply a much higher interest rate to balances that were created with the understanding that the rate was much lower is just WRONG.  The credit card company immediately becomes your enemy instead of being your friend.  It's the worst possible way to deal with your customers.

Cable TV companies are renown for awful customer service.  The satellite TV providers and now the phone companies (Fios) have responded and what was once a comfortable monopoly is now doggedly competitive.  My experience is that whenever anything goes wrong with your cable TV service, it can take weeks for someone to get to your house to deal with the problem. The other public utilities (electric, gas, phone) understand that they need to deal with service problems immediately.  The cable TV industry never learned that lesson.  They cheap out on having enough service people.  One year, my service went down about two weeks before the Super Bowl.  I couldn't get a service appointment until after the big game.  ARGGH!

The other thing that the cable TV companies all seem to do is miss these long awaited appointments or show up hours later than promised.  Nothing better than having to take time off from work, then wait around the house for an expected on-time serviceman only to have the guy show up either not at all or hours late.  

I've relocated for business a number of times and each time I've tried the local cable TV company, thinking "this time it will be different."  Maybe in this city, the cable TV company will be better.  NOT!  Each time I've switched away from them to another TV provider - usually satellite.

These two different industries do not treat their customers like customers.  Once they've got you, they adopt a "you need us more than we need you" attitude and it permeates everything they do that touches their customers.  They focus on getting your business but once they have it, they take advantage of you rather than service you.

As you evaluate your company's customer service efforts, learn from the grossly unacceptable practices of the credit card and cable TV people.  Never play GOTCHA with your customers. Treat them just as importantly AFTER you have them as when you're trying to win their business.