Should Comcast Investors care about the lack of Customer Centricity?

Posted by Rudy Vidal on January 27th 2008

improving-busienss.jpgJust read a post here, which considers if investors are/should be concerned about Comcast Cable’s alleged lack of customer centricity.

I believe the the answer is a resounding YES. Extreme Customer Satisfaction is one of the main drivers of loyalty in a commoditized environment.

Harvard Business Review published the article “Beating the Market with Customer Satisfaction”, Christopher W. Hart, March 2007, where they discuss the groundbreaking study by Michigan University which shows direct impact of customer satisfaction on market valuation.

The study follows a hedge fund containing only the top rated companies on the American Customer Satisfaction Index. The results show this fund beats out the market without exception. Here is the chart.

acsi-harvard-slide.jpg

Yes, Comcast Investors should care. I sold my shares.

1 comment

  • Chris Brown says:
    January 31, 2008 at 5:10 pm

    Rudy, great post and thanks for your comments on my recent post on Customer Satisfaction Versus Customer Value http://blog.marketculture.com/2008/01/22/customer-value-versus-customer-satisfaction-lessons-from-sprint-and-apple/…..

    Comcast are an interesting company that we talk about in a number of our training programs. It is a company with really quite innovative advertising strategies, certainly campaigns that grab your attention like the “slowskys” http://www.theslowskys.com/home/ and “comcastic”. But boy are they let down when comes to customer service and satisfaction…..

    If I think about 3 common areas of customer value measurement: BRAND, PRODUCT and SERVICE. The marketing comms guys are doing a pretty good job on branding, the product is pretty good, triple plays etc… but for me at least they fall down when it comes to billing (confusing as hell) and service, I call 3 times over 3 months to try and get automated payments set-up and each time it seems I have done something wrong (their words…..) some much for service.

    Unfortunately every interaction brings me closer to cancelling and each time I question what else is out there…..

    So what does this mean? spend a little more on customer experience (in this case service) and a little less on advertising in my view…….

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