Time Warner Cable Combats Dreadful Customer Service With One-Hour Service Windows And Self-Deprecating Humor

Cable and Internet Service Providers like Time Warner Cable have been blasted time and time again for horrible customer service. While it hasn’t exactly reach top “A-hole” status like Comcast, its performance in customer satisfaction surveys leaves much to be desired.

The company feels your pain and doing its best to turn things around and put the customer first. The company this week started by advertising an “open letter” to its customers in 18 major newspapers around the country, which helped to kick off National Customer Service Week (are you listening, Comcast?).

“We did this to let you know we get your frustration with cable companies,” said Andrew Russell, Time Warner Cable’s Senior Director for Corporate Communications. In the open letter, the cable giant outlines the steps that it has taken to ease the pain of customers by offering one-hour service windows (Cosmo Kramer thanks you), a commitment to restoring lost service within 24 hours, and shorter hold times when calling Time Warner Cable directly.

“We’ve seen where we’re ranked in customer satisfaction surveys and we’re familiar with the perennial jabs from the folks at ‘Saturday Night Live,’” said TWC Chairman and CEO Rob Marcus. “We’re telling our customers how we’ve made profound changes over the last two years to better respect their time, provide more value for what they pay us and deliver the kind of experience anyone would expect from a leading entertainment and technology company. The many changes we’ve made are just the beginning of the new TWC service experience.”

In an effort to get this message out to more customers — and not just those that still read newspapers — Time Warner Cable has also launched two new commercials that use humor to make fun of some of the practices that have come to define the cable industry over the years.

This is definitely a good start, and we’re happy to see that Time Warner Cable is trying to turn things around instead of sweeping its past behavior under the rug. Now if only the rest of the cable industry would wake up and smell the coffee…