Talking cable at the University of Louisville

Last Thursday I had the privilege of spending part of my day at the University of Louisville with the Cable Center's Cable Mavericks program. I was hosted by UofL's College of Business and had the opportunity to speak with several groups of UofL students Thursday afternoon.

My first stop was an on campus television studio to record an interview with some questions posed by students and faculty. Even though the University's Big East Conference regular season champion (and now tournament champion) Cardinals were playing their first game in the Big East tournament, a group of students skipped the game to come ask me questions about the cable industry and Insight. I've YouTubed a portion of one of my answers to a question about how Insight works to provide our customers with the highest levels of service.

After the interview, I spent some time in the atrium of the College of Business with students interested in coming to work for Insight. Even with the challenging conditions of our present economy, Insight is looking for bright, energetic individuals, and I got to speak with some of the UofL students interested in starting a career at Insight. Later, Gregg Graff, Insight's Senior Vice President for Field Operations, and I spoke to a marketing class about Insight's efforts to build and retain our customer base by distinguishing our products from our competitors'. After that, I spent some time with a class of students majoring in various aspects of information technology. A couple of Insight's folks whose primary focus is on the technical aspects of delivering our products - Jeff Warner and Jeff Leftwich - worked with those students on interviewing skills.

It was great to spend the day with the next generation of innovators in cable and telecommunications, and I appreciate the opportunity that UofL and the Cable Center provided for me and the rest of Insight's team to share some of my experiences with students.  Special thanks to Jane Goldstein of UofL for taking such good care of us all day.

Comments

[Loraine Lawson Hammerbeck]

"...how Insight works to provide our customers with the highest levels of service."

Now I'm concerned for the future of customer service at all Louisville businesses.

Apparently, you don't know what's going on in the field. Let me give you a sample of what I and my neighbors have been going through with your company for three weeks now.

Obviously, our high-speed connection has been compromised at the main pipe level, not our homes, because we're all having the same problem. But the six times I've called Insight, despite the fact I go through this fact with them every time, I get this:

"Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to reset your router."

Followed by a long explanation of how that's not the problem. They will then note that packets are being dropped on the line. Then they'll say this:

"I'm going to schedule a tech to come to your house."

The first two times, I was fine with that. But after the second tech failed to fix it and I knew other techs had failed to fix it at my neighbors' houses, I began to suspect this was a waste of time.

We've been in it for three weeks and I work from home. The fourth tech to visit my house came today and promised it would be fixed tonight because they were working on it at the source - finally. Of course, it was not fixed. I called and we asked for a free upgrade to 20.0 because other neighbors had found this fixed their problem and they were given a free upgrade until 10.0 could be fixed.

Daniel, the senior service tech at Preston Highway, informed me this was impossible. No one could offer a free upgrade he said. No one. "Not even the CEO?" I asked. He said no.

He did offer, however, to keep sending techs until the problem is fixed. Of course, at this point, the techs ARE part of the problem. I'm not sure how one more helpless, clueless tech wanting to check my cable connection is going to help.

I admit it: I blew my stack. I eventually hung up on Daniel. I have loved having Insight cable internet, but I'm going to have to move to DSL because I can't endure such awful, ineffective customer service.

Surely, U of L can find a better company from which to learn about customer service.

[Loraine Lawson Hammerbeck]

I know you're going to delete my comment, but frankly, I'm not sure how else to get this resolved. I thought you might like to see what the entire neighborhood is saying:
http://www.neighborhoodlink.com/Woodlawn_Park/topics/258585?page=1