Keeping Promises In Salt LakeCity

Cable World, August 25, 2003

Byline: K. C. NEEL

When Comcast Corp. took over AT&T Broadband's Salt Lake City operation late last year, the name on the door wasn't the only change the MSO made. Indeed, Comcast installed a new area VP, new marketing director and new ad sales manager in the property that counts 240,000 basic video customers.

"We brought in some new executives, but I was pleased with the talent the system already had in place," says Gary Waterfield, area VP and a Comcast veteran of 22 years. "We got to take the best of AT&T Broadband and Comcast and blend them into a great team."

Like all other AT&T Broadband properties, Comcast went to great lengths to introduce and indoctrinate employees to its way of thinking and its particular corporate culture. Waterfield says it wasn't hard, but he also notes the changes in culture are still occurring.

As a former AT&T employee, director of customer operations Merlin Jensen says he was impressed that Comcast's leaders spent time visiting the system and introducing themselves, and so were his staffers. The event - an all-day pep rally that featured CEO Brian Roberts, chairman Ralph Roberts and Comcast Cable president Steve Burke - did exactly what the folks at corporate wanted it do: inspire employees to go out and do their best, believe in their company and feel good about working at Comcast, Jensen says.

"The level of acceptance was not necessarily surprising, but it was definitely wonderful," Waterfield says.

On the flip side, existing AT&T Broadband employees who had become accustomed to centralized management were pleasantly surprised by their new level of control over operations.

"I'd heard a lot about how important local management was at Comcast," says Jensen. "But I never imagined how much power we'd have to make sure customers are well taken care of. It's been one of the nicest and biggest changes [since Comcast took over last year]."

It's taken some time for employees to get used to the new way of doing things. Waterfield himself is known to visit outlying offices regularly, take customer calls at local call centers and go into the field with technicians. "The first time I visited the call center people were very surprised, and when I went out on a service call in the field it was the talk of the department," he says. "But that's the Comcast culture. It's now sunk in with employees, and it's beginning to sink in with the community."

Also helping customers see Comcast in a better light these days is the company's pledge to spend $100 million in 2003-'04 to finally finish an upgrade of its 8,500 miles of plant as well as fulfill the promise of new services. Of course, skepticism had run high until recently because similar promises have been made and broken time and again by former owners Tele-Communications Inc. and AT&T Broadband. But Waterfield says 70% of the system is already upgraded and Comcast is rebuilding between 250 and 300 miles a month right now. The project should be completed in the first quarter of next year.

"Promises have been made before and broken before," he says. "But this time, I have the money in the bank and we're doing what we promised. That goes a long way in convincing customers they can trust us."

It's also gone a long way toward convincing employees they can make those promises with a clear conscience.

"The amount of upgrading that has been done this year alone took three years to complete before," Jensen says. "It shows that Comcast is serious about getting through the pain and moving on to roll out new services. That makes employees feel good and they can, in turn, make customers feel good about taking our services."

It's that kind of attitude that is turning around the system's subscriber numbers. Although he declined to provide specific figures, Waterfield admits that the Salt Lake City system lost customers over the past couple of years. DBS providers have aggressively marketed special programs to lure disgruntled cable customers tired of delays in the rebuilding of plant and of broken promises - and they've been successful in doing so.

"But," says director of marketing Todd Beauchamp, "the days of the dish in this market are numbered."

Still, Scarborough Research puts dish penetration in the Salt Lake City area at 27% - 46 points higher than the national average.

Comcast is trying to reclaim as many customers as it can by advertising its dish buyback program. Beauchamp says the program has worked well - so well, in fact, that supervisors in a nearby warehouse called him recently to note the facility was filled to capacity with nearly 4,000 dishes and wanted to know what to do with them.

But even more important than winning back and gaining new customers, he says, is the introduction of new services. High-speed data service has been a huge success in the areas where it's been launched.

"This is a highly educated market with lots of culture, and high-speed Internet is a highly desirable product for consumers," Beauchamp says. "Our HSD numbers are ahead of plan at this point."