"Customer Surly" and "Customer Friendly" Service: 2 Anecdotes

It's only one anecdote, but one does wonder whether incentives for "saving" an account could have something to do with what many could say is an overly-aggressive effort by one Comcast CSR to save an account, when the customer wanted to halt service. 

Few might consider the call a pleasant experience. 

I had the diametrical opposite experience recently when changing service levels for my mom's Verizon FioS video account. I needed to downgrade one premium video service and also end purchase of a backup and security service for the Internet access account.

The former downgrade was because she doesn't watch so much TV, and certainly was not watching the premium service. The latter downgrade was because, after moving mom to a Chromebook, the online backup and security package simply was unnecessary. 

I got everything done, right away, on the Verizon website, with no need to make a call, talk to a customer service representative and endure the "save the revenue" script I suspect I'd otherwise have encountered. 

To be sure, Verizon's customer-friendly approach to online downgrades meant Verizon did not have one more shot at avoiding the two downgrades. 

On the other hand, I appreciated the chance to quickly and easily accomplish a service level change without grief. 

Perhaps one should not conclude too much from just a couple of customer interactions with a major service provider. 

But it also is hard not to wonder whether a different approach is at work in these two instances. 

I probably am not the only potential customer, or existing customer, who has encountered what appears to be a deliberate effort by a service provider to make dropping or downgrading more difficult.