And they both expect to make their margins offering a panoply of digital applications. Training Customer Reps Both Adelphia and Charter see customer service as the way forward. Both have set up customer call centres to train personnel on the benefits of digital services. But that is where the similarities end. Adelphia trains its customer service representatives to handle questions on all of its products, rather than one or two specific services.
Charter encourages sales reps to become experts on a specific service.
On the Internet side, for instance, we have a very select group of reps that take only Internet calls. Adelphia, however, sees more benefits to having its staff have a working knowledge of all the operator's applications. As part of its training programme, field sales reps entering a customer's home are taught to be alert for anything that may help them drive a sale, such as scattered toys, which would clue the rep to talk up children's programming options. The costs involved in educating consumers are high, but they are worth it, Haywood says. I don't think the telecommunications industry has really experienced the expense of what it's going to cost to change residents' spending patterns on a daily basis.