to: Roger L. Stancil, Town Manager
from: Sabrina Oliver, Communications and Public Affairs Director
Catherine Lazorko, Public Information Officer
subject: Response to Questions about Time Warner Cable Customer Service
date: October 15, 2008
The purpose of this report is to transmit the 2008 Customer Survey conducted by Time Warner Cable and to respond to questions raised by the Town Council at its meeting of June 9, 2008.
During the course of its review of the Time Warner Cable Annual Report on June 9, 2008, the Council requested additional information about customer complaints and related cable service. While the annual report provides a list of complaints that are transmitted to the cable company from the Town, the report does not list all customer complaints received from the Chapel Hill area. The Council member requesting the information also was interested in complaints about signal quality and outages.
The Town’s franchise agreement specifies that Time Warner “shall conduct a random survey of a sampling of its subscribers within Chapel Hill” upon the Town’s request every two years. Cindy Ray Keene, Time Warner Cable Government and Public Affairs Director, attended the June 9, 2008, meeting and stated that the company was preparing a Customer Survey and would provide that information to the Council. The Time Warner Cable Customer Survey 2008 was transmitted to the Town on August 29, 2008 (Attachment 1). Ms. Keene discusses the recent survey findings in a letter dated September 16, 2008 (Attachment 2). In response to the Council’s additional questions, the Town Manager received a letter from Ms. Keene on July 17, 2008 (Attachment 3).
We have reviewed the survey and cable responses, and provide the following observations:
Customer Survey 2008
Time Warner contracted with Highline Research to conduct a customer satisfaction survey for subscribers within the Town of Chapel Hill. Telephone interviews were conducted with 300 randomly selected subscribers of Time Warner Cable. All respondents were heads of households, and equal proportions of men and women were interviewed. Interviewing was conducted August 4-7, 2008, by Aspen Media and Market Research of Boulder, Colorado.
Approximately 55 percent of the respondents said they had experienced problems with their cable service in the last year, which was up significantly from 43 percent in 2006. Among those reporting problems, the most common problems mentioned were outages (50 percent), poor reception (26 percent), and other technical problems (21 percent). In addition, the incidence of converter problems (14 percent) increased significantly since 2006.
About 62 percent of the respondents said they had tried to contact Time Warner Cable in the last year regarding a service issue or a change in their service. This was up significantly from the 44 percent who had tried to do so in 2006.
Those who had tried to contact the cable company in the last year rated three aspects of the service they received, and the ratings were all significantly lower than those of 2006. The courtesy of office personnel was rated highest, with an average rating of 3.94 on a 5-point rating scale. How easily they were able to get through by phone received an average rating of 2.72 (below the midpoint on the scale), while the ability to get problems resolved the first time, over the phone, averaged a 3.13 rating, slightly above the midpoint.
The diminished ease of getting through by phone to customer service representatives has been noted in calls received by the Town. Ms. Keene states that the company’s upgrade of a communications system created some problems and resulted in much higher call volumes. By August 2008, the company hired an additional 61 customer service employees and added more than 100 new lines to its phone system, and it reports improvement with fewer complaints, according to Ms. Keene.
Signal Quality, Outages and Complaints
In response to the Council’s request to provide a list of all customer complaints, Ms. Keene states (Attachment 3) that the company’s customer service call center system is unable to “segment out video (cable television) calls from one local franchising authority or one category.”
Additional questions were asked about the cable company’s signal quality and outages. Time Warner reports that there were 51 “planned” (for repair or utility work) outages in the area and 549 “unplanned” outages in 2007. The average outage duration in Chapel Hill was 2 hours and 26 minutes. In 2006, Time Warner reported that there were 21 “planned” outages and 303 “unplanned” outages. We inquired about the increase in “unplanned outages,” and Ms. Keene reported in previous conversation that the increase is due to a change in the way the information is gathered and the equipment that is used to track outages.
Addressing the question of signal strength, Ms. Keene explains in her July 17, 2008, letter that most new cable lines are installed following notification by a developer or the power company. Quality control technicians are required to check the signal quality of all new construction projects. According to Ms. Keene, signal strength is checked again when a customer calls for cable service.
CONCLUSION
Section 10-96 of the Town’s franchise agreement (Attachment 4), the Chapel Hill Cable Television Ordinance, states that under Normal Operating Conditions, customers will receive a busy signal less than 3 percent of the time. It also states that under Normal Operating Conditions, telephone answer time by a customer representative, including wait time, shall not exceed 30 seconds from when the connection is made. If the call needs to be transferred, transfer time shall not exceed 30 seconds. These standards are to be met no less than 90 percent of the time under Normal Operating Conditions, measured on a quarterly basis.
We will formally request the following from Time Warner Cable, as provided in the Chapel Hill Cable Television Ordinance:
In addition to the above requests, we will continue to monitor customer complaints to Time Warner Cable. We have requested that phone listings for Time Warner Cable clearly state the customer service telephone numbers for Chapel Hill customers, which is either 1-866-489-2669 or (919) 595-4892. The cable company continues to provide service from its local office at 1201B Raleigh Road, but customer service telephone representatives are not based in this local office. We have required that the Town of Chapel Hill telephone number appear on Time Warner Cable bills so that residents have another avenue of recourse if they are dissatisfied with the cable company’s response to a complaint.
We will continue to monitor the responsiveness of Time Warner Cable to Chapel Hill customers to ensure that the standards of the franchise agreement are met.
No action is required at this time by the Town Council.