Your Comcast Employee Experience / How Comcast Treats Their Employees

*** EMPLOYEES ***

Comcast pays their in-house sales agents minimum wage and commission.  Their commission is calculated two ways and Comcast changes the rates and what/how they pay their employees every 3 months so it’s very unpredictable for the agent you speak with to actually know what their pay will be month to month.  Comcast pays a small commission based on product sold (TV, Phone, Home Security – they do not pay their employees for setting up your Internet-only account) and they add this product commission to close rate commission.  They take the number of calls the agent takes and divide it by the number of sales the agent makes that month and based on the percentage the agent earns the rest of their commission.  They add the close rate commission plus the product commission and that is the agent’s commission for the month, plus their minimum wage.  Bottom line is, every call you make into the Sales Department that isn’t adding money to your account directly penalizes that agent’s paycheck.

In October 2015 Comcast’s West Division revised their employee commission plan and cut their sales agents pay by 30-40% depending on the agents close rate and product sales.  Some agents are seeing a pay cut of $20,000 or more.  This caused a mass-exodus of employees that quit in response.

The Government requires Comcast to answered within a set amount of time or get fined so the company deliberately dumps non-sales calls into the Sales Department which effectively penalizes the paycheck of the agent you are talking to (a win-win for Comcast) and requires you be transferred to the correct department.

Comcast assigns “skills” to their agents as a way of routing calls.  Their Sales Dept does this so Online Sales, Upgrade Sales and New Sales get routed to the correct department.  When Upgrades or “Change of Service” calls overflow the system Comcast routes these calls to the Sales Department.  If the agent isn’t adding money (service) to your account it penalizes the agent’s paycheck.  Comcast doesn’t care because the call was answered so they weren’t fined by the government and it lowers the agents close rate so they don’t have to pay the agent very much in commission.

In-house Agents are required to ask you about all services offered by Comcast Xfinity.  In fact, Comcast pays a third party company to listen to 5-6 random calls from each in-house agent monthly and the calls are graded.  The agent’s shift rankings, pay increases, promotions, etc. are based on these grades.  Unfortunately, most of the customer service complaints actually come from Comcast’s third party vendors but the company takes it out on their in-house employees.  The Comcast Agent’s hands are largely tied regarding what they can and cannot help you with.

Sales Agents cannot remove things from your account.  There is a separate department for adding service to an account (Sales) and a separate department for taking them off (Loyalty).  You cannot call in and instantly get routed to Loyalty- someone has to transfer you to their department.

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