DIRECTV's Ellen Filipiak Takes The Floor

If you've been reading this blog at all you know that me and DirecTV have been at war for quite awhile - not just because they done me wrong, but because they have been a mess of broken promises, processes, bad policies, poor culture and a myriad of other "bads" that make for what for me (and many others) a miserable customer experience. Well, about two months ago (less than that, really) they hired Ellen Filipiak as the Senior VP of Customer Care to fix all of this. Starting today, and repeating every two months on the first of the month, Ms. Filipiak graciously consented to let us know how much progress and what progress they are making to transform DirecTV from its very broken state to a customer-centric company. So, take it away, Ellen Filipiak and readers, feel free to drop comments in if you think it merits it or send me an email and let me know what you're thinking if you care to be more private about it.

Ellen Filipiak

First of all, I want to thank Paul for his invitation to blog here over the next few months. As he recognized, I joined DIRECTV in April specifically because it is experiencing unprecedented change and its resulting challenges.This change presents so many opportunities - both for customers and the organization - to benefit from service excellence, and I am moving forward quickly to make that happen.

DIRECTV is positioned to be the market leader for HD programming this fall. One out of every four households has an HD-capable set, and they want HD programming. DIRECTV is best positioned to meet that demand. Honoring our commitment has taken a tremendous amount of preparation to get customers installed and ready to go when more HD channels arrive this fall. As a company, we could have managed customer expectations better earlier in the year.

By example, some months ago, customer demand for HD receivers put our service systems to the test. We managed available supply of receivers to meet the tremendous demand. Some customers experienced delays and frustration getting installed and that can have a cascading effect on service for those affected.

Also in the last year, we moved to a lease program for our receivers, rather than the owned model. This is a change, particularly for our longer term customers, from past practice. Our senior executive team regularly reads e-mails, forums and blog postings regarding this, and has challenged us all to respond better to questions customers have about leasing versus owning.

As Paul and others know, enjoying HDTV requires an investment by the consumer, in a television set, receiver and programming, and by us, in developing more advanced receivers, broadcasting equipment and programming content. Although customers do have the option of owning their DIRECTV equipment, leasing makes the receiver part of this equation more affordable for customers. Since we are sharing in that investment, we feel it's fair for us to ask for a service commitment, even from our long-term, loyal customers who choose to upgrade to HD. However, we do need to improve our communication with customers who obtain DIRECTV equipment from a retail location, to make sure they understand that the they are still operating under the lease model and do not own the equipment.

The good news is we have plenty of receivers in stock and with these new receivers, we have the ability to provide HD programming upgrades to customers' homes on a national level through our satellites. What this means for customers are fewer phone calls to make, fewer appointments to wait for, and new features to enjoy - such as new HD channels like the recently announced HD Discovery Channels, History Channel and Starz channels. DIRECTV also provides customers with access to interactive services such as NASCAR HotPass, and MLB Extra Innings SuperFan package as well as updates to the program guide or CallerID features at the flip of a switch. In fact, in recent weeks we have rolled out many updates to these receivers and that has significantly reduced calls and complaints - it's truly exciting to watch this happen so quickly.

I also recognize from talking with customers and employees that we have many opportunities to enhance the customer service we provide. With this potential in mind, I have identified several key priorities to address including:

• Resolving a customer's issue on the first call
• Ensuring our representatives have the training and systems they need to successfully assist our customers
• Make it easy for customers to get to the representative who can best respond to the reason they are calling
• Informing customers that there are many ways to get information and service from DIRECTV, including directv.com, for transactions such as paying their bill, viewing recent account transactions and ordering pay per view.

To accomplish these objectives, I am touring our call centers around the country in June to seek out the best of what this organization has to offer. Innovation is found on the frontline where customers reach out to a company - and this is where we will find our best answers.

Overall, I would like to see us continue to leverage the technology we are rolling out to simply the television viewing experiencing so that our customers can best enjoy the increasing variety of advanced television choices that DIRECTV offers.

I look forward to posting future installments here.

Thanks again for the welcome and we can all look forward to an exciting fall, a season of change for DIRECTV.

Ellen Filipiak

Senior Vice President, Customer Care

DIRECTV, Inc.

Ellen.Filipiak@directv.com

Technorati : Customer Service, DirecTV

Comments

[Steve M]

have NEVER recieved WORSE a customer service expierence than I have received today from Direct TV.

I has My account on suspention and it came off. NO notification WHAT SO EVER.. Not by mail or EMAIL. AFTER BEING HUNG UP ON 3 TIMES I finally talked to Yevon who was very helpful.. But could not reverse these charges.

Ispoke to KEVIN a supervisor,
explained to him I has no proof that I had been recieveing the signal as the recievie hadn’t been switched on in months and I had not recieve notification of any kind it was switched back on… He offered me half of the amount.. I decided to pay the full amount and as I told him tell EVERYONE about the TERRIBLE customer service and DECEPTIVE practices of DIRECT TV… for thirty one losey dollars and change Direct TV has lost a customer for life and I will influiance every friend of mine to never use Direct TV and how Terribly I was treated.

Next is the Washington State Attorney General and the FCC for Misleading and Deceptive pratices.

Ellen Filipiak VP of customer service take note… I have been in customer service for 30 years and would NEVER treat a customer in this fashion.

[Art Hall]

First of all, let me start off by saying this - HOW ABOUT THOSE FRIGGIN YANKEES, HUH?! 6 Straight baby!!! We may be turning a corner. Let's hope for the best!

Second, I appreciate Ellen's response and willingness to discuss the issues that you are having with DirectTV. There are some things stated in the blog that "concern" me that I would like to express.

As a former VP of Customer Care of a major financial services firm (former = within the last 90 days), I know first hand that when there is a major customer problem that has made its way to the Internet, the first plan of attack is to work with marketing to "script a message." While I do not doubt that Ellen/DirectTV is sincere in making wrong things right, the response appears to be corporate messaging to assuage you and readers that your matter will be handled. While this may not be the perception that DirectTV wishes to communicate, it is a perception nonetheless. When I read her comments, I immediately felt like they were scripted by marketing. The only way that perception will be changed is through ACTION; ACTION defined as doing what's in the best interest of the customer recognizing that customer share is at stake! In this case, doing what's right by you Paul Greezy!

Additionally, resolving calls on the first contact, enabling a culture that fosters win-win for associates, hiring the right type of agents to manage call volume, provide an acceptable customer experience is not easy. We can tour all of the call centers all day and collect anecdotal and/or quantitative feedback but it all comes down to process, change management and strategy and to the extent that technology can enable a better customer experience, then leverage it apporpriately.

I have managed small-to-medium call centers as well as enterprise call centers. I know practitioners that have been executive managers for years and still scratching their head on how to provide/resolve all call on the first interaction. I don't know if DirectTV outsources their centers but coming from experience, it is difficult to provide a first contact resolution leveraging an outsource provider. But providing FCR in this sense is only symptomatic - if DirectTV is a fragmented and siloed organization (don't know if DirectTV is fragmented but if they are), it will be increasingly difficult to provide FCR because knowledge needed to solve difficult customer inquiries is fragmented and decomposed enterprise-wide. The way to solve customer calls on the first interaction is solving the knowledge breakdown within the enterprise and knowledge transfering to the centers and ensuring that a discplined process is in place to ensure not only is the knowledge updated frequently, but that the knowledge being updated is the correct knowledge! The issue may be part of a larger organizational problem than one that may inherently exists in the service centers.

Let's see what happens -- Ellen must have a great track record for DirectTV to hire her as the SVP of Customer Care. Ellen definitely has demonstrated the ability to hear your voice and respond accordingly. Like you stated at the CRMA National Conference - the voice of the customer is not in your head; it is actual voice of the customer!

I hope DirectTV hears your voice and acts on it.

[Brent Leary]

Hey Paul,

I've been following your ongoing saga with DIRECTV for a while now(I loved the clock counter you had going!). What you went through was a textbook case of what I call "Tales from the Dark Side: A Tragic Case of Customer Relationship Mis-management". It took a lot on your part to finally get to Ellan and it's good to see that she accepted your invite to post entries on your blog.

Ellan you have your work cut out for you. I'm looking forward to what you find on your trip (the good, bad and ugly) and how DIRECTV will use it to improve the customer experience. I'm betting Paul wasn't the only one being "given the business", as NFL Ref Ben Drieth famously explained when handing out an illegal roughness penalty in a game.