Why are people leaving Spectrum?
Spectrum is among the largest cable television and telecommunications companies in America, with millions of customers in 41 states. Nevertheless, over the past few years, Spectrum has been experiencing customer churn as people opt for cable TV alternatives. There are several key reasons why customers are leaving Spectrum.
Price Hikes
For instance, like other large cable companies, Spectrum has increased its rates many times in the last few years while neglecting the quality of AT&T Customer Service and technologies. Customers are locked to their contracts for 1-2 years at a time and cannot renegotiate the rates during that time. After the contract is over, Spectrum raises monthly charges by up to 40%, even affecting the most loyal clients. These abrupt mid-contract price increases mean that more subscribers are leaving Spectrum.
Limited Streaming Capabilities
Even though streaming has turned into the go-to approach for millions of viewers to watch TV, Spectrum’s catalog remains mainly focused on traditional cable bundles. The limited number of apps and services for streaming content other than the cable box offered by the company as compared to competitors. Spectrum also does not offer much wiggle room for eliminating unnecessary channels or adjusting lower-tier streaming packages. Originally, the failure to innovate to capture the changing nature of the viewership market has been a major source of customer loss.
Poor Customer Service
Spectrum’s customer service department is among the worst in the industry based on surveys and customer feedback. Many customers lament horrible experiences with support, long delays, frequent outages, and service installations that can take as many as weeks to resolve, and high-pressure selling tactics to get people to sign up for services they did not ask for. So, just the thought of having to converse with Spectrum’s customer service is enough to make many people simply cancel their service with the company.
Limited Availability
Spectrum currently serves more than 100 million homes but still does not cover many small and rural markets in the United States; Additionally, there is increasing dissatisfaction of consumers in the existing Spectrum areas, which has led to the emergence of new competitors to attract customers. Newer providers, such as AT&T Internet, Verizon, or fiber optic networks, may provide better rates and service stability than Spectrum’s outdated infrastructure. This means that once credible alternatives enter areas of operation that Spectrum had a monopoly in, subscribers switch over en masse.
More Options
The shift from cable to streaming is offering consumers more options than ever before to consume home entertainment. This gave birth to Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, SlingTV, and others which are now providing powerful competition to Spectrum with a comparable number of channels, DVR space, libraries, apps, and no contract. Their initial offers can even be cheaper than Spectrum’s lowest introductory offers. So, if customers are not satisfied with the services that they are getting from Spectrum, they can easily turn to other substitutes that are available in the market.
What Steps Are Being Taken by Spectrum to Address the Losses?
In response to drops in its subscription base, Spectrum has attempted to address a few pain points but generally failed to get to the core of user frustrations.
- Hypocritical ‘price freeze’ for the first year with mid-contract hikes, but rates increase again after 12 months
- Simplification of bundles to make more emphasis on internet speed rather than cable services.
- Providing some specific streaming applications, but no enhancements to the streaming functionality
- Including other overseas call centers to absorb the customer service overflow
But as long as the company does not fix the issues that make the customer experience worse, it will continue to operate at a loss; today’s consumers do not want the old-fashioned cable service that Spectrum offers. This is the minimum of the changes Spectrum will have to make to improve its streaming functionalities, contracts, and pricing schemes as well as increase customer service responsiveness.
At the moment, Spectrum remains the provider with the highest market share in several areas mainly because there are no other players around to displace. As more such options come up, we can further anticipate that the exodus of Spectrum subscribers will only persist if they change the current obsolete model. For consumers looking for a higher quality experience, the options have never been clearer for dumping this cable behemoth.
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