Business Services Bundled
When Comcast started installing its package of video, voice and high-speed Internet services in homes throughout the Twin Cities, it found its next growth opportunity right across the street.
“We were going right down the street with our network, passing gas stations, strip malls and restaurants,” says David Diers, vice president of advanced services for Comcast’s Twin Cities region. “It was a natural migration for us to take the same products that we were providing residentially and roll them out to small and mid-sized businesses as well.”
Now those voice, video and Internet services are bundled together as Comcast Business Class, which was designed to offer a complete package to businesses that previously had to patch together services from different providers. According to Diers, its speed, fast service component and competitive pricing have already made Comcast Business Class an attractive alternative for Twin Cities business owners, whose options had previously been limited to local telephone providers.
“The speed is a big thing — we hear a lot about that,” Diers says. “Our network is capable of delivering faster speeds, because it’s a higher bandwidth. We also have a local support center, which makes a difference for a lot of people. We can get people out relatively quickly for service calls — we have a four hour response time.”
Price was the primary factor for Desta Lachner, whose husband, Phil, owns Magic Carpets, a flooring showroom in Brooklyn Center. When she heard about Comcast Business Class, she quickly made the change. “The difference in price was significant to us,” she says. “Plus, we had not been able to bundle everything together before, so that was also important.”
Magic Carpets had used different providers for voice and Internet services, but it had never had video capabilities before Comcast. It’s been a nice addition to the kid’s corner of the showroom, Lachner says. “We leave the television on a cartoon channel now,” she says.
The video component has been the mainstay of Comcast’s service for the better part of four decades. The company began offering high-speed Internet services to its residential customers about nine years ago; two years ago, it added voice services as well. Now, according to Diers, it is the fourth largest voice provider in the U.S.
Once voice services became part of Comcast’s products, adding business customers was an obvious next step, Diers says. And the Twin Cities was a natural location to include in the national introduction of Comcast Business Class. In addition to the service center in Minnetonka, in 2006, Comcast merged with Time Warner, which had already been offering business services in the area. “That gave us a big advantage in the Twin Cities,” Diers says. “We were able to leverage those relationships.”
Comcast also has been able to leverage its relationship with Microsoft to offer small and mid-sized companies access to Microsoft’s suite of services, including calendaring capabilities and remote meeting services. “That’s a huge value added for our customers,” Diers says. “Usually only large companies are able to afford that.”
As a large company itself, Comcast has used its relationships with other big businesses to benefit its customers. “We’re used to dealing with big business because we’re big business ourselves,” says Diers. “That’s how the Microsoft deal came around. We realized that it would likely be just as important to small and mid-sized businesses as it is to us.”
— S.G.