Once the face of Comcast’s customer service, Frank Eliason now drives for Amazon. Here’s what he learned over 24 years seeking ‘balance.’
Frank Eliason helped customers by incorporating executive vision, worker experience and a lot in between.
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Back in 2009, in social media’s infancy, Frank Eliason became “the most famous customer service manager in the U.S.,” according to BusinessWeek. The Yardley native pioneered Twitter engagement as @ComcastCares, soothing and aiding frustrated users of the Philadelphia-based cable and media giant.
Nearly a quarter century later, Eliason is still consulting but also drives a truck for Amazon, seeking the “balance” between bosses’ vision and workers’ experience that he prescribes for this contentious nation.
Eliason’s digital celebrity seemed instant, but he didn’t come out of nowhere. His career included earlier stints at Malvern-based investment giant Vanguard and Horsham-based credit card leader Advanta — plus later posts at global Wall Street bank Citigroup and as a consultant, and driver.
Eliason talked with The Inquirer about lessons along his journey.
Vanguard: Shifting focus
Vanguard [where he led teams from 1997 to 2002] had this dedication to the customer. Jack Bogle had stepped down as CEO, but he was still active. He’d eat his tuna fish sandwiches in the cafeteria and talk with us. He believed in being that connected with the crew, the customers, everyone.
He had started this thing at Vanguard, the Swiss Army. It meant senior managers taking customer calls sometimes, so the leaders would know what’s going on.
Then I saw the evolution away from that. This was when Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, was a hero to a lot of company managers. Welch wrote a chapter called “The People Factory” in his book, Straight from the Gut, about getting rid of your bottom 10% [of managers every year].
[Bogle’s handpicked successor] Jack Brennan was a wannabe Jack Welch. I agreed with it — at first. But after watching it get implemented [on Vanguard’s hourly employees], I saw it was destroying the customer service culture. It became less about the customer, and more about making sure you weren’t in that bottom 10%. It was wrong. I left.
Advanta: Family and team
Advanta [2002 to 2007] didn’t have a customer service-centric culture. They had an amazing, employee-centric culture. It felt like a family.
My job was to make it perform better customer service. They had a project called Payment Defender [which penalized borrowers for repaying loan principal, so they’d keep paying interest]. I had [CEO] Dennis Alter in an office, listening into some customer calls. It was awful how we were squeezing the customers. Two calls was all it took. Dennis said, ‘That’s it.’ They stopped Payment Defender.
I was still a believer in the Jack Welch style. What happened to my own family while I was at Advanta opened my eyes. Our oldest daughter got sick with cancer. Everyone chipped in to send us to Disney. Brian Tierney, the advertising man, had joined the company. He called me when my daughter died; he was at the funeral.
You go through a thing like that, you realize what other people are going through. That’s how I learned to build a real team — we are all in this together.
The problem wasn’t the people; it was with the business. ... They had to sell the company.
Comcast: Getting the company to relate
I went to Comcast [2007 to 2010] to manage their executive complaint department.
[Founder] Ralph Roberts reminded me of Jack Bogle. Ralph would also have lunch in the cafeteria. He’d ask me how to use Twitter. Brian Roberts [who succeeded his father as CEO] is a great business guy. He’s all about the deal.
Comcast knew they were not customer-centric. And they were not well-loved. They ranked pretty far back in consumer surveys.
I saw what I needed to do was to make stories people could relate to. We started talking about customers like “Grannie Annie,” who used her internet to communicate with her grandchildren. Comcast bought this service in Indianapolis; it went haywire, and Granny Annie was having a tough time. I reached out, and put her in our newsletter. She did a blog post about it: “Frank, with Comcast, has been a big help!”
[Comcast executive] Steve Burke wanted to know all about it. No one had told him about this problem in Indianapolis. He made sure his people got engaged.
The Inquirer did the first article about me. It wound up on the front page and got picked up in other Comcast cities. Things just went crazy — New York Times, TV, magazines.
But it started to feel I was carrying the brand on my shoulders. It became stressful. What if I missed something? For three years, it was nonstop. On call 24 hours.
Citi: Fixing ‘hate’ after the mortgage crisis
Citigroup [2010 to 2015] was hated because, during the banking and mortgage crisis [of the 2000s], they made a lot of these bad mortgages, and now they were foreclosing on people left and right.
We created this homeowner-support program that hired people to be in the collections process, who had themselves lost their homes. We partnered with a nonprofit to help people struggling with their mortgages.
We also did a lot of fighting. We had to tell people at the bank they had to change.
I was named the most innovative person in banking in 2011 and 2012 by Bank Technology News. I got promoted to executive director. At that level you start to see things in a very different way. Up there, you are better able to understand policy. But you need both the high-level vision and the hands-on experience.
In 2015, they had a restructuring. They said I could pick a position, but I left. Two months later that whole division got folded.
Consultant: Finding ‘a balance’
Next, I worked for a public-relations agency. Then I started a consulting partnership. We had Walmart, McDonald’s and QVC. The strength of QVC was discovering products. But television was destroyed [by the internet]. They are still trying to figure out what to do over there, besides cutting costs.
The pandemic was rough for business. And our insurance was pretty expensive. I went over to Amazon’s place in Robbinsville, N.J., and started working on the dock, nights, so daytime was free for consulting.
Amazon gets a bad rap. They are often top-down; they may refer you for “coaching,” sometimes you might think it’s stupid stuff, like apparently driving a truck faster than its programmed maximum, because someone doesn’t understand the difference between the speedometer and the way GPS measures.
But if people knew all they do, Amazon would be very well-regarded. The way they train people, off the street. The trailer-loads of stuff they donate. The coolest part of Amazon is the diversity. I work with a former bond trader. Another guy had been homeless — working at Amazon, he got his first car, and his first apartment.
These days companies are all about doing things for the shareholder. But capitalism works best when there’s a balance. We have to find a balance that works for people.