Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA) regularly ranks among the worst companies in America based on customer service. Anecdotes about the way customers are treated get picked up by the press occasionally, further harming any effort the cable and entertainment company can make to erase the problem. Comcast recently announced the opening of customer service operation with 5,500 new jobs. For a company with millions of customers, and deep-seated trouble, the new initiative cannot scrape the surface.

Comcast management announced:

The core elements of the strategic plan include: creating more than 5,500 customer service jobs over the next few years and setting a goal to always be on time for customer appointments by Q3 of 2015. It also includes major investments in technology and training to give employees the tools they need to deliver excellent service. The company will also simplify billing and create better policies to provide greater consistency and transparency to customers. Additionally, the plan includes the renovation of hundreds of stores across the country and the development of new technologies that will enable customers to interact with us how and when they want.

Comcast’s earnings report showed it has more than 22 million video customers, over 21 million high-speed Internet customers and more than 10 million voice customers. Throwing 5,500 well-trained people and upgraded stores against the problem cannot address a system that has been overwhelmed by customer service issues for years.

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The breadth of the Comcast customer base makes it the largest company in its industry. Within that industry, all the biggest companies have very low customer service grades. This is a sign that the amount of effort needed to reverse the problem is Herculean, well beyond the effort of a few thousand new workers.

Comcast has problems similar to any customer-facing company with millions of customers. That puts it in the same category as banks and the largest retailers. Every one of these companies wishes it had better customer service because of the erosion in revenue poor customer service causes. Even with the massive resources all these firms have, none has been able to make the correction. That is because the problem of serving tens of millions of customers is beyond correcting.

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