Cable-TV Leaders Adopt Plan to Improve Service

The cable-television industry, beset by complaints about service and prices, issued guidelines Thursday that officials said could lead to price increases but also to service worth paying the extra price.

The voluntary standards, which cable officials hope can be adopted nationwide by July, 1991, call for improved responses to customers, better-trained and more accessible service representatives and faster installation and repairs.

The standards also urge cable companies to state clearly what services a customer is receiving and their cost and to make prompt refunds. Customers also should be given at least a month’s notice when a company is going to raise rates.

“In all candor, we can say that a significant number of our companies haven’t gotten to the point where customer service is adequate,” said James Mooney, president of the National Cable Television Assn. “Just as cable customers demand the best in television programming, they also expect and demand the prompt and reliable service reflected in these standards.”

Mooney said that the new guidelines could boost monthly cable rates but that it will benefit customers in the long run. “If customers want high-quality programming and . . . state-of-the-art plants--sure it’s going to cost them something. . . . But I think it will not be a significant upward boost in rates.”

Cable companies acknowledge a need for better service. But they note a survey released last May by Tele-Communications, the nation’s largest cable operator, in which 27% of responding subscribers rated quality of service as “extremely good” and 57% as “pretty good.” On the down side, 8% said service was “not very good” and another 8% rated it “not good at all.”

More than a dozen bills are pending in Congress that seek to impose varying degrees of “re-regulation” on a cable industry that, since it was essentially deregulated in 1987, has been criticized by some as having grown smug and unresponsive to complaints over prices and service.

Robert Miron, chairman of the National Cable Television Assn., said implementing the guidelines will require spending by the companies. But investing in customer service, he added, is likely to make money for cable companies in the long run because it will help them attract the 40% of the public that does not now subscribe.

Among the standards:

* Telephone calls will be answered within 30 seconds, including waiting time and transfers, and automated answering systems will limit the number of rings to four. This standard should be achieved 90 percent of the time.

* Under normal circumstances, a customer will receive a busy signal less than 3% of the time a cable company office is open.

* Standard installations will be done within seven business days.