Comcast plans to reexamine the way it tries to keep subscribers from leaving its service, after a nightmarish call with one customer went viral last week and led to an outpouring of criticism. The recorded call included eight minutes of what Comcast calls a "Retention" agent attempting to argue a customer down from leaving, and Comcast now admits that much of this aggressive behavior was its own fault. "The agent on this call did a lot of what we trained him and paid him … to do," Dave Watson, Comcast's chief operating officer, writes in an internal letter that was published Monday morning, leaked to Consumerist, and verified by Ars Technica.

"I am not surprised that we have been criticized."

As The Verge's Adrianne Jeffries reported last week, the agent's startling obstinacy was right in line with the ways in which Comcast motivates these employees — namely, having their pay rely on how many customers they lose and how many they keep from leaving. In its internal letter, Comcast doesn't say exactly what measures it will take to prevent situations like this in the future, and it certainly won't be wholly ending the "retention" practice — "He tried to save a customer, and that’s important," Watson writes.

But Watson does say that how retention calls are made will be examined. "We will review our training programs, we will refresh our manager on coaching for quality, and we will take a look at our incentives to ensure we are rewarding employees for the right behaviors," Watson writes. "We can, and will, do better." That final item, reviewing how Comcast motivates its retention employees, will likely be a critical one to address before attitudes like the one demonstrated in last week's call disappear, and clearly Comcast knows there's an issue: "It was painful to listen to this call," Watson writes, "and I am not surprised that we have been criticized for it."

You can read the full memo below, via Consumerist.