Comcast has announced a new, multi-year plan to reinvent the customer experience and to create a culture focused on exceeding customers’ expectations, at all levels of the company. The plan centers on looking at every decision through a customer lens and making measureable changes and improvements across the company.
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.
“This transformation is about shifting our mindset to be completely focused on the customer. It’s about respecting their time, being more proactive, doing what’s right, and never being satisfied with good enough,” said Neil Smit, president and CEO, Comcast Cable. “We’re on a mission and everyone is committed to making this happen.”
“We’ll be successful when our customers see and feel this change in every interaction with us – from the first time they order and use our products to the way we communicate with them or respond to any issues,” said Charlie Herrin, EVP, customer experience, Comcast Cable. “We won’t stop until we get there, and we will never be ‘finished’ delivering a better experience to our customers.”
Creating more than 5,500 new jobs
The company’s multi-year commitment to create more than 5,500 new customer service jobs will begin with the addition of three new state-of-the-art customer support centers in Albuquerque, NM; Spokane, WA; and Tucson, AZ. More than 2,000 new employees will be hired at these centers. The new center, which will open in Albuquerque, will be staffed with bilingual employees who will support Spanish-speaking customers across the country. Sites for the two centers in Tucson and Spokane will be operational later this year. The company is also tripling the size of its social care team to serve customers more quickly on Twitter, Facebook and other social platforms, and hiring 250 team members to serve in its Xfinity Stores across the country.
To meet the goal of never being late and respecting customers’ time, Comcast is hiring hundreds of additional technicians across the country and strengthening Comcast dispatch teams and operations. If a technician doesn’t arrive on time for an appointment, Comcast will automatically credit the customer $20.
Investing in tools, technology and training
Comcast is also making significant investments in its workforce tools. The company is continuing to develop cutting-edge technology that will help its technicians and call center employees deliver excellent service. It is currently rolling out a new, cloud-based platform that gives employees a better, holistic view of the customer’s account history so they have everything they need to help customers faster. Starting this year, all employees, from senior management to frontline representatives, will be required to participate in additional customer experience training every year. In addition, new smart network tools have been developed to proactively diagnose issues in the network and enable Comcast engineers to solve them before they reach customers.
Reimagining the retail experience
This reinvention of the customer experience will also involve major changes to the in-store experience. Comcast is redesigning all of its stores, adding staff and introducing new capabilities, including intelligent queueing that allows customers to reserve a place ‘in line’ from their mobile phone, to cut wait times. We have opened or built 125 new stores to date and plan to reach all 500 of our locations over the next few years.
Service on demand
Comcast is also building new technology so that we can be available for customers where and when they want. The My Account app, which launched last year and has been downloaded more than one million times, puts customers in the driver’s seat giving them the tools to troubleshoot problems and fix issues. Customers with questions or issues can also use the app to schedule a convenient time for a Comcast representative to call them – with no waiting on hold.
Another new feature, called Tech Tracker, is being trialed in Boston and will be launched by the end of the year across all Comcast markets. The tool allows customers to track the location and arrival of their technician in real time on their smartphone and then rate the experience after the appointment. And, a recent partnership with The UPS Store makes returning equipment easy and convenient for customers.
These are all examples of the changes Comcast has already begun to make, and will continue to make, to improve the customer experience.
For more information about these changes, please visit comcastcorporation.com/customerexperience.
