Driving Home an Improved Customer Experience

By: Jim Samaha, Senior Vice President, Comcast Freedom Region

Continuing in our efforts to re-imagine the customer experience, I’m pleased to announce that renovations have been completed at our Center City customer service center located at 1351 South Columbus Boulevard in Philadelphia.

The location now offers off-street parking for 40 cars, including five for customers with disabilities. Inside, the store has been expanded by more than 1,500 square feet of space, featuring a more open floor plan, new technology and intelligent queuing that allows customers to reserve their place in “line” and have the ability to explore the center while they wait.

This renovation follows recent openings of new Xfinity Stores on Cottman Avenue and Aramingo Avenue in Philadelphia as well as in Havertown and Langhorne, PA and Mount Laurel, NJ. More store openings are coming soon in locations like King of Prussia, Exton and Willow Grove, PA.

Our top priority is delivering a better customer experience and, as part of that, we are making a significant, multi-million dollar investment in our stores, adding new locations in key retail shopping areas so we can be closer to our customers. These new stores are all about convenience. There are self-service options, opportunities to try out our latest services and, if you need to see a service expert, there’s no more standing in line – you just sign in and explore until your name is called.

We’ve rolled out a number of other customer service improvements over the past few months. From hiring hundreds of additional customer-facing technicians, to adding 300 new trucks custom-designed with input from employees across the company, we are listening to our employees and customers and acting on their feedback.

Other recent customer experience enhancements in the region include:

• Xfinity My Account app has been downloaded more than 2.3 million times, and gives customers the tools to troubleshoot problems and fix issues (for example, the app can power cycle set-top boxes and perform diagnostics on any Comcast-supplied equipment in the home). Customers can also use MyAccount to schedule a convenient time for a Comcast representative to call them – with no waiting on hold – and it allows customers to easily view and pay their bills simply by taking a picture of their credit card.
• Partnership with The UPS Store makes returning equipment easy and convenient for customers; this enables customers to drop off equipment at their more than 50 locations across the region.
• Offering self-install kits for the X1 Platform, Internet and Voice services at Comcast Service Centers and Xfinity Stores to make it even easier to get services on customers’ schedules; professional installation service appointments can be scheduled any day of the week with service windows as short as one hour.
• Providing iPads to care supervisors and iPhones to technicians to further empower them with the right tools to better serve customers.
• Additional customer experience training for all employees including all senior management.
• Developing better technology and tools – like the knowledge database Einstein, and a customer timeline feature that will give a holistic view of a customer’s experience with the company and give frontline employees all the information they need to answer questions and solve problems quickly.
• Another new feature, called Tech ETA, will be fully launched by the end of the year across all Comcast markets; the tool will allow customers to track the location and arrival of technicians – in real time from anywhere – on their smartphones and provide status updates so they can plan accordingly
• Co-Pilot, a new tool for X1, is being trialed that allows customers to share their television screens and allow customer service agents to “take control” so they can walk them through various features and commands.

More information about our ongoing efforts to significantly improve our customers’ experience with us can be found here.

Transformation of the customer experience is our top goal and we’re 100% committed to making it happen. We’re so excited to demonstrate this yet again right here in our hometown, and we’re looking forward to rolling out more improvements soon. Stay tuned!