Comcast seeks to fix awful customer service, admits “it may take a few years”

Comcast promotes executive, orders him to fix its biggest problem.

Jon Brodkin – Sep 26, 2014 3:30 pm | 138

Comcast executive Charlie Herrin is aiming to improve Comcast's legendarily poor customer service. Credit: Comcast

After months of getting bashed for treating customers poorly, Comcast today said it’s going to make improving customer service its “number one priority.” But the company admitted that “it may take a few years before we can honestly say that a great customer experience is something we’re known for.”

Neil Smit, CEO of Comcast’s cable division, wrote today that Comcast’s customer service hasn’t kept up with Comcast’s focus on “product innovation,” technology, and content. “But this is only one half of the customer experience equation. The other half is operational excellence in how we deliver service,” he wrote. “The way we interact with our customers—on the phone, online, in their homes—is as important to our success as the technology we provide. Put simply, customer service should be our best product.”

A longtime Comcast executive is being called upon to fulfill that goal. Smit announced the promotion of 15-year Comcast veteran Charlie Herrin to a new role as senior VP of customer experience. Herrin previously was senior VP of product development and led design of X1, Comcast’s new TV user interface.

“In this new role, Charlie will partner with leaders across all business units, including customer service, technical operations, sales, marketing, training and development, and product innovation to reimagine the customer experience and ensure that we are delighting our customers at each touch point,” Smit wrote. “Charlie will listen to feedback from customers as well as our employees to make sure we are putting our customers at the center of every decision we make.”

Comcast says it has made some improvements already. “[W]e are addressing some very real pain points that are making it easier for our employees to serve our customers, and easier for our customers to do business with us,” Smit wrote. “We rolled out new tools in our call centers like Einstein to help our employees provide better, faster service to our customers. At the same time, we shortened our technician appointment windows to 1-2 hours, introduced new self-service apps so customers have more choice in how they interact with us, and we are making improvements to our service centers across the country.”

Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which are attempting to merge, ranked as the most hated companies in their industry in the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index.

A flurry of criticism over the past few months followed distribution of a recording in which a Comcast call center employee all but refused to let a customer cancel service. Comcast apologized for the employee’s behavior and promised to do better, but subscribers continued posting recordings showing how poorly they were treated. In some cases, Comcast did not fix problems until customers shamed the company publicly by going to the press.

This has come at a bad time for Comcast given its attempt to purchase Time Warner Cable. During an April hearing on the merger, Comcast Executive VP David Cohen told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “we are deeply disappointed” in the company’s customer service. “It bothers us that we have so much trouble delivering a really high quality service level to customers on a consistent basis. It is not something we’re ignoring,” he said.