Comcast wants to help its customer-service ranking by letting subscribers help themselves.
Over the past several months, the operator has
added several new features to its Customer Central
portal that give customers new ways to retrieve
information or manage their accounts — without
having to pick up the phone. Recently introduced
self-service functions include a service “health status”
indicator, appointment-management capabilities
and order-confi rmation email.
“There has been a big investment from our perspective
to build out our self-service tools, which
comes back to this mantra of respecting our customers’
time,” Comcast senior vice president of
customer experience Tom Karinshak said.
Some tasks still require speaking with a human.
For example, making a service appointment
requires a phone call to Comcast “because we
want to make sure the truck roll will fix whatever
their issue is,” Karinshak said. But once a visit is
scheduled, subscribers can cancel or reschedule it
themselves online.
Interestingly, one of the most popular features on
Comcast’s customer-help site is a code-fi nder tool
for remote controls, which has been
accessed more than 1 million times
since it debuted last summer.
As for future enhancements, Karinshak
said Comcast is developing
a knowledge-management system
to provide easier access to info on
resolving common issues. That initially will be for customer-service representatives but,
eventually, it will also be made available to customers, he said.
“We want to give customers choice and control about how they work with us,”
Karinshak said.
