Continuing to execute a public charm campaign under new customer service czar Charlie Herrin, Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) intends to unwind the age-old cable industry practice of leaving customers in the dark all day as they wait for a technician.
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Comcast's new technician tracking app. (Source: Comcast blog) |
The company had already trimmed the estimated arrival time window for their technicians to a more reasonable two hours. Now, it is offering an Uber-like app that lets customers track a technician's arrival down to the half-hour.
"Customers with scheduled appointments will be alerted through our app when our technician is about 30 minutes away from arriving at their house, and will be able to track this technician's progress on a map," Herrin blogged. "We're hoping this will prevent our customers from just needing to sit at home and wait. They can check the app from the office, or wherever they are, and head home when they see we're on our way. If we are running late, which can happen if our tech gets tied up at someone else's house, we will let folks know that too, and provide real-time status updates so they can plan accordingly."
The new, human-faced response follows series of recent apologies and mea culpas from Comcast, which is trying to do a better job under Herrin of explaining such issues as service interruptions and billing errors.
The aggressive initiative comes as the U.S. consumers register an almost irrational negative response to Comcast in numerous surveys. And, of course, the conglomerate is trying to get a $45 billion cable merger approved with federal regulators.
For more:
- read Charlie Herrin's blog post
Related links:
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