Comcast cares. Really.

In recent months, our efforts in the blogosphere, forums and sites like Twitter have been widely talked about. Listening to our customers on the Internet is not new for Comcast - we’ve been at it for a several years now. In the fall of 2007, we started to reach out to customers more aggressively by using social networks to not only listen, but respond to customers who expressed their frustrations online. We simply contacted customers either by phone, email, tweet, post or comment to see how that person needed assistance. The positive reaction customers had was amazing when we called or wrote to simply say “how can I help?”

Our reaction was to take this process to the next level. By locating the account we learn more about what happened and use the information to improve as a company. By having the discussion with the Customer we obtain even more detail, get to the root of the problem, and resolve it. This is a great win for Comcast because we are gaining very useful feedback that we can act on. It is also great for the Customer because we are able to help resolve their concerns. David Pelland wrote an interesting piece for Digital Insider on this very process…check it out.

The best part of using social networking to help consumers is all of the new friends that we meet throughout the world. One of my online friends is Grannie Annie. This remarkable woman set up her blog as a way to communicate with her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who live throughout the country. We first met when Annie needed help setting up her Comcast.net email address. Through many conversations, we were able to help her set up her computer in a way that kept her connected to her entire family. This led to her blog post “Frank, with Comcast, has been a big help!” For me, it was a new friend that I enjoyed chatting with about all kinds of things.

Just like I have with Grannie Annie, I look forward to chatting with all of you on this blog about your thoughts. We are working hard to improve the Customer experience and one of the keys to improving is listening and gathering your feedback. To kick the conversation off, has social networking with companies helped you get better service? Are there things you’d like to see Comcast do to better help you?