It’s not your father’s Comcast. It’s now your Comcast, the Comcast of the future.
I was invited to participate in Comcast’s CX Innovation Day on Monday, November 4. The event’s purpose was to put a spotlight on CX innovation. It included a roundtable discussion with Comcast executives and CX thought leaders, followed by interviews with SiliconANGLE’s Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE.
As you know by now, customer experience is a hot topic, as it should be, especially since products and services have become so commoditized that the only true differentiator across brands is the customer experience. Customers are willing to pay more for a better experience, so it’s time for brands to step up and deliver.
Comcast is one of those brands that has stepped up and is delivering. The Comcast of today is not your father’s Comcast – or, well, the Comcast of five years go. It’s not the same brand of yesteryear, when we heard stories of abusive customer service and of a brand taking advantage of its customers.
At this event, I regularly heard “customer experience is our best product” as the brand’s new mantra, while “time to joy” was mentioned as a concept and a metric being tracked. This was refreshing to hear, as were the stories shared by Comcast executives.
Two of the stories shared were from the product team, while others came from their director of customer experience.
- Preston Smalley, Vice President of Product Development, talked about Xfinity Flex, which allows you to stream movies and shows, as well as search your show library across all of your apps (e.g., Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc), in one place with the help of a voice-enabled remote control.
- Mike Fine, Cable Software Architect, talked about and demonstrated Eye Control, which enables independence and improves accessibility for people with disabilities (originally developed for customers with ALS) by allowing them to control the remote with eye movement.
Both of these innovations speak to understanding your customers and solving problems for them.
- Kristy Schaffler, Director of Customer Experience, California, talked about why she joined Comcast and what she’s been working on since then. I loved that she talked about their focus on the employee experience and how Comcast has invested in tools, training, and process improvements for employees in order to improve the customer experience. There was also an outreach to employees to identify what was holding them back from serving customers the way they deserve and desire to be served. Once executives saw the list of issues, they started with the #1 issue and focused on fixing all of them.
There’s a clear focus on both employee and customer experiences at Comcast, with a lot more innovation yet to come. It’s taken four years or more, but Comcast has reinvented itself. If Comcast can, your business can, too!
After the Comcast team shared their stories, Chris Preimesberger, Editor-in-Chief of eWEEK, moderated a roundtable discussion about customer experience, technology, data, AI, and more.
Once the session was over, all attendees were invited to be interviewed by SiliconANGLE’s Jeff Frick for theCUBE. Here’s my interview:
If you prefer to see the video with the transcript, as well, click here. You can also check out SiliconANGLE’s write-up of my interview. And, finally, you can view all of the attendees’ interviews.
