Is Comcast Starting to “Get It”

As we look around the cuurent landscape and see it littered with “old’ media companies who just haven’t seemed to grasp the revolution that is taking place around them, there are a few that have begun to stand out.  One being Comcast.  I never ever thought I would make that statement, even in light of the recent announcement of bandwidth caps (Come on people .. who the hell NEEDS more than 250 GB a month …), but I will say that I have enjoyed watching them come onto the social media scene and even more thier ability to use these new social medai tools to provide the customer a better experience.

Many of us Twitter users have become quite familiar with @comcastcares there as a place where Comcast is reaching out to people with issues or questions, and importatnly allowing people to reach out to them minus a lot of the BS.  Frank Eliason started this and his superiors saw the value it brought and he has continued to build out the social media team there at Comcast.  Have an issue, twitter or email them and you will be taken care of.  It is exactly the thing social media is meant to do, cut out the middleman and allow the comsumer a direct line of communication to a receptive audience.  It has been interesting to see the “tide” kind of turn recently.  Whereas people used to bash Comcast as a modern day beaurcratic nightmare, that seems to have shifted.

So I am moving into a new place and decided I was going to go back to cable as DSL has not cut it for me.  In the past I was so used to the long labourious phone calls to the sales department to get my new account and set up and installation time … I was dreading it.  I went online to at least check out the pricing for the bundles and as I was looking I noticed I could add the itme to a Cart … Hmm.  I added it and proceeded to the checkout.  I was pretty surprised, a rather seamless experience.  My next choice was a place to pick a couple of installations times that would be good for me, and that was it.  In the end a Live Chat window came up for an analyst to verify my order.  While chatting he told me he found a better price for me !  I took it and that was that, transaction complete, installation sceduled, and I didnt have to wait on hold or any of that annoying  BS.

All in all a great customer experience that I appluad Comcast for.  How about you all?  Any expericences with Comcast or anyone else you thought was a great example of using new tools to make a better customer experience ?