Cable Technology Feature Article
Comings & Goings: Comcast Appoints New Senior VP of Customer Experience to Improve Image
By Ben Linton, Contributing Writer
Comcast (News 
- Alert) Corp. has appointed a fast-rising executive, Charlie Herrin, as senior vice president of customer experience. The new position will have broad powers to allow him to fix Comcast's relationship with its customers. Herrin will oversee a sector of Comcast business with over 50 call centers and thousands of customer service employees and technicians. His successful work as a team leader of the group that developed Comcast's interactive X1 TV guide earned him this promotion.
"Charlie will look at everything we do with customers across the board," company spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said Monday. Herrin "completely changed the convention of TV viewing with X1," and Comcast believes he can bring that same customer focus to customer service, according to Khoury.
Appointing Herrin comes at a critically sensitive time for Comcast. Federal regulators are exhaustively reviewing the company's proposed $45.2 billion deal for Time Warner (News - Alert) Cable Inc., and Comcast's poor record of customer service has become an issue in Washington. Both Comcast and Time Warner Cable consistently rank low in independent customer satisfaction surveys and have been plagued by highly publicized failings in the past year.
A specific example occurred in July, when AOL (News - Alert) Inc. vice president Ryan Block posted online an eight-minute conversation with a Comcast customer service representative who argued against Block's dropping his Comcast Internet service. The call went viral on the Internet with the help of Block's 80,000 Twitter (News - Alert) followers, and has been listened to more than five million times, according to Soundcloud.com.
Comcast is notorious for customer service and it’s refreshing to know that the company is at least attempting to reconcile the situation. Herrin has a difficult task ahead of him but possesses the experience and knowledge necessary to make a change. Otherwise customers will become frustrated and switch to another service provider altogether. The public should expect a better customer service experience from Comcast in the future.
Edited by Alisen Downey
