Comcast-ic

We are Comcast subscribers, cable TV and Internet access, and I haven’t given much thought to the service one way of the other. It seems pretty reliable. We haven’t had a lot of tear-our-hair-out experiences with them.

The other day, Comcast e-mail - just one of several e-mail systems I rely on, but an important one since a number of my clients contact me through it - was down.

It was not how I wanted to start my morning.

I got on Comcast help, and started a chat session with a perfectly helpful customer service rep, who gave me two possible ways to get at my e-mail: through their mobile facility (primitive, but doable), or by switching to Windows Mail (a.k.a. Outlook). The CSR was quite helpful, and provided good information and links to web pages - Comcast’s and others - on how to get Windows Mail going.

Well, it was easy enough to get Windows Mail going in one direction - inbound - but there was some SMTP setting that I was missing in terms of getting outbound mail going.

Back on to Comcast for another chat session.

This time, the rest of America had woken up to no Comcast e-mail, and I found that I was 343 in the support queue.

I took a shower. I was 297.

I did some exercise. I was 214.

But the queue was going down, and not at a terribly slow rate.

Suddenly, I was number 12, 11, 10, 9, 8….

I got another customer service rep, who provided me with the information I needed to get outgoing mail working. (Vista is different than XP, so there was one more box I needed to check.)

So far, so good.

Support had been helpful and correct.

Later in the day, John Whiteside sent me an article claiming that Comcast had been hacked, and that e-mail addresses and passwords had been compromised.

So, I decided to change my password just to make sure.

Which I couldn’t do, because I am the "secondary user". My husband is the "primary". Which would have been fine if Jim had ever actually used his Comcast e-mail address, which he hadn’t. In fact, he didn’t even know what his address is, let alone his password. It didn’t take much sleuthing to figure out what Jim’s e-mail address was. But that password….

Once again, back to online chat.

Terri was my support rep this time.

Password reset wasn’t going to be a problem.

Except for the fact that we needed to know Jim’s pin.

I figured it had to be A or B, since these are the usual pins we use for things like Frequent Flyer miles, etc.

It wasn’t.

What were we going to do?

What Terri was going to do was bend the rules a little and call to confirm that we actually were at the registered phone number, and then tell us what Jim’s pin was.

So she did.

Pin in hand, I was able to make Jim the secondary, me the primary, and change our passwords.

Saved!

What was so good about Comcast online support?

• The people, especially Terri, were helpful.
• The help they provided was correct.
• They let me know where I was in the queue - and the queue went pretty fast (meaning that they have adequate staff on board).
• They weren’t frazzled, even though I was and they’d ben dealing with frazzled customers all day.

For many of the goods and services we buy, the customer support rep is the face of the brand. And, if we’re in a situation where we’re dealing with customer support, it’s probably not because everything’s going swimmingly, or when we’re in a peachy mood.

Comcast may have its ups and downs, but last week - at least in my experience - their customer support was Comcastic.

---

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.

The Opinionated Marketers | Powered by WordPress | ElegantBlue is a custom theme by Nathan Rice