Comcast wants to clean up its notoriously messy act, and the telecom company plans spend $300 million and hire thousands of new employees in a bid to improve its awful customer service. Maybe, just maybe, Comcast is finally getting the message. After being repeatedly embarrassed by countless tales of unbelievably bad customer service, many of which went viral, then being forced by government regulators to drop its planned acquisition of Time Warner Cable, Comcast says it’s going to put $300 million toward cleaning up its act. The country’s largest cable provider plans to add 5,500 customer service jobs during the next two to three years. (Some of those folks are current employees who will presumably be transferred into service jobs.) It’s also building three new call centers and adding technicians. “There are times you just need to transform things and rethink things from the base level,” said Neil Smit, president and CEO of Comcast Cable, at a recent industry trade show in Chicago. “That’s what we’ve done.” Should you be skeptical? Of course. Comcast has abused so many customers for so long, that it should take more than promises, some of which we’ve heard before, to convince people an outfit that has twice been named the “Worst Company in America” by an arm of Consumer Reports finally had its come-to-Jesus moment. The cable giant has repeatedly embarrassed itself, including an incident in which a women’s billing account was renamed with a profanity following a run-in with a Comcast customer service representative. Last year, a customer who wanted to cancel his service was forced to argue with an amazingly stubborn and aggressive service rep who wouldn’t take goodbye for an answer. The angry customer put a recording of the call online, and it went viral, much to Comcast’s chagrin. You get the idea. A year’s worth of really bad publicity, the failure of the Time Warner merger, and increasing consumer interest in cord cutting, seems to have grabbed someone’s attention in Comcastland. In addition to the hiring wave, Comcast says it will give customers $20 credits if techs are late for appointments. The company plans to redesign its bills by 2016 to make them easier to understand, and it will provide receipts for all orders and returned equipment so there are paper trails when disputes arise. To be fair, Comcast is a very big ship, and it will take time for it to execute a turn toward better customer service. In the meantime, you should keep complaining to Comcast when it messes up, and also let consumer advocates (like me) know about the mishaps. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe