I was enjoying a dinner party at my house this past Sunday when I peeked in on my email shortly after a guy we use to plow the snow had cleared our driveway.
Gmail was offline. Then I checked my blog – nothing. Same with Twitter and Facebook. So I looked at my cable modem and saw a single blinking light. Bad news.
My first thought was that the snowplow guy ran off the side of my driveway and took out my Internet cable, because he flew off the other side of my driveway earlier and nearly took out my lightpost and clipped my cars.
So, I went outside and my worst fears were confirmed. My cable was lying there dead in the snow.
Then I did what any Comcast customer on Twitter would do… I Tweeted a message to @comcastcares:
@comcastcares my snowplow guy severed my Internet and TV cables just now – help!
Just 2 minutes later (2 MINUTES!), Frank Eliason (@comcastcares), Senior Director of Comcast National Customer Service, responded and the ball was rolling. Did I mention this was a Sunday evening?
Long story short – my Internet was back up inside of 48 hours, thanks to Frank, @comcastbill, and some other folks at Comcast.
This was a big deal to me, since I have a lot of deadlines this week and work from home. The technician that came out had to deal with fixing the problem in sub-freezing temperatures in the dark. Afterwards, he came in and helped with an unrelated TV issue.
Anyhow, this prompt resolution comes as no surprise.
I had another great experience with Comcast on Twitter a year and a half ago. I had an issue that just wasn’t getting resolved when I’d call customer service, so I tried reaching out on Twitter.
Just like this time, they resolved things quickly, and after I blogged about it then, I was featured in a TV news segment that ran nationally on leveraging Twitter for customer service.
Thank you Frank, Bill, and Comcast – you guys are doing great stuff there.