Charlie Herrin: From Designing X1 to Chief Customer Experience Officer

Charlie Herrin is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at Comcast. He serves as a customer advocate, partnering with leaders across the entire business to reimagine the customer experience and put the customer at the center of every decision we make. Prior to this role, Charlie was Senior Vice President, Product Design and Development for Comcast Cable, where he led the design team behind the development of X1 and spearheaded the company’s initiative to deliver a consistent experience across platforms.

Q: What did you learn about Customer Experience during your years in product development?

A: Customer experience is the overarching goal of a product team, so I learned a lot about the customer during my product days. You can never go wrong working to save people time, money and effort.  In product, my team and I focused on building those “I never knew I always wanted this” moments, which is also relevant when looking at the customer’s entire experience. 

Q: What drives the work you do on the Customer Experience team?

A: Customer and employee feedback drives the work we do on the Customer Experience team. We have implemented a system across all of our markets that gives us real-time feedback from our customers and employees and that information is invaluable. We call back tens of thousands of customers a month to ask how we did and what we could have done better. Our front-line employees are the closest to our customers’ experience and they are our greatest resource, so we put a high value on their feedback. We do everything we can to empower our employees through tools, technology, and training so that they have the knowledge and ability to give our customers the excellent experience they expect and deserve. Ultimately, we understand that when an employee is confident and has the right information, a great customer experience will follow. 

Q: What does the ideal customer experience look like?

A: Good customer experience is proactive, thoughtful and reliably consistent. The ideal experience is when an issue with the product (though rare!) happens and it heals itself or proactively alerts the customer when it will be fixed. We invest constantly in the reliability of our network and products to make this happen, but inevitably we will need to communicate with the customer at some point about their service. When we do, we are focused on making sure that interaction is proactive and personalized so customers are informed of any service information in real-time. 

Q: What are you most excited about for the future?

A: We have made a ton of progress in the last few years since. We have invested in technology, improved our processes, and put the customer at the center of every decision we make. And our customers are starting to feel the difference. I am excited about the future of technology and how that can help our customer. We are investing and innovating in the artificial intelligence space – which we feel will make our products smarter and can help inform employees with more real-time information and recommendations.