A person uses their mobile device on a couch.
Customer Experience

Reimagining the Product Activation Experience

Melinda Lindsley, on the customer experience team, discusses a new product activation experience her team developed in partnership with the Systems Engineering organization, to help simplify and save customers’ time.

Q: Why was product activation a pain point for customers?

A: We heard from our customers that the best customer activation experience is one that is fast, intuitive and can be done at a time most convenient for them. The activation experience that we had previously was really complex and often required customers to call us to get their devices up and running smoothly.  We needed to create a simple activation process that gave them the tools they needed to do it fully on their own.

Q: How did you go about changing the activation process?

A: We looked at customer and employee feedback to see what the pain points were and worked to address them. This led us to create the “sign up and sign in” solution. This experience integrates customer identity (login credentials), activation and device customization to create a seamless onboarding flow, which is easy and personalized. This new activation flow is being used by both customers for their self-install experience as well as technician installations. The “sign up and sign in” solution will ultimately support over 24 million device activations annually.

Q: How does this help simplify the process?

A: It consolidates activation steps like WiFi setup and ensures multiple devices in the home talk seamlessly to each other during the install so customers don’t have to enter their login credentials multiple times for multiple devices. This saves customers time and allows them to get up and running even faster, and gives technicians more time to focus on the customer experience.

Q: What has the feedback from customers been so far?

A: So far, 70 percent of customers have told us their installs using the “sign up and sign in” activation experience are faster. This foundational development sets the stage for new customers beginning to enjoy our services. We want the experience to be as simple, fast and easy as possible so that our relationship starts out on the right foot.



Melinda Lindsley is vice president, business process management for Comcast Cable.