One of the best-kept secrets in the state of Washington is a small but mighty team in our Spokane region’s Liberty Lake Call Center. This 80,000-square-foot Center of Excellence employs more than 600 people in our region that support Comcast’s digital care, mobile, retention and retail affiliate teams.
It is also home to the nation’s most unique Comcast call center team, solely dedicated to helping customers with disabilities navigate every aspect of their Comcast experience – the Comcast Accessibility Center of Excellence, or ACOE.
Led from the Spokane location, the ACOE supports 30,000+ customer requests a month from individuals with special needs and disabilities, offering them a quick and easy way to connect with us for extended support and care. This team also works side-by-side with our Comcast Accessibility and Product Development Lab at our company’s headquarters in Philadelphia – helping to lead implementation and support for the latest innovative products and services we offer for our customers with specialized needs.
The ACOE team’s specialized services for customers with limited abilities include offering braille supported billing support, large button remotes, closed captioning assistance and personalized regular direct calls with customers that need continued extended care.
Earlier this month The Spokesman-Review joined us for an exclusive tour of the center, and took an in-depth look at how this nationally recognized and acclaimed team operates and serves customers nationwide:
The telecommunications giant launched the ACOE in 2013 with 12 agents and has since expanded to more than 70 agents, who handle 30,000 customer calls a month. Agents undergo 10 weeks of product training and extensive soft-skill training on how to interact with customers with disabilities, Gifford said.
The ACOE has a dedicated phone line – separate from Comcast’s main customer service number – that connects customers directly to the center. The special focus hasn’t gone unnoticed.
“The ACOE is great. It really helps when you have a problem with your television to have people really troubleshoot with you,” said Eric Bridges, executive director for the American Council of the Blind. “Cable costs a lot. I’m paying for accessibility right now and I like it.”
The ACOE works hand in hand with the Comcast Accessibility and Product Development Lab at the company’s headquarters in Philadelphia, which was established in 2012 by Tom Wlodkowski, the vice president of accessibility for Comcast.
The lab allows developers to collaborate and create products and features that can be integrated into Comcast’s platforms. It hosts focus groups that include people with disabilities who test products and provide feedback.
Wlodkowski has made it a priority to enhance usability of the company’s products and services, especially for people with disabilities.
“He is very conscious of where can we take our technology, and I think truly we all feel like we’ve just begun to tap into what we can do,” Gifford said. “I think it’s really endless on where we are going to take our technology.”
You can access the entire article by visiting: www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/jan/13/comcast-aims-to-help-customers-with-disabilities-t
Spokane Center of Excellence Building & Job Opportunities
We are incredibly proud to have this team located and led here in Washington state. Further, our Liberty Lake Call Center as a whole continues to be one of the most successful in the Western United States. Housed in a newly constructed building, the building is one of the more innovative workspaces in the Spokane region, offering employees a state-of-the-art workplace and a plethora of amenities including a “grab and go” cafeteria, fitness center, a communications technology lab and more.
Interested in working at the Liberty Lake Call Center of Excellence? You can find all of our current openings here.
