Comcast has hooked up with Nextdoor on an Xfinity Neighborhood Program that provides cable subs in Seattle access to a local “concierge” who’s available to answer questions about the MSO’s products, communicate service outages and provide offers and passes to special events.
According to GeekWire, Nextdoor, a private social networking platform tailored for individual neighborhoods, recently alerted community leaders in Seattle about the pilot program.
Founded in 2010, Nextdoor’s free platform enables individual neighborhoods to create private Websites to exchange contact info, offer advice and recommendations, and to organize virtual neighborhood watch groups. Comcast Ventures was one of a handful of companies that participated in a $60 million round of funding in Nexdoor announced last fall.
According to an FAQ about the pilot underway in Seattle, Comcast isn’t paying Nextdoor. “While XFINITY is offering this new program through Nextdoor, the two companies remain completely separate, and XFINITY will have no access to information about Nextdoor members," it reads.
The FAQ also notes that Nextdoor can’t assist with Comcast service support or technical issues.
However, Shelli, the first “Xfinity ambassador” for the Seattle trial, notes in this Web post that she’ll be providing help with questions about Comcast services. Describing her role as “kind of like a neighborhood concierge,” she’s “not a salesperson, just your conveniently located link to a larger team that’s dedicated to providing customer service for you.”
Comcast is testing out the neighborhood concierge idea as the operator expands on efforts to improve its customer service and care. Of recent note, Comcast announced it would hire 5,500 customer service reps over the next three years as it showed off a prototype Studio Xfinity store in Chicago during the INTX show.
