Comcast center boosts customer service with fine-tuned cable boxes

All of the equipment turned in by the company’s approximately 2 million customers in New England will end up here, where 140 employees visually inspect the devices, subject them to a battery of tests, and clean them up.

The company built the plant and improved the process with the hope it leaves more customers happy and reduces the number of angry calls from people who are inadvertently given faulty equipment.

The equipment is inspected for obvious damage, sorted by type, and stacked on pallets. The devices are then loaded onto metal racks and wheeled into a room where hard drives are wiped of any recorded memory - say goodbye to those old episodes of “The Twilight Zone’’ - and restored to factory settings.

Once the latest firmware has been installed - including, for instance, the most recent show guide for set-top cable boxes - the equipment is hooked up to machines that assess a wide range of functions. It takes about 20 minutes to conduct more than 70 diagnostic tests on a dozen set-top boxes.

Comcast’s regional senior director of supply chain, Bob Allen, who oversees the facility, said the company did not previously have the technology to test components efficiently, meaning a customer might accidentally receive a box that could record only one channel at a time instead of two, for example. Similarly, the company, which offers Internet and telephone service as well as cable TV, did not previously test both phone lines on its voice equipment. Now it does.

“In the past, we would be doing at best five or six [tests], and it wouldn’t be anywhere near as high tech as this,’’ Allen said. “We are weeding any [defective devices] out and getting them off to repair.’’

Ben Popken, managing editor of the website Consumerist.com, said he has heard complaints from customers of Comcast and other cable companies who have received faulty equipment.

“They break, they go out of service,’’ he said. ‘They don’t do the job they’re supposed to do. I’m glad to hear they’re trying to improve that. I would take a wait-and-see approach.’’