CHICAGO — The nation’s largest cable provider wants its subscribers to know that it’s thinking about them. During a keynote speech at the cable industry’s INTX (Internet & Television Expo) show, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts took time to focus on how the company wants to fix some of the more painful parts of its pay-TV experience.

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An app to track (and rate) your tech

“We want to make the customer experience our No. 1 priority and our best product,” Roberts said on Tuesday. It’s a line that may prompt many Comcast subscribers to laugh bitterly. The company has had a bad year in the news, as one customer-service meltdown after another has gone viral online.

A few recent features in Comcast’s My Account app (Android and iOS) may help you avoid those issues. Since December, you’ve been able to use the app to check your hold time or request a call back within a 15-minute window. But does this get you the same old phone reps? No, said product director Al Cho: Using the app routes you to a separate help desk, at which you shouldn’t be asked to repeat the basic troubleshooting steps that the app already walks you through.

Cho also demonstrated the app’s Uber-esque Tech Tracker feature, coming in a few weeks, which provides a technician’s estimated arrival time, his or her location on a map, and the employee’s photo. You can then rate each service visit from zero to five stars. Cho said a one-star rating should automatically trigger an alert to a supervisor.

Before you ask, I already did: No, you can’t use this app to cancel your service.

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A remote control you can talk to

Finding something to watch using a dense, onscreen program grid and a button-strewn remote control has been historically dreadful. The updated remote Comcast introduced at the INTX show still features 39 buttons (older ones packed in 50-plus) but also includes a microphone for its voice-control feature.

I tried it, and it actually worked on the noisy show floor. You’re not limited to ordering up a TV channel or a movie or TV-show title, so I said “Washington Nationals” and within seconds was presented with a topic page listing the Nats’ current and upcoming games with options to watch or record each. Neat. Then I tried to test the system’s ability to recognize movie quotes by intoning, “We must not allow a mineshaft gap.” It heard me but did not get the Dr. Strangelove reference.

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