Consumer Experience, Who Cares? by randulo randulos
July 7, 2008
01:57 am | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
A simple web site that sells products. A problem with one sale, the customer orders a $40 product in error and asks for a refund/credit. Do you train your CS staff to say, "sorry, your fault, no can do" or have you calculated the ocst of customer acquisition and realized that great service will get you more business?
Apple, the company some of us love to hate. Yet, I've never had a better customer experience than the one I have had so far with iTunes. They always give the customer the benefit of the doubt regarding bad downloads or corrupted files, event hough a customer could be lying about say, a rental that expired. Further, iTunes Store has issues several refunds and credits (yes both) for series related to the writers' strike and other oddities, such as the occasional removal of an episode.
On the other hand, you have a company like InkClub.com who refused to work with me on an erroneous order, then added to me to a mailing list (insult to injury!). It is indeed fortunate that I use Sneakemail.com for early dealings with companies like this one. Now InkClub can say, "the customer ordered the wrong product" all day long, but if I were in the retail business, I'd have made some kind of feel good dea,, a win win situation that would likely have resulted in word of mouth business and renewed customer confidence. Instead I'm here to say do not use InkClub, they don't care about customers and their prices stink.
February 2, 2008
07:35 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Today, I had four chairs that "required some assembly" delivered. The first one took about 20 minutes to put together. The fourth chair was done is about 4 minutes.
Certain sites have figured out how to do build a chair that is sturdy. The next versions of a Kiva.org-like concept should be easier. We see exponential multiplication of YouTube and MySpace wannabes, video conference, video blogging and all the rest of the "all dressed up and no where to go" universe and still no earth-shattering "let's do something that makes a difference" sites.
06:38 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Some companies get this, some don't. Maybe the bottom line is good without "wasting" time on happy customers? As Merlin Mann once said, his cellphone provider's motto is "We're not happy until you're unhappy".
I'll tell you who cares the most in my experience: American Express.
01:18 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Not. But it wasn't their fault. How could they deliver, since the office was closed. The delivery person left a perfectly legible hand written tracking number on the delivery slip. I called FedEx (Sunday at 5 PM) and was assured after a fairly long game of IVR, that they were planning to deliver before 6PM tomorrow (by default). The person asked for a phone number which I provided. In the beginning of the call, I was given the choice between French and English. The 0820 number is billed at about $0.18 per minute. The call lasted 4.5 minutes.
Evaluation: FedEx does a good job and lives up the the promise. The phone number for package tracking should be toll-free and it probably is in the USA.
12:52 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
I've decided to place this elsewhere. (see http://feeds.feedburner.com/randulovoip)
What is the out of the box experience for your product? Has anyone actually tested it and does anyone care? Many consumer products have pretty decent instructions or are intuitive, but most fail miserably in this. Does it lead to disappointment or just delayed gratification?
Tomorrow I will take delivery of an evaluation unit for a small pbx product called the Asterisk Appliance. I have decided to document every single step of the process from the unsuccesful FedEx attept to deliver the package to our closed office Friday, to the end result, presumably a working product. My only question for the moment is where I do this. Should I set up a new blog on one of my servers using oe of the many open source products? Should I do it on Blogger which is dead easy? Should I do it in someone else's house (like FastCompany)? Something makes me want to try it here and see where it goes.
04:22 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Is there some deep socialogical reason why here in Europe, SMS technology has been embraced where in the USA, most people have no time for it? In most European countries, you can get regular cordless and corded home phiones that send and receive SMS, yest apparently this doesn't even exist in the USA.
A lot of SMS use here is by the young, Twitterers and IM crowd, but the text messages have many good uses for adults. The first serious example that pops up is when you are in a meeting that is extended and you need to tell someone you're running late. You can discreetly send such a message to the person without distracting or leaving the room. I have a free phone with a small monthly credit that allows me to SMS to my partner to call me or an important caller that she missed.
One of the less-obvious uses of SMS will be part of a paper I am giving at Asterisk Tag in Berlin in May. Our Paris office has an Asterisk pbx and I can send it commands via SMS, such as "Call me back if I have vmail". The PBX can send me an immediate missed call alert with the caller's name and number, even if they did not leave a message.
SMS is a great tool and I'm sory to see it hasn't caught on in the same way in the US, where surely even more creative uses could be found for it.
We sometimes discuss SMS on the http://VoipUsersConference.org live every Friday at 12 Noon EST.
09:20 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
There has to be the definitive beginning to all things, that's why we don't understand the universe, since... what came before? And if there are several, how can it be uni, wouldn't it be multi? This format looks very promising to me. But what do I know? Besides the fact that my first Internet experience dates back to 1987, probably very little.
