I recently wrote someone to meet about a future project for a customer. The dollar value of a project we are looking at would be around $140K. The email I got back wasn't very enticing. It had a heavy PDF attached with nothing I didn't already know about the company. What's important is what comes next:
I wrote asking to meet, as we're in the same city. No answer. My partner met this person subsequently and the guy confirmed getting my message.
Zoom forward several weeks. Today, I received a mass mailing to my address with news from this company. I replied asking him remove my address from the mailing list and that subsequent mailings would be reported as spam. Here's what he answered:
"I was thinking you would be interested by this newsletter. If you don't wish to receive this newsletter anymore, you can unsubscribe directly."
Bzzzzzzz BAD answer. I replied that one doesn't opt out of UBE which is Unsolicited Bulk Email (aka spam) and when I ask to be removed, you don't make me jump through hoops to be removed from a list I never asked to be put on.
He then answered beginning with "I am the General Director of Vin......a...". Ok, this is a small company in the already crowded wine social web space, trying hard to get traction. They could use a real job about now. Why didn't a meeting happen, even with another employee?
I do not wish further discourse with this person, but here's what my thought is:
As General Director of a company, you just spit on being a part of a $140,000 deal with a brand name more prestigious than any in your PDF. This would be a stupid mistake for a sales repo, let a lone the general manager of a company.
One: Admit you're wrong, it doesn't cost you anything. Almost any error is savable (except if it involves atomic energy)
Two: Don't bandy about your title to people, it means nothing to me. You probably made it up anyway.
Three: What part of UNSOLICITED do you not get? Bad enough to send this crap out, but never ask me to opt out of something I did not opt into.
When you make a mistake and order two copies of the same DVD on Amazon.com, they offer a simple refund process. Send the product back, and they effectively reverse the charge on your purchase, paying the money back to your bank account. It was with some surprise that I learned yesterday, that after spending two minutes paying VMWare $80 for their desktop product, "returning" the product when it didn't work for me was a lot more complicated.
Although I took delivery of the product by download and purchased it directly from the VMWare web site - meaning they have all the proof of purchase they need on their computer systems - VMWare requires that you print out proof of purchase and a return authorisation form and mail it to them. According to their site, when they've processed this information, possibly in 10 to 12 weeks, they will then send a refund check.
VMWare is, like most tech companies, is on Twitter these days, so I politely poked a few people there, after spending about a half hour trying to get the product to work. I was comparing VMWare Fusion with Parallels. On the same Mac Mini, VMWare did not run, it hung and had to be killed. I tried everything I could think of and searched for an answer on the web. Then I installed Parallels, which worked perfectly on the same Mac Mini. My contact began as private messages so as not to blurt out bad things about their product without cause.
Tweeting about this, one user helpfully mentioned that I should check out the community on the forums, which I certainly would have done, but it was too late to be of use, since I now had Parallels working. I wrote to VWMare about a refund and got a response within a reasonable time containing a link to the page on their site with the procedure for using the guarantee. The official @VMWareFusion answer to my refund question was "What's the issue you ran into? It substantially diverges from what the grand majority of our users experience."
While the above statement may well be true, it doesn't help me in any way or change anything for my particular problem.
About company presence on Twitter, here's my conclusion: @comcastcares has set the example in a simple, concrete behavior pattern:
Get the first 140 character message about the issue and answer it by immediately offering a direct email exchange to the customer.
I believe this VMWare issue was not handled well via Twitter, even though I did start the request using a direct private message exchange with an employee of VMWare. His whatever it takes response should have been an email or phone number to solve things quickly and without all the hoops of searching sites, filling out forms, etc. The next official company response, which was public, also missed the boat of a simple phone call and instead basically said "you're the only one having this problem".
Imagine a world where I'd be telling everyone to try both Parallels and VMWare because hey, although VMWare Fusion didn't work for me, it might be good for you and the company is a pleasure to deal with. Now look at the end reality which is that I see how unimportant an individual case is to the company. I hope VMWare can learn from this and perhaps then next individual will get better service. I also hope that individual buyers of products and services will learn that in this day and age, there's no good reason to put up with things like this, a message needs to be sent.
Update: One person I exchanged messages with on Twitter told me "No matter how much you like it, Twitter is not an online support forum. I personally don't deal with support or refunds". The same person did howver ask me "Ping @vmwarefusion, they may be able to help". I think the bottom line here is that companies need to have a policy on social media.
Shouldn't this be obvious? Maybe in this particular technology company, management is made up of former programmers who see how good the product is and act like open-sourcers. In that case, don't expect to get money for what you do. These products depend on discretionary income to be spent, as against your power company or your auto repairs.
Case in point: I paid $40 for a product that does a fine job in its realm, which happens to be recording media on the Internet for later watching, commercial-free. Yes, you can grab shows from sites like Hulu.com, record them which fixes the abysmally slow downloads and watch them without any commercial interruption.You can see the product by clicking on the link that shows the "Free Upgrade" page.
So when this program popped up the typical "A new version of ... is available, click here to download" I clicked. And when I saw the page, it said "This is a free update to ..." I downloaded and installed it, even though I read the release notes and saw no features of interest to me.
Here's where that whole scenario broke. I ran the program and it then said "Your license is not valid for this version, click here to purchase the upgrade." Since the upgrade was $10, I wzent ahead and purchased it. The license didn't get emailed for some reason. I found the older installer, ripped out the update and reinstalled. Business as usual and I used to the program again.
I went to the site and then the support forum. I posted the problem of the FREE upgrade and the patent lie inherent in that statement. At first they didn't believe me (call the customer ungrateful for such a great program and belittle him for being too cheap to pay $10 and doubt his word). Finally, I showed a screen capture of the link, they went and looked and fixed it. They posted a very weak apology in the forum.
"Sorry for the confusion, folks. We looked into this and found that the upgrade link for version 1 users only was going to the wrong page. We have since fixed that error and the upgrade link for versions 1 and 2 now goes to the proper page"
I then went to the support ticket center and asked for a refund. I pointed out that I thought it was shabby to say free update and then ask for $10, all in a polite and respectful manner, admitting the program worked well.
All in all, I wasted a couple of hours between the update, the downdate, the forum, several emails to support etc. I got the $10 refunded.
So what's the big deal?
Simple. The management of this product should have come up with a stronger, more sincere apology. Rather than the "anyone can make a mistake, we're sorry", they should have said, "We regret the confusion and wasted time this mistake may have caused you. To make up for this experience, you can have the upgrade free. Please choose any other product in our in our line and accept a free license for it.
When you sell a product on the Inetrnet that requires no shipping, no handling and no inventory, you can always make an impression at no cost to you by giving the product free to a customer, especially one who has already spent money at your site.
The good news is, it's pretty simple to have a human being monitor services like Twitter and catch references to your product or service. The bad news is, adding more channels doesn't make it better or easier for the customer to get satisfaction. Speaking of the rare suppport treasure that is satisfaction, take a look at GetSatisfaction.com which ostensibly seems like a great idea.
I've used Get Satisfaction a few times for different reasons. Onne thing is does not do properly is tech support, no mater how well the company monitors it. Support requires information about a problem that one is loathe to tell the entire world about, so among other reasons, Get Satisfaction should be limited ONLY to issues like requesting new features, and blowing off steam about things you don't like, not pubic dialogues about your private needs as a customer.
I have also been engaged in a support session on Twitter with Comcast and their alter ego Frank. Now Frank does a good job of doing the "@customer How can I help" part. Unfortunately, the email exchanges that followed didn't get the job done, because the final answer was still a scripted one. It blamed the problem on someone else, aka, "It's not my job" used as a company level.
Having so many channels open to reach a company is good. Having ONE that works is far better. An easy to find contact form on the site (simple URL and simple email address) is the best way to make contact and solve a problem. The form can have subjects that direct the email to the proper person, opening a ticket and sending an auto acknowlegement containing the ticket number. The ticket software is supposed to be able to bring up all the context needed to resolve the issue.
Live chat is great when it works. Which it rarely has for me. One case that worked pretty well, was Mosso. But the fact is, when I used Mosso's phone support that too was excellent, so it isn't so much a question of the channels but the efficiency those manning them.
I find it impossible to believe that someone at a high level has tried their own company's support to see how well it works. Bad support multiplies customer frustration and dissatisfaction exponentially so it's a no-brainer to say "go check your support as a customer would experience it".
When you first arrive at the IVR level, you are asked to enter your number and maybe some other keypad entry. So when the agent answers, why does she need to ask again?
Stop telling people "your call is important to us". It's almost a proof to the contrary, since you need to say it several times. Stop the ads during the music on hold loop, they really add a new level of irritation.
Bottom line: you either care about the feeling your customer gets when she calls for help or you don't. Find why to make it so that don't require pretending it is so while putting the caller through innumerable hoops to jump through before getting someone who reads a script.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
