Four recent incidents have prompted a mini-rant about customer service.
First, the bad.
We were one of the very first users of Sprint’s PCS service. We were in San Diego and had a Pioneer Plan phone. The deal was that the phone was to have no monthly fees for life, but it had a very high per-minute charge. When we moved back to Colorado, we still kept our Sprint phone, even though there was no Sprint service here. Several years later, Sprint bought ClearTalk, and we decided to get cell phones with Sprint, switching our wireline to my phone number. We’ve had the same phone number in my family for over 30 years, so I wasn’t about to change it. Unfortunately, we ended up needing to file a complaint with the FCC about our local phone company, who initially refused to transfer the number. To make a long story short, we did eventually manage to get the number switched to Sprint service.
Now, several years later, I was looking at doing more bill-paying online, but I ran into problems getting set up at Sprint. I contacted their online chat help, and they assisted me in getting the accounts set up for the two current phones we have here in Colorado. However, when I tried to get our old Pioneer line phone set up, I couldn’t do it at all. I found out that Sprint, with no warning and no notice, had canceled the phone due to non-use. We typically used it once per year when traveling, as its per-minute charge was still less than the roaming charges our other phones incurred. Now, I can see asking about cancelling a phone line, but to do so without a single warning to the customer? That was really bad. Sure, the phone didn’t show up in Sprint’s new billing system, but I didn’t expect it to – it had no monthly fee. Not only did Sprint cancel our long-term phone number and contract, but they also refused to reinstate it, even with a new number. If going to supervisors is like levels on a game, I made it to level five before maxing out.
The final result was this: no additional Pioneer plan phone in our house, and we were down to two Sprint phones. One unintended (and vindicating) consequence for Sprint was that the Pioneer phone was the only reason we stayed with Sprint for so long. Without that link, we are now shopping cell phone plans in our area, and we expect to switch when our contract runs out. Sprint’s inability to provide the customer with a clear warning of significant impending changes has cost them a longtime customer.
Here’s bad customer service experience number two.
I work on a Macintosh. I spent the last year gearing up for the switch to Leopard (10.5.6) because I had many legacy applications that I needed to replace or upgrade. Finally, I made the switch around the first of the year. Major operating system upgrades are always fraught with hassle, particularly in how they handle printing and scanning. I had verified at the HP site that our laser multifunction printer – a model 3015 – would be supported by Leopard. Note that this printer is clearly listed as compatible according to HP, and it has no notes listed saying that scanning will not be supported. I know it’s an old printer, so I made sure to verify this first.
I followed all procedures to the letter and installed Leopard as per instructions. I got printing to work, but the scanner no longer worked on my machine at all. I started searching the HP site for help. Unfortunately, I then discovered that some folks noted several months ago that HP was not yet supporting scanning on multifunction printers. I downloaded and installed HP’s latest driver software, hoping that that might fix it.
No such luck! I finally called HP service after getting the run-around in their email service for days. When I finally got a person to talk to, the answer was that HP no longer supported scanning under Mac OS X Leopard for their multifunction printers. No amount of pointing out that their own website says they do got any results. I was “offered the chance” to buy a new HP multifunction printer at full price.
Needless to say, this will be my last HP printer. When this one dies – or, as is more likely, I can no longer get cartridges for it – I will buy something else. I will never buy another HP product because they lied. Had HP honestly documented the issue on their website, I’d have been upset, but not totally unhappy. I could have planned for that change, and, in fact, probably would have bought a new HP printer. Instead, I went out and bought a nice Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M and got rolling on scanning year-end documents within minutes.
Now, the good.
I got a Kindle from Amazon last summer. The first one had some problems, which resulted in Amazon sending out a replacement. By the time the replacement got here, the first one was working – it was an authentication error with the EVDO data service, which was fixed by Sprint. By now, we had decided that we needed two Kindles in the house, so I called Amazon. They instructed me to keep the replacement, and after 30 days, my card on file would be charged. I did, and they did. I downloaded and read a lot of samples, put a number of them in my “save for later” section on Amazon, and also added many books from feedbooks.com and Gutenberg on my Kindle.
I started having problems with the battery depleting overnight. I used Amazon’s “call me back now” service option. The support person called back immediately, and we spent several days talking back and forth and testing things. Throughout the entire endeavor, I was able to get back to the same support person whom I’d originally spoken to. He knew the history and understood the problem.
Amazon was ready to send me a new Kindle, but I was sure it was a software problem, not a hardware one. I managed to get enough samples and music off of my Kindle, and I left it plugged in overnight to fully re-index the system. Thankfully, the power drain has stopped. I still suspect that there’s a bug in the power management system, as other Kindle owners have reported similar things, but it is rare. The Kindle appears to go into an infinite loop of reindexing the system under some difficult-to-replicate circumstances. During the entire episode, the Amazon rep was cheerful and helpful, and he called me back when I asked. He really worked to get my Kindle operating properly. I was very impressed, and I will continue to buy Kindle books. Now, I’m not going to get a new Kindle anytime soon, but I’ll take a look at the Kindle 3 when it comes out.
Here’s good customer experience number two.
My last good customer service experience was with Apple. I was trying to put some MP3 files on an SD card to use in our non-Apple music player. I could get the card to less than half full, then I’d start getting errors that the card was full. The Mac system reported over 1 GB of space remaining, so I was confused. Putting the card into a Linux system showed that, for some reason, Spotlight was reserving a huge space for indexes, and there was no way to turn the indexing off for that drive. I used Apple’s “call me back now” option, and I got a real human on the line almost immediately. The customer service rep stayed on the line with me for over half an hour as we tried various options, and finally, we successfully got the card reformatted. He waited while I slowly transferred over a bunch of files to test the limits of the card. Sure, I wish the solution had not involved a full reformat of the card, but I was pleased that the customer service rep was willing to stay on the line until I was satisfied. There was no “do the reformat and call us back later” BS.
The lesson for businesses is this: you need to keep in mind that customers can be very loyal if you treat them well. Keep us informed of your plans, call back when necessary, and do not lie to us about your service.
In these hard economic times, companies would do well to remember that one upset customer will tell many, as I am doing on this blog. Retaining a customer is far easier than trying to get a new one.