Customer support (Jim Carson) September 13, 2003

Consumer Reports has an article on how bad software and product support is getting. In the last two weeks, I've had to contact various organizations' support organizations for a variety of reasons, some tech and some not.

I've observed the following:

Companies are making a concerted effort at self-fulfillment. I'm fine with this, provided they don't make it ridiculously difficult to get a human when you need one. I loved the experience at PCC where I could just ask someone and they were helpful. It's so rare these days.

When I deal with a person, I'd much rather know their full name. Some of the contacts had a signature like "Joe M." For some reason, this rubs me the wrong way. It seems worse than no name.

I like small talk. Maybe that's why I prefer knowing someone's full name. ("Ah, so you're from Sweden, I've been to V�xj�")

There's a lot of outsourcing of technical support. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Many, many years ago, I worked in a technical support role. What helped me deliver superior results was easy access to the developers, time to work through the hard problems, and feeling like I was not temporary. It's a different world.

I'd be interested in other folks' observations and experiences.

Here's the scorecard:

Company	What did I want?	Result	Note	Verdict
Amazon.com (uber-retailer)	Gift sent was not received	No hassle -- they verified the address with the recipient and took care of it.		:-D
Colorado Cyclist (bicycling products)	Will their customized wheels work with my 7-speed bicycle?	Inquired twice. Have never received a response.		>:-(
Cannondale (bicycles)	Will they build bike with custom components?	Three weeks later I received a terse letter saying no customization was available, suggested trying to work it out with a dealer.	(*)	:-\|
Dell Computer (pc mfg)	Laptop touchpad failing	Promised to send replacement hardware. Some disconnect when they hadn't sent it, but situation corrected..	(*)	:-)
Dotster.com (domain registrant)	Unable to register domain.	Eventually answered questions, but after I got impatient and asked pair.com	(*)	:-\|
eBay (auction site)	"power seller" didn't deliver, wouldn't answer mail, and his building negative feedback was violating the power seller TOS	Personalized concatenation of blurbs essentially telling me I was SOL, work it out with the seller. Emphasized they're just a venue, yatta yatta.	(*)	:-\|
Microsoft	Deterministic installation errors	Took 2 days to answer, but the answer was correct.		:-)
Pair.com (web hosting provider)	Unable to register domain.	Within a day, responded with correct information about ICANN restricting two-letter .org domain names.		:-D
PCC	Directions to the marshmallows.	Stopped what she was doing, led me to the marshmallows (I wouldn't have found them), and made a personal recommendation. Asked if there was anything else I needed.		:-D
Rackshack.net (web hosting provider)	Question on product offering.	Has never answered.		>:-(
Trek (bicycles)	Catalog request; reported bug on web site	Catalog arrived one week later. Short email from web admin thanking me for reporting the bug.		:-)
Tacoma Wheelmen Bicycle Club	They contacted me when I registered twice for the same ride.	Returned my original check.		:-D
Wall Street Journal	Subscription problem.	It was really easy to reach and the person took care of the problem as promised.		:-)

Notes:

Cannondale also wouldn't send me a catalog (saying all the info is online). However, the response was personal.

Dell: Ticket submission involves running a system profiler which suggests it's going to provide better diagnosis. What you get is a form email offering suggestion for "likely" things based on keyword matches. If those don't work, you hit reply again and it goes to the tech support queue. As far as I can tell, the techs ignore all of the system profile information. Their responses usually include the litany of time consuming options that defy common sense. Promised to send hardware, hasn't done so yet. Technicians overuse blurbs.

Dotster throws up incredible barriers. I'm still not sure how I actually submitted a trouble ticket. The technician was terse, but eventually solved the problem.

Contacting a human at eBay is only slightly easier than Dotster. Reponse times are about a week. The problem I have with their venue defense is they're also the primary payment method (e.g., Paypal) which, surprise, defaults to checking account. You can get totally fracked.

3 Comments:

Hans wrote on (September 13, 2003 7:32 PM)

For a great web hosting service I highly recommend Pair.com. They host my sites. Hassle free for years. I've registered several domains through them without any problems. Always helpful when I have tech questions.

mitch wrote on (September 15, 2003 8:41 AM)

My biggest gripe is the difficulty in getting a real person. This weekend when I noticed a small problem on a credit card bill, I went through a phone tree of five levels (literally) and who knows how many minutes before getting the message that they don't staff the phones on Sunday!

Here are some more of my recent examples:

Vanguard (financial services) - in my decade of doing business with them, I have always received superior service, but recently had a dissapointing experience when there was a typo in the account data on a new account I opened. The issue took four phone calls, filling out new paperwork and nearly a month.

Dell - I usually receive okay service. This month however, I ordered some service parts that they emailed were "on sale". I just got an email that the order wouldn't ship for two more weeks, three weeks after they announced the sale, meaning I won't get my product for a month after I ordered it.

Amazon (Jim knows about this one) - Usually great service. The ONLY issue is with returns. You send your stuff back and it is a black hole for about three weeks before you get an email saying you got a credit. During those three weeks you don't know if they got it, if there were any problems, etc. No transparency in the process as a consultant would say.

mitch wrote on (September 15, 2003 8:42 AM)

Oh yes, don't even get me going on health insurance providers. I am convinced they PURPOSELY underman the phones, don't return messages, lose paperwork, etc. in order to wear people down.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Jim Carson

This is the older blog.

Categories