Becky is vying for the winning spot in the Johnny Bunko contest. Winner gets to go to the TED Conference in Oxford, England! All votes must be cast by 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 15, 2009. Find out more here.
But hurry, time is running out.
Is it worth complaining about poor service in restaurants or other places? Does anyone really listen?
It turns out they do. A few months ago, my doctor fired my insurance plan. It was disruptive, annoying, and irritating. I don’t go to the doctor often, but he’s convenient, he has my records, and I rarely have to wait.
Well, two weeks ago, I got another letter saying the economy is bad, patients’ options are limited, and the doctor’s practice was able to negotiate with the insurance company to ease some of the administrivia. So, he’d changed his mind. He would continue to take the insurance and apologized for the “disruption, hardship and angst” that many patients endured after the original decision.
I thought that was remarkable. He realized he’d upset his “customers” and he took steps to fix it.
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I was just going through my mail/bills and found a note from Chase Visa.
It thanked me for being a customer… and then proceeded to tell me that because my account hadn’t been used in a while, they assumed that I didn’t need it and had closed it! The whole thing was presented as if they were being helpful.
I couldn’t see how so I called Chase to find out what had happened. They said, oh it helps you because your credit score will go up, and in this crisis we can’t have open and unused credit lines because the credit bureaus charge us (in case you might use the credit).
Aha! So, it’s not about ME at all. It’s about THEM!! The scary thing is, I just nearly used the card about 10 minutes ago. I was buying model train stuff for my dad, and the site didn’t take Amex.
I finally settled on my debit card instead because a) I figured I hadn’t used the Visa card in a while and model trains were so odd (for me) they might think it was fraud and b) one less addition to my credit card bill next year. Imagine if I’d tried to use the card!!!
I promised to blog about it. They said they’d seen lots of other people complaining too (including today). But, they didn’t seem to care. It didn’t bother them at all that thousands of their customers were angry. The rep said there was “nothing she could do” and she didn’t even seem sorry about it. Guess they forgot there’s a person at the other end of the bill.
I wonder, instead of canceling the account, why not send me a letter offering me something to get me to use the card? A discount? Coupons?
Many years ago, when my dad hadn’t used a gas card for a while, the company sent him a letter saying , “We miss you”. Got his attention AND he talked to other people about it. It was viral! Why not make people feel happy instead of angry? Encourage/strengthen your tribe of customers, rather than break it.
Hugh at Gaping Void said, “.. if I randomly asked you to make a list of the world’s top ten most “Creative” companies, would Dell make it on to the list? I’m guessing, for most people reading this, they simply wouldn’t.
Yes. I happen think this is a SERIOUSLY huge problem.”
This got me thinking. Dell’s problem is they have no tribe. They haven’t reached out to their customers, or given people considering a new computer any particular reason to prefer Dell over HP or any other brand.
Apple is famous for its “cult” of enthusiastic, loyal customers, a tribe if you will. One reason is that they provide first-class customer support. Several months ago, the display on my iMac wasn’t working properly (everything had a green tinge). I have Apple Care, and they sent a technician here (twice – because he didn’t have the right part the first time) to fix it. For free!
When a Dell customer has a problem, they’re routed to an outsourced customer “service” rep in India, who has been given poor training, may not speak English well, and is forced to rely on a script. I know of one instance (and could easily get more) in which a Dell rep talked a customer through “fixing” her computer. At the end, she said, “OK, where are my files?” They were gone. She’d just deleted them!
Why not encourage Dell owners to talk to each other? Have a forum to discuss problems, work-arounds, and new updates. Have executives hang out and answer questions.
Post software documentation written in plain English (have you seen Microsoft’s online documentation? It’s unintelligible). Offer special upgrades for higher quality tech support. Or heck, just offer the best tech support. Have it stand out, be so remarkable people talk about it.
I can’t say it any better than Seth Godin did, so I’ll quote him, “not only is there a juicy insight on every page, but I’m comfortable saying it’s the best designed PDF I’ve ever seen, worth making into a template for your next project.”