12 posts tagged “customer service”

FoxSoccer.TV used to use Vividas as the platform, and while it wasn't spectacular it worked.  It didn't work well, but it worked.

Then, come August they shut off the service and replace it with a countdown to August 15th.  All new things, and now it is hosted by RayV.com.  I was very hopeful that this would yield a better user experience, and bring in many improvements.

I wouldn't really know, because they completely removed my access.  After complaining, many times, they gave me a 2 week account and assured me that I would get my original access restored before the 2 weeks was up.  This was at the end of August.

I still don't have access.  Their support is absolutely terrible.  Every email about my account yields, "We'll restore your access in a few days".  This has been going on since September 7th.  A full month of "in a few days" and I still have no access.

The part that is chafing is that for the 2 weeks that I had access, there were no really decent games going on anyway (I missed the FA Community Shield, and it was in the season opener of the EPL).  The games that I did catch were of fairly low quality, anyway.

Vividas and RayV video streaming was pretty similar.  The user experience for finding a game was the same, but the new design is quite ugly.

All in all, you're paying for a service that will give you the worst support I've ever experienced and it is significantly reduced from Setanta-i.  Setanta-i is $14.99 a month, FoxSoccer.TV is $14.95.  The other thing is that the "Season Pack" expires May 31st, and it isn't prorated if you subscribe now.  This makes very little sense.

Apparently that extra 5¢ goes towards crafting a user experience that isn't absolute garbage.

So, if you're looking for a TV over IP provider for watching soccer, pick Setanta-i or just grab torrents.

To content producers, really think about using RayV's services.  Their claims of 24/7 support are greatly exaggerated, as all my emails require at least 24 (usually 48+) hours to be answered.  The answers are also out of context most of the time (asking me for the same information, etc.)  I will certainly never subscribe to any RayV service again, just because the terrible support.

The Telegraph has a story about a smile-meter being deployed in Japan (for railway workers on the Keihin electric express).  It's interesting to see the discussion on the internet and the immediate reactions.  I think a lot of people who react negatively aren't familiar with Japanese culture (or, rather, in particular only familiar with Western culture).

Most reactions I see tend to be along the lines of opposition, labeling the company as oppressive or draconian.  Remarks along those lines are often times added with, "give them a raise, and they'll actually be happy."

There are, however, some other points of view.  Southwest trains their employees to smile and appear happy.  This affects the bottom-line numbers, as well fewer complaints and incidences.

My view is somewhat more meta on this.

You are paid to do a job and to do it satisfactorily.  A definitive metric of any customer-facing job is how your customers feel when they leave.  In general, these positions are temporal.  An employee shows up at a designated time, and leaves at the designated time.  These points are not foreign concepts in any developed nation, regardless of culture.

In this scenario, the requirements of the job are adjusted.  To do the job satisfactorily, you are expected to present a happy face to the customers.  In my view, this is no different than a tidy uniform, honorific greetings and scripted speeches.  All of those are customary, but adding in a smile somehow invites spirited debate.

If an individual is expected to do a job for an 8 hour shift, and that is customer facing, listing a smile as a requirement is reasonable.  It doesn't cost any money, cause any harm or have any negative affects.  People commenting they should get a raise may end up getting that, if they smile first.  More profit for the business can trickle down to the employees, and the smile may boost profits by one or two percent.  Simple change for huge gains.

So why the debate?

Because Western cultures are sarcastic bastards that love frowns and terrible customer service, that's why.

(I'm kidding.  Mostly)

For those in the know, you may know I'm in Japan.  For those not in that category, now you know.  Now that we've got that out of the way, I'd like to write about my trip here.

To begin, a context enlightening preamble.  My mother-in-law, who is awesome, stays with us for extended periods of time (months in a row) and it is a huge help.  She's fantastic to have around the house, and the kids love her.  Our trip to Japan coincides with a return visit for her, so we'll all be catching the same flight back to the US.  That will make the 15 hours of travel easier. Having another adult to man the kids is very good thing.

She asks me to book her flight, and I happily oblige.  I create the itinerary on United.com and get the thumbs up, and then attempt to buy it.  This works fine, up to the payment page when it doesn't allow me to enter a Japanese billing address.  There isn't clear messaging on this site, but after a couple clicks I figure out that I have to go to United Japan's website.

Excellent, I think, as I login and pull up her saved itinerary.  I click through to purchase it, and it simply errors out with some helpful messaging you might find on a 404 Not Found page (such as updating bookmarks).  I'm assuming this is because their programmers just don't care about their job, because handling errors is generally simple.

I recreate the itinerary, or so I thought.  I picked the wrong flight (fortunately for us, on her return to Japan) that had her out far too early to catch the SFO connection.

I figure that a quick call to United to explain the situation, and also to request the bassinet available to us, will get everything in order.

This is where United gets even worse.

First, the wretched and unhelpful woman on the phone apparently put the request for the bassinet in a drawer, then set the desk on fire.  Nobody had any idea what so ever about a bassinet request or anything else to assist us.  Fantastic.  Fortunately, the flight attendants (well, the Japanese) were very helpful in getting us situated.  On the flight, they bumped a woman at the bulkhead to business and setup my wife and baby there with the bassinet.  I'm very happy about this, which helped alleviate the frustration about the phone jockey.

The frustration which was hugely amplified by her unapologetic lack of care about the United.com dying on purchasing, and my subsequent struggles trying to change the flight to the intended purchase.  She simply informed me that it would be around $250 (I think $282, I wasn't really paying attention to the number) to change the ticket.  I told her that was ridiculous, as I could buy a round-trip ticket just for that leg for much cheaper (since I do the PDX-SFO flight on occasion, I know that I can buy it for $150 on sale and $200 regularly.)

Her response: If you do that, you cannot continue your trip unless you board the original flight.

Go United!  This is how you keep customers, fo' sure!  I think I'll be recommending the NWA direct PDX to NRT flight, since it is around the same price (for PDX to KIX).

This trip has also exposed me to the privilege of watching two other stewardflight attendants snap angrily at passengers.  One instance was because the woman put discarded chewing gum in the bottom of a plastic cup.  Seriously.

Airlines aren't losing money because of the economy, or security concerns.  They're losing money because they treat their passengers like cattle.  A smile and friendly service can make any seat feel like business class.

I don't think I'll be flying United anymore, perhaps a time or two more to use up my miles.

When I bought my Macbook Pro, I wasn't expected to purchase another Mac so soon.  Well, it's just that good.  Seriously.

So, I ordered the iMac and then I realized that I don't have the family license pack for iWork, and I just bought iWork 3 months ago.  I google around and search the Apple site, but can't find any option to upgrade from the single license to the family pack.  A quick phone call to Apple's customer service department got me a discount on a purchase for iWork.  It's a bit more expensive than just the price difference, but they took care of me and that is really fantastic.  I also threw in the mini-DVI to DVI-D adapter so I can run dual-head.

Unfortunately, things still ship via FedEx:

I'm glad that OSCON is this week, so I have something to do other than fume over FedEx's ridiculous package routing.

Now I have an estimated delivery date.  Of July 25th.  Being overly optimistic is one thing, sending my package to the other side of the country is a different issue.  For those of you not so well versed in geography, here's the route:

That's a 9 hour drive, all on the interstate where you can get good gas mileage.  Instead, here's what they are doing:

Now, we have 2 days and 16 hours of driving time and 4,446 miles.  That is 3,900 more miles that my 40 pounds of shiny new computer is traveling.  The really sad thing is that according to this route, my computer has visited nearly as many US states as I have.
 
This is absolutely astounding.  I'm amused, confused and more or less going to not use FedEx.  I already gravitate towards UPS because there is a convenient store nearby, and the staff are knowledgeable.  My packages also tend to go in the same general direction as their destination, and get there reasonably fast.

FedEx, on the other hand, is one disappointment away from a hat trick.

I'm absolutely stunned that in the age of the Internet and free blogging companies don't get the first step of customer satisfaction right.

It's so distinctly simple, that I fail to understand how it slips through the cracks.  It seems this must be on purpose, almost as if the leaders of these companies attempt to see how irate their customers get while still turning a profit.

On Thursday, after finally getting terminally frustrated with Linux not doing the right thing and not having the motivation to want to fix it, I ordered a refurbished 24" iMac from Apple's online shop.  The price was right, and my fantastic day job picked up the bill for it.  Fantastic.

I'm in no hurry to get the system, so I opted to stick with the free shipping.  Apple says, "Please allow 5-7 days after shipping to receive your order."  Cool and reasonable, they're picking up the shipping bill on a nearly 40 lbs shipment.  Props to them, and setting my expectations.

On Friday morning, I check my email and see the shipping notification.  Awesome!  That means that no later than Wednesday, or maybe Thursday, I should have it, right?  Again, awesome!

Later in the day I click through to the FedEx tracking system and I am greeted with more good news.  Estimated delivery: July 19th.  Wow, that's even better.  I place the order on the 17th and I get it on the 19th?  Unbelievable!

So, Saturday I spend most of the day hanging around the house waiting for FedEx.  And waiting.  And waiting.

On the FedEx site, their posted delivery hours are from 9am to 8pm.  So I'm waiting.

They never come.

It's just an "Estimate" and I understand that, but with any estimate you have an expectation.  If I didn't have to sign for it, I wouldn't care as much.  Given that I do have to sign for the package I have to schedule my day around their estimates.

Apple set the expectations properly.  They told me I'd get the system sometime within the next 10 days or so.  It was honest and up front.  Apple exceeded the expectations that they set.  See the magic there?  They set the expectations and then proceeded to exceed them.  Things like this are key to Apple's fanatical customer base.  It works.

Contrast to FedEx.  They set an optimistic expectation.  I don't know what their chances of success are, but this is not the first time I've had this same little rodeo with FedEx.  Their estimates are as stable as Twitter (zing!).

The end result is Apple has a very satisfied customer because they did the right thing.  FedEx has a frustrated customer that looks at FedEx like they're a bunch of incompetent monkeys who learned how to drive trucks.

The solution here is simple.  Ditch the remarkably useless Estimated Delivery Date and be more specific (UPS does it, why can't you?) or simply don't list it at all.  If you can't do estimate right, keep your mouth shut and leave it to the folks who can.  That's the business equivalent to "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

I ordered the Eye-fi 2GB SD 802.11g card from Buy.com, as they had a $20 off if you buy another $20 or more item.  That part was a bit difficult, as anything I wanted at the time was either more than the eye-fi card or $19.99 (Curse you Brain Age 2 and your penny-shy-of-ownage!).

My friend purchased an eeePC and was looking at either a USB thumbdrive or an SD card so I picked up a USB drive for him and got myself the Eye-fi for $80.  $99 seemed a bit steep for a wireless SD card, but $80 put it in that realm of not wanting to kick myself for buying it if it wasn't as good as I wanted.

The packaging is awesome.  I thought Apple did packaging well, but it isn't nearly as fun as the eye-fi.  I don't want to ruin it for anybody, but it is surprisingly fun packaging.  I giggled, then ran into the other room to show my wife.  She promptly didn't giggle, but did call it clever.

The setup was a piece of cake and just because everybody likes to hate Vista I set it up on the Vista PC in my office.  I plugged it in, ran the auto-installer and everything worked like a champ.  It connected to my network, registered to my SmugMug account and all went through just fine.

I popped the card into my camera, and it didn't do a damn thing.  I could take photos just like it was a typical memory card, but the Eye-Fi Manager failed to receive any incoming photos.

No worries, as a firmware update was flashing at me so I decided to update the firmware and try again.  Bingo, now it works.

Photos upload very quickly, and then the manager pushes them out to SmugMug into a private gallery where I can move them as I see fit.  There are a couple points here that I absolutely love.  It creates a gallery for each date that you take photos, marks it as private and uploads there.  That works great for us, since we always want the photos uploaded even if they're private and then move them around.

We have an older Kodak EasyShare DX6440  and got my mother-in-law a newer Kodak EasyShare C875.  The only problem with our older Kodak DX6440 is the screen gets an interference pattern with the Eye-fi card in it.  It is subtle, and not a big deal since the camera has an optical viewfinder.  If it didn't, I wouldn't be pleased about the interference but that camera is on its last legs.  Apparently cameras have a finite quota of how many times they can be dropped... who knew.

The Kodak C875 is a different story.  I inserted the Eye-fi and it immediately shut off.  I browsed their help pages, and they ask you to contact them if the camera won't power on (which, after the immediate shut off is what happens).

Now, today is Christmas Eve.  Aside from it being nearly a holiday, I would imagine that anybody who purchased an eye-fi for Christmas really wants it to work for Christmas.  I still got a response in 20 minutes.  It wasn't a canned response, and detailed that the rep looked at the Kodak site to find more information on the camera.

She gave me some troubleshooting instructions involving the power settings (which looking at their help pages seems the only real trouble folks have) which didn't work verbatim, but a slight modification did.  So, after emailing them I get a crafted response that was actually helpful in 20 minutes on Christmas Eve.

That, everybody, is called customer service.  I applaud you Eye-fi, in not only making a really cool and functional product but by staffing caring customer service people.  I'd definitely recommend the Eye-fi as long as you're not a huge video taker, since it doesn't do videos.

And, for those interested, the C875 required me to set the Power Off to 10 minutes with no memory card in it, exit the menu entirely, then insert the Eye-Fi card.  Trying to set the Power Off with another memory card in it failed to work.

I like to rant on negative customer service experiences.  This should certainly not come as any surprise to anybody who has ever read anything I have written, or spoken with me at length.  My rantings are very infrequently paired with a so called tip of the hat, mostly because such opportunities tend to be few and far between lately.

But, every so often something happens and I get so pleasantly surprised I actually giggle with giddiness.

Well, last week I had the pleasant privilege of dual customer service experiences that were beyond satisfactory.  The first, was Nintendo.  I wasn't very hopeful on this, and it all started when my Wii started to show signs of a buggy GPU and the artifacting became more and more severe (which is really sad, because I just don't get the chance to play all that often).  I did some googling to see if there was a software fix, or some other way to fix it without calling into customer service -- and I did already try to use some component cables (which really just showed the problem in higher clarity).  Unfortunately, googling revealed that it was a hardware fault, and I was SOL.

I had 10 minutes left on my lunch break, and my wife urged me to call Nintendo to see about getting a replacement and I complained about it and said I didn't have enough time -- obviously it would take more than 10 minutes.

I called up, had a repair order done and finalized, and received the confirmation email in 6 minutes.  Complete with an apology for the inconvenience caused.  There was very little troubleshooting -- it was, "Do you see [artifacts]?" and I responded with yes, and a few questions about where and how they show up.  Done.

I got my prepaid shipping label, sent the Wii off and within a week I had a new Wii console.  My only complaints: a new Wii number and I can't edit the previously existing Miis on the console.  Ah well, at least now the graphics aren't artifacting so bad we're missing details in Zelda :)

The second was even more surprising than Nintendo being so prompt and friendly.  My local garbage company.

Yup, they have awesome customer service.  I've called a few times, and in the beginning I had a great deal of information delivered upon me -- but I really thought it was just a fluke and I caught the right person on the right day.  Being new home owners, and never even living in a home in an era of such sophisticated radio-dispatched, computer controlled semi-automated garbage pickup there is a lot I simply don't know.

Have no fear, a simple phone call to their operators gives me all the info I could want.  Detailed pricing, timing and in the 3 phone calls I have made they have all been so remarkably friendly and thorough I am actually happy to pay the garbage bill.

Think about that... how often to you get to be happy that a portion of your moneys paid to some company (municipal service or not) is going towards paying for good training, good personnel and overall a good company that cares about customers?

Not nearly enough, that's for sure.

VPSLand.com has still ignored me.  I've been billed 3 times now, after repeated attempts to cancel and being told that I would have my account canceled.

So, moral of the story is that if you like to be billed for services you don't use, attempt to cancel, and don't even get the courtesy of an inept telephone support a la AOL.com then head over to VPSLand.com and open an account.

However, if you want competent people you can talk to, go to Linode.com.  VPSLand is an embarrassment to business.

Update: Hey!  After sending out emails to every @vpsland.com email I could find on Google, someone actually responded!  The last two months have been refunded (unverified) back and they closed my account.  Hopefully.

I'm sure that it is no surprise to anyone reading my writings that I have a little side "business" for showing restaurants.  I really enjoy it, but the current site has stagnated quite a bit and I've been working on porting it over to more modern frameworks and getting a better look and feel.  I tend to have a very high standard for work that I hire out, so I prefer not hiring it out and doing it myself.  If I pay for something and it ends up mediocre, I get really frustrated.  If I do it myself, and it ends that way, I just flog myself a bit and get over it.

Well, I realized that I don't want to do that anymore and I simply need to get over it.  Enter Magentis Media (which sucks).  So, I get a recommendation from someone to check them out, which turns out to simply be a "her" running a design shop.  Looks reasonable enough and I like the style.

The live help widget was nice, and I appreciate the responsive proactive approach to customers.  Oops, I guess that only applies to folks who don't pay yet.

Here's been my experience:
April 24th - Pay the deposit for the work.  I get back, nearly instantaneously (well, the same day):

I will have the firsft draft proposal on Monday.

Cool!  So, Monday rolls around and radio silence.  I email on Tuesday not really thinking much about it.  Tuesday goes by.  Silence.  Wednesday, finally I get an email back.  An apology, an excuse about how they weren't receiving emails and some rough concepts.

I spend a week reviewing.  May 8th rolls around and I send in my feedback and thoughts.  Nothing.  May 14th, I send another email.  This time I'm actually started to wonder what the hell is going on.  Maybe she just hates email.  Oh, but on May 16th she responds and says everything is ready and I'll receive the revised concept that very same day.  Must be my lucky day.

Except it isn't, because more silence.  This was actually expected, because so far Caroline apparently works in inverse dog years, where 7 days is an hour and that's somehow acceptable.  So, after not hearing anything at all I finally decide to just close the relationship.  Consumer rights, and all that.

I email her this morning informing her that I expect my deposit refunded in full, and that I am extremely disappointed.  Ah hell, here's my email:

Caroline,
I've been more than patient with you and have had nothing but constant delays.

I'm cancelling our arrangement and expect a full refund to be processed within 48 hours.  Your complete lack of communication, follow through and failure to deliver is unacceptable.

Failing to receive a refund will result in an immediate chargeback.  This is not up for debate, I simply do not have the time to devote to these matters.

-Jay

I suppose I could have warned her a bit first, but really, she's not a 4 year old.  She's in business and so am I.  I'm not going to coddle someone who is running their own business.  I don't have the time for that.  I do, however, have the time to write a blog entry and publicize her failures so other people don't get caught up.  The response is priceless, though.

Hello Jay,

 

I am very sorry about this.  I am quite overwhelmed with work at this moment.  I really try my best to please everybody.

 

Unfortunately, deposit  are not refundable since it covers up for the intital design proposal on which we spent an amount of time, that would be unfair to initiate a chargeback. 

 

I you can give us until monday morning, I will be happy to have the revisions.

 

I apologise for this unusual delay and hope you will understand.

 

Regards,

I like how she just magically decides that the deposit is not refundable.  I never agreed to a non-refundable deposit.  I also like how she spells horribly.  What email clients don't have built-in spell check?  Firefox even has built-in spellcheck.

After another email informing her of her fault, I got this gem.  Really, it's beautiful:

If this is what you want to do.  Do it.  Remember chargback are illegal practice, you made a deposit for a first draft proposal and you received the designs.

 

Also please take not that any of the material/concept proposed can be used in any part or in totality.

So, she agreed to me doing a chargeback.  Cool.  But then she says it is illegal!  I'm so confused!

Chargebacks for failing to receive services hired are illegal!  I guess consumer protection is for the birds.  Really, if you have a paying customer do the right thing.

Why is it so hard to simply say, "I'm sorry I totally punted, ignored your emails and really, the job you hired me to do.  Here's your money back."  So, my part is done.  I filed a dispute with AmEx which took me half the time of writing this entry and now she's going to deal with a lot of paperwork and the dispute.  If she ignores it, she's out the deposit.  If she doesn't, she will have to explain how she failed to explain it was a non-refundable deposit and then try to change after the fact.

So, I salute you Caroline of Magentis Media.  Your business sucks.