6 posts tagged “customer service”
Almost two years ago, I bought a 15-inch "Cargo" bag from the University Village Apple Store in Seattle. It was for my 13-inch MacBook, but I needed a bag right away and there wasn't a good 13-inch bag available. So I lived with a slightly too-big bag, and it was quite satisfactory. I loved the look of the bag, the functionality of it, and the really smart details like an easily accessible iPod holder and an extra removable pouch for keeping cables.
I wrote back to Musictoday and let them know that, yes, I would indeed like to have a complimentary copy of the album, but the limited DVD version, please. I didn’t hear back for a week, so I wrote in just now and asked for an update. They wrote back in about 15 minutes, confirming that they were ordering the DVD-album for me! Woop! Customer service for the win. They're also putting me in touch with their web design team.
Now... please don’t bombard them with demands for free Rush albums. :P
The other day we were at the mall, as we seem to be so often these days, and we stopped in to Aveda to look for some kind of girly product. The staff was friendly and helpful enough, but what got me was when they brought around a tray with little cups of "comforting tea". I guess they are selling the tea there, so the tea is meant to be a sample. Maybe some people buy the tea after trying it. But it made me wonder what effect the tea had on sales in general. Being given tea makes you feel good, makes you want to stay in the store for a little bit longer, relaxes you a bit, maybe makes you just a bit more likely to go ahead and try some new product. I'd be really interested to see what the pre-tea and post-tea sales numbers look like.
It's 1 AM, and I still can't get phone calls. I was hung up on once, another guy got me to hang up by reassuring me that the fix was "pending" and that I should "turn my phone off and on randomly for a while" until it worked. Now I'm on hold again listening to the same commercials as an hour and a half ago...
Only Cingular has the fewest dropped calls!!
I'm on hold with Cingular's after-hours emergency support line right now. Is it a good idea to play commercials, complete with obnoxious techno music, to people who are already upset and frustrated with you?
Based on Merlin Mann's recommendation, I went to check out the sleep and nap coaching application pzizz. It is a well-made Mac OS X application, and the little video on the site was so inviting, so I went ahead and bought a license. But the purchasing process was kind of a pain; I had to enter my address a couple of times, and at one point I had to start over completely.
It seemed like a company that cared about its customers' experience, so I sent a quick e-mail letting them know that the process was not very friendly. 12 minutes later, at 1:21 in the morning, I got an e-mail back from Edward at pzizz saying that they'd look into improving the process and that he was refunding $20 from my purchase! Nearly any other company would just grumble, "ehhh, it's not our fault."
