by: Idris Mootee
Talking customer experience, here are my most recent stories:
I
first ordered a batch of Lenovo IBM Tablet back in Oct 07, two weeks
later when we contacted them they said the order was lost and that we
had to start over again. So we bought some stock from a reseller. Four
weeks later, a notice came through my mail box and said my order was on
its way. I called them up and said all I needed to do was to decline
delivery and they would take care of things. Three months later today,
AMEX still has not refunded my money to date for merchandise that was
cancelled and never received.
During
the week of Christmas, I ordered another batch of Lenovo IBM Tablet
online and they promised delivery in 2 weeks. So I thought perfect as
our new staff won’t start until mid Jan. Two
weeks later I called and they said my order was cancelled due to
configuration problems. So if I needed anything I needed to re-order and
they could rush my order which would take 2-3 weeks. I said forget it
and I bought some from a reseller. Last week, a notice came through my
email telling me they were preparing to deliver the laptops. I called
them up and they said they had no idea what’s going on and I talked
to about half-a-dozen of customer service people and at the end no one
knows what’s going on. So they delivered the laptops today that I don’t
need. Anyway I decided to take them instead sending them back for refund which I know how painful it will be.
And
worse, we have so many problems with the quality and now we’re waiting
for parts for replacement plus the battery recall. Lenovo is hopeless
and so many things are broken in their system. They deserve to go
out-of-business. It is a matter of time when I will issue a company
policy of not buying from them. We have spent
collectively about 50 hours on the phone with them and the experience
was awful. How can Lenovo turn this IBM division into such a bad
company? The IBM Thinkpad was really nicely designed and the ThinkPad
logo still gives me a lot of goodwill. I think I need to tell my story to the Wall Street Journal. Will put in on my to-do list.
On the contrary, Apple gives me the best experience I can get. I order a batch of MacBook Air a few weeks back. They
called me while I was driving to work to confirm my order; I made some
changes to it and add a few more MacBook Air to the order. Went
back to the office, checked my order on the site and they did exactly
what I’ve asked them to do. Two days ago I got this email in my inbox
telling me that they were being shipped directly from their assembly
plant in Shanghai. I clicked on it and it gave me an instant tracking,
so I know it is now in Anchorage. This morning, this stack of MacBook
Air showed up on my door front. When I opened
the box, it was like such an experience. With the black box packaging much thinking has been put into this thing. I opened the box and it
was magical. The battery is pre-charged and setting up takes less than 3
minutes. A small little icon was jumping up and down to tell me there’s
a software update needed. Click on it, done.
Just
this weekend, I was at the Apple Store picking up a few accessories and
some software while my wife was shopping at the Louis Vuitton store
next door. The guy was so helpful despite the shop being full of
people; there were people available to help. So 10 minutes later, I got
what I needed and about to head off to the casher. He pulled out a
hand-held and scanned my credit card and seconds later the invoice was
in my Blackberry inbox. That’s a great experience. Apple deserves to rule the world. What a difference between the two experiences? Is it that hard to do what Apple does (outside of the product)? I am so upset with Lenovo that everytime I look at my machine I was wondering how fast are they losing market share?
Companies today invested heavily in systems and networks of
frontline sales staff to retaining their current customers. It is an
indisputable fact that the costs of doing so tend to be much lower than
those of acquiring new ones. Why companies such as Lenovo are foolish
enough to piss off customers which heavily influence corporate buying
decisions?
What I was getting from Apple were multiple sparks between me, the
product and frontline staff –the sparks that help transform wary or
skeptical customers into strong and committed brand advocates. These
sparks are the core of the emotionally driven behavior that drives
great customer experience companies earn trust and loyalty during
“moments of truth”: those few interactions when customers invest a high
amount of emotional energy in the outcome and being remembered as the
customer or brand “experiences”. Proper and effective handling of these
moments requires an instinctive frontline response that puts the
customer’s emotional needs ahead of the company’s agenda and
systems/processes.
When we work with some of the greatest brands of the world, we have
identified a number of simple ways for them to solve these challenges.
In any industry that offers a service (or sells a product with an
“embedded” service component), there are moments when the long-term
relationship between a business and its customers can change
significantly–for better or for worse. By developing a rigor customer
experience strategy can ensure delivery of these positive “moments of
truth”. This is not a spread sheet exercise; it requires a sound
practice of “customer empathy” and “customer service economics”. It is
not one or the other; you need both. Need to call Lenovo again.
Original Post: http://mootee.typepad.com/innovation_playground/2008/02/lenovo-and-appl.html
