For those who regularly read my blog, you'll love this. Last July I posted an entry about the importance of making your company accessible. In the posting, I mentioned that the only means of contacting Motorola about a piece of software I was interested in buying and downloading from its website was via an online form.
I reflected that a month after submitting the form I had yet to receive a reply. Well, you'll be happy to know that on March 31 -- nine months after submitting the online form -- I finally received a one line response from Motorola. I kid you not. What's worse was there was no acknowledgement of any delay.
Contrast that experience with one I had recently with another well-known consumer electronics provider, Bose. I've had a Bose SoundDock for about three years. I'm thinking about trading in my fourth generation Apple iPod for an iPod Touch. On a Saturday morning I dialed the toll free number that was easy to locate on the company's website. Ryan in Bose's technical support group picked up on the first ring. He explained to me that because Apple now has so many varieties of iPod, Bose has created a universal adapter for its SoundDock so it will work with any type of iPod. He was more than happy to send me the adapter at no charge. Bose has a customer for life. The next time I'm in the need of a quality sound product, you can bet that I will not stray from the Bose brand.
With the cost of acquiring a new customer ranging from 5 to 10 times what it costs to keep or upsell new products to an existing customer, it's no wonder that Motorola is on the ropes and trying, without success, to sell its handset business. They simply don't get it. It being the importance of getting back to those pesky customer people about an online software product that has zero distribution cost and -- I would guess -- somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% profit margin. I can't imagine a more dysfunctional organization. Frankly, at this point they would have been better off not getting back to me at all. At least then I would have attributed it to some type of internal glitch.
A relevant footnote worth sharing is that I got rid of the Motorola phone mentioned in my original blog posting almost six months ago. I decided then to go an entirely different direction for my calendar and contact synching needs. Hey Moto, can you here me now?
2 comments:
Your Motorola example is right omn the money. Too many companies invest money and resources into creating strong marketing campaigns and follow up with old fashioned customer neglect.
The new global "customer service" model seems to support this model.
The Motorola story reminds me of my frustrated visit to a local Best Buy where I went with the cash to buy a new speaker system. I couldn't get one sales person to help me, although I was told more than once that someone would be right with me. There were plenty of 'blue shirts' walking the floor, but not one of them worked in Sales in the audio department. After 20 minutes of waiting to be helped, I walked out, went to another store and bought a much better speaker system than the one I was interested in at Best Buy - A Bose. Thank you Best Buy for not helping me!
Post a Comment