January 2008

The Netdisaster is only a TOY.

I don’t want to be specific about where this happened, but it should not happen at a company that is well known for such “amazing customer experience”.

It’s not easy, I know. And sometimes, you just get a situation where everything continues to go wrong, so much so that at some point you have to start laughing about it. Now that it’s at a stopping point, I wanted to share it with you dear readers.

I purchased a new consumer product on New Year’s Day. It was a very exciting purchase that I felt was going to enable me to stay organized and stylish now that I was leaving the house for work. I went to the store and made the purchase. They made it pretty difficult though because of a new process that had just been put in place. I went to the store with my cash in hand hoping to just give it to someone to get my new product, but I had to work pretty hard to get someone to let me buy it.

2 weeks later a new accessory becomes available for my product. I decide to go on my birthday and get this new accessory. They don’t have any and nobody can answer my questions, but they have a number system before you can talk to anyone so I got to spend an hour of my birthday sitting around waiting to be told I can’t be helped. I’m a customer that just had to pretty much wrastle an employee to the ground to buy the product and then when I wanted to keep giving them money for my shiny new product, they still weren’t interested.

I was told the only way to get what I needed was to call someone and they could help.

I knew it would be an experience that would require much patience so I waited a week and a half to make that call. Today was the day. I was also reminded today that sometimes things really just were meant to be comically bad from beginning to end.

After two specialists and one hour and twelve minutes I got the information I needed.

Great customer experience and it’s not quite over yet, but it’s definitely reached the comical stage. So I’m laughing and meditating on what universal lesson I should be walking away with from this situation. I’m sure that will reveal itself when it needs to be known.

Now with video….

Not only is it an invitation to upload a video of your review, it’s smartly coupled with a very convienent link to a video camera you can purchase at Amazon to create your video product reviews for Amazon. This is such a great example of how context can drive sales. It’s also an interesting evolution of the product review that Amazon has made famous.

They are giving this one away for embedding in your blog. Share it, love it, Buy their album from iTunes.

It’s been a good year so far. I haven’t had trouble changing the date when I write it or type it at all. I think the even years are better somehow. Happy Friday everyone.

Today was a good day. Every day should be a good day when you have opportunity and the ability to choose to make it a good day. I threw a party last night and I was achy from cleaning yesterday, but it was worth the effort to see my friends together at the end of the holiday season.