UPDATE: After posting this I received an email from a higher-level support person. He promised me he would “look into” the “support” I received and asked me to send a log showing exactly what was happening. I’ll update as things move along.
Here at Gear Diary we love to publicize GREAT customer service. At the same time we also like to share stories of limited or poor customer service with the hope that it will encourage an improvement.
Here is my latest story…
I used Vlingo on my BlackBerry Bold 9000, and while I preferred the Beta version of Dragon I was also using, Vlingo came in handy on occasion. I updated my hardware to the Bold 9700 and discovered that neither Vlingo nor Dragon would work on it. I emailed Vlingo asking when the 9700 would be supported and heard nothing back. When I Tweeted the question publicly however I got a response. Well, actually, I got no answer at all … until some time later when this arrived.
COOL! Version 4.0 of Vlingo was out, and the Bold 9700 was supported.
I loaded it. The setup went smoothly. I restarted my Bold 9700. I went to use Vlingo and … my Bold crashed.
I restarted my Bold. I went to use Vlingo and … it crashed my Bold.
This happened three more times. I was getting frustrated. I removed Vlingo 4.0, restarted my Bold, reloaded Vlingo 4.0, went through the setup process and went to use the app. I started Vlingo and … it CRASHED my Bold.
So I Tweeted this:
Within minutes I heard back from Vlingo.
Okay, no problem. When I got home, I went to the Vlingo site and filled out a support request. Easy enough.
![crashes my phone every single time [Incident_ 091213-000060] - rabbidmc@gmail.com - Gmail-1.jpg](http://www.geardiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/crashes-my-phone-every-single-time-Incident_-091213-000060-rabbidmc@gmail.com-Gmail-1.jpg)
Once again, I heard back rather quickly. Only problem was that it was a form email, and it didn’t help one bit. It told me that Vlingo 4 was out (I knew that), that it supported OS 5.0 and that the Bold 9700 was one of the supported devices.
![crashes my phone every single time [Incident_ 091213-000060] - rabbidmc@gmail.com - Gmail-3.jpg](http://www.geardiary.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/crashes-my-phone-every-single-time-Incident_-091213-000060-rabbidmc@gmail.com-Gmail-3.jpg)
What it DID NOT TELL ME was what I should do, since the app is consistently crashing my Bold, and therefore completely and totally useless. It doesn’t work. It crashes my device. And that was why I tweeted in the first place, and why THEY told me to reach out to customer service, and why I wrote them as they had said to do.
Seriously companies- if you are going to offer customer support and encourage customers with issues to use the service, how about actually READING the complaint and responding to it … please? A form letter showing that you didn’t actually read about my issue just makes me not want to deal with you; and your app, even less.
Customer service by bots is NOT customer service. It's crap.
Here's what I don't get:
With how cheap and easy it is to have someone send emails from just about any location and any device, why not just staff your support service with real people? Arm them with netbooks and blackberries, and even if their responses are effectively form letters anyhow, at least they are form letters with a person behind them. Anything beyond basic questions still needs to go to a level 2 tech, but at least the customer feels like someone took care of them, instead of feeling combative and angry at the first real person they encounter.
They invented telephones to contact CS and/or the company.
Agreed – I can understand a sort of 'we are looking into your issue, here is a link to our support FAQ in case you can find something helpful there' thing. Something that lets you know they've seen your question, don't have an immediate answer, but are working on it.
But the fact that you have made it pretty clear what your issue was makes it pretty useless that they just dumped you a form letter!
Do you realize how many thousands of support requests Vlingo is probably getting each month? With each release there are tens of thousands of new users, so you can imagine that support is a little overwhelmed right after a new release. I bet you got a follow up to your canned answer that was more helpful, right? Why not post that part of the story as well.
A few things:
- Yes, we realize that new releases always unleash new issues … but since they know it as much as we do, they should be prepared in one way or other.
- The response they got was made to look like they had 'studied your situation and found a solution'. That is obviously not true. So instead of a canned 'we'll contact you soon' reply he got a 'we are closing your issue' reply.
- You assume that he got a follow-up, but we aren't sure yet. If you follow Dan's stuff (like his whole Amazon thing) you know he *is* diligent about updating articles based on 'what happens next'.
And indeed I got a message from an upstairs support person. I'll keep
you posted.