Nov 21, 2012
Even when the initial user experience of a product is good, the
total customer experience suffers when a company ignores service
after the sale. We at Design Critique argue that service after the
sale IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF A PRODUCT'S DESIGN because it directly
affects the customer experience. Only bad companies isolate product
design from customer service design. In Tim's case, T-Mobile
destroyed a loyal, 8-year customer relationship for its monthly
prepaid service by
* Refusing to help replace a smart phone under warranty when it
broke, in any kind of realistic time frame,
* Refusing to unlock the phone after selling it on the condition it
would be unlocked after 90 days, and
* Implying its monthly prepaid customers are not worth helping
because only long term contract customers deserve good customer
service.
It's a comedy of errors unless you're the one who wasted hundreds
of dollars and hours of time dealing with T-Mobile's agressively
anti-customer practices. What lessons can we draw from T-Mobile's
mistakes?
One anecdote does not make a statistically significant trend, but anecdotes provide useful insights into the how and why of customer service failures.