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10 WAYS TO PLEASE US, THE CUSTOMERS
In a tongue-in-cheek piece carried by the New
York Times recently, David Pogue had the
following advice to electronics makers. Blogs
had a field day on the Internet, some of which
is in a separate piece.
I. Thou shalt not entomb thy product in
indestructible plastic. Sure, we understand the
temptation: you want your packaging to be sturdy
yet see-through, so shoppers can see exactly
what they're buying. Trouble is, you're caring
only about whether people take your product
home; you apparently don't care about what
happens after that. You don't seem to mind that
getting those hard plastic packages open is a
dangerous ritual involving scissors, steak
knives, band saws and, eventually, blow torches.
There are ways to have it all. Technology has
marched on. You could design the front of your
package with the rigid, clear plastic, but seal
the back with easy-to-open cardboard. Or you
could perforate the seams of your "clamshell"
for easy separation without power tools. All it
takes is a little imagination and, say, 0.015
cents per unit.
II. Thou shalt hire native English
speakers to translate thine instruction manual.
"When the camera focus is not so possible, hold
the shutter button vaguely until the beeping
tone is heard." Is that really how your company
wants to address customers?
Talk about New Math. You'll spend millions of
dollars developing some breakthrough gizmo, but
won't spring for somebody to rewrite your manual
in proper English? I know some high schoolers
who'd do the job for $50 and 10 free ring tones.
III. Thou shalt not hype irrelevant
specs. The digital camera industry wants us to
believe that a camera's quality is somehow
related to its number of megapixels. A seven-megapixel
camera must be better than a four-megapixel one,
right?
It's the same with computers, where millions of
people still believe that the higher a
computer's megahertz, the faster it runs. (To
its credit, Intel has recently started playing
down that simplified statistic.)
In cameras, the quality of your photos depends
far more on things like lens quality, processor
speed and image software; in computers, memory,
hard drives and internal signal pathways are key
determinants of speed. When you try to make us
believe that a single statistic is all
important, you're being deceptive, and that's
not nice.
IV. Thou shalt not charge tech-support
fees for thine own mistakes. We're used to
getting 90 days of free technical-support calls,
and being charged after that. We don't like it,
but we're used to it.
But even after that period, you should still be
liberal in saying, "We won't charge you." There
are situations that merit free calls: when your
product isn't working right; when the manual is
unclear; or when the product is working right
but the design is so poor we can't even tell.
V. Thou shalt not participate in rebate
rip-offs. We admit it: we, the people, are
cheapskates. You know and we know that we
ruthlessly compare prices. We'll buy the cheaper
gizmo almost every time.
But what do you do? You exploit our love of
saving money by offering your delicious
electronics for crazy-low prices - "after
rebate."
So we buy your thing, cut out the barcode, fill
out the form and staple the original store
receipt. We handwrite the rebate center's
address on the envelope, mail it away and wait.
And a few weeks later, you know what we get? A
stress headache.
We've already sent away our only copy of the
documentation and you didn't provide a phone
number, so we're just stuck. You've got our
money and you know there's nothing we can do
about it.
But in this particular religion, there's a
special circle of hell reserved for rebate
cheats.
VI. Thou shalt not hide from thy
customers. If you've designed your product
properly and provided a decent manual in
English, you ought to have nothing to hide;
there should be very little reason to worry that
we, the masses, will jam your phone lines asking
for help.
Yes, of course, it's a lot cheaper to funnel
people to your Web site for answers. But let's
face it: your Web site is designed to handle
only the most basic and obvious questions. It
doesn't handle the more mystifying - and more
common - real-world questions, and it certainly
doesn't advertise or even acknowledge the bugs
and glitches in your product.
True believers in customer service, then, do not
conceal corporate phone numbers. Those numbers
should appear on your Web site, head held high,
and even - gasp - in the user manual. On Page 1.
VII. Thou shalt remember the customer's
phone number. This means you, computer and
cellphone companies. We call for help; we're
asked to type in our 10-digit phone numbers or
20-digit customer numbers; then when an agent
picks up, we're asked for that number again.
What - did you think we actually moved and
changed our identities since placing the call?
If they can write software that sends a man to
the moon, they can surely write call-center
software that passes on to the agent the
information we've already typed in.
VIII. Thou shalt not prevent "zeroing
out" of thy phone-mail maze. When we do finally
get you on the phone, we can tolerate a
voice-mail system that routes our calls. But
when we get frustrated or lost in the labyrinth
- "Press 2 for sales, press 3 for service. ..."
- we should be allowed to press the zero key to
escape and talk to a live human being.
If you have designed a phone system to ignore
desperate zero presses, then you're showing your
fear. And we, the customers who pay for your
whole operation, may wonder why you're trying to
hide from us.
IX. Thou shalt not hog the power
strip. If a power cord absolutely must
incorporate one of those big black transformer
bricks, how about putting it in the middle of
the cord? When the transformer brick is at the
prong end, it hogs three slots on our power
strips or both outlets on the wall, and that's
just greedy.
X. Thou shalt not plan
obsolescence. In six to eight months, the
digital cameras, cellphones and computers we buy
will be discontinued, replaced by something
better and cheaper. Sure, that's the march of
progress. But every six months? Is that pace
really necessary?
To be fair, dear electronics makers, your
customers aren't perfect, either. We can be rude
to you on the phone, even when the problem we're
having is a result of our own cluelessness. We
test drive your products and ask questions in
retail stores, and then order online just to
save a few bucks.
We clamor for more and more features, then
complain that the result is more complicated to
use.
But that's part of the game that you, our
beloved gadget makers, have chosen to play. We
may be the bane of your existence, but we're
also the reason for it; you're stuck with us.
We've got our credit cards ready - now show us
some love.
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