design
Xbox 360 repairs – when customer service red-rings
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 | consoles, consumer culture, design, gadgets, gaming | No Comments
A couple of weeks ago, my XBox 360 suddenly stopped working and displayed the Red Ring of Death (RRoD) – anyone who has been playing a game and forgotten to save in the last little while will totally understand my anguish and the loud, heart-felt cursing that followed.
Still, Microsoft made it pretty easy to send the console back:
- Watch XBox 360 red-ring and despair.
- Call XBox 360 people.
- Get free shipping label.
- Pay $13 for UPS to box it up nicely and send it to the repair centre.
- Wait and rejoice at its speedy return.
Today the good people at Purolator brought me a new XBox 360 – I plugged it in, practically humming with excitement at getting to play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion again. I followed every instruction to the letter about setting it up again and – more despair; no Oblivion for me.
I got an error message telling me the downloadable content (DLC) for the game was not available to me. I found this pretty puzzling since I used to have access to it with no issues at all.
I called XBox 360 Customer Service and set up a ticket to document the issue. I was told to wait three to five business days for the problem to corrected. Annoying, but OK.
I looked on the XBox LIVE site and discovered that my LIVE account still had the serial number for the previous XBox associated with my account. This got me worried – what if the repair centre hadn’t registered the XBox correctly at all?
I called again and was treated to a woman reading straight off cue cards who was unable to tell me if either mine or Joe’s account was associated with the new XBox’s serial number, but a second ticket was issued under his name and gamertag.
To make matters worse, during this second call the supervisor admitted that my issue is a frequent and ongoing issue with repaired XBox consoles and that they’ve received many complaints about it.
Anyway, Joe discovered a few hours later that the new XBox was listed under his gamertag and account, but not mine – so I called again to cancel his ticket and keep mine open with a note cross-referencing his now cancelled ticket.
This was apparently beyond the scope of the script; the third customer service person I talked to was not able to answer my questions with yes or no answers and interrupted me several times to repeat the same stock phrases over and over again from his script.
I understand that Microsoft wants to keep answers consistent – that makes sense. However, not everyone processes information in the same way and forcing your call centre staff to repeat the same things over and over again doesn’t make them more intelligible.
I admit that I was frustrated with the responses I got during my second and third calls – I spent nearly two hours in total on the phone with people who are not allowed to tell me things, don’t know the answers to things and either can’t or won’t rephrase anything from the script in a way that makes sense.
I also found it very annoying to have my name used repeatedly throughout the conversations; for instance: “Thank you for your patience today Renee. Now, Renee, we are going to escalate this matter to a higher department and we assure you, Renee, that everything is being done to correct the issue. Is there anything else you’d like to bring to my attention today Renee?”
I’m sure they think this will calm frustrated customers, but honestly, it’s sort of creepy. Even Joe rarely uses my name, so to hear someone reading off a script and putting my names in the blanks is just weird. Also, it’s very annoying – I had a moment where I just wanted to yell “I know my own fricken name!!”
If anyone in a position of being able to do and know things at the XBox 360 Customer Service centre reads this: please, please, give your staff a little leeway and let them think outside the box just a tiny bit. Let them answer questions in plain English. Tell them not to use my first name so much and NOT call me ma’am either – I hate being called ma’am.
And most of all – if customers are calling frequently about a specific problem, you need to find a better solution than scripted answers that your staff can’t really understand or explain.
How is boot shopping like your website?
Monday, December 29th, 2008 | consumer culture, design, websites | No Comments
Vancouver is melting. We got an incredible amount of snow over the holidays and now there are deep pools of water pretty much everywhere – and I haven’t got a pair of rain boots.
So, I went out to various shoe stores and found that they come in two distinct varieties: great and terrible.
Scene:
I walk in and am immediately crowded by aisles so narrow they only allow for one person to be in the aisle at any given time. There is a mish-mash of shoes directly inside the door to my right, both men’s and women’s and I have no idea where to begin looking for rain boots.
There are four employees; a surly looking woman behind the cash register ringing up a purchase and three young ladies standing at the end of the counter talking. When I finally get to that area I hear them discussing plans for New Year’s Eve and the various states of inebriation they were in a few days ago at some house party.
Fascinating and work appropriate.
I turn back towards the left hand wall and wonder if I passed the rain boots altogether. Perhaps the only pair they have are the ones in the window? I pass three people, two men and one woman, each holding a single shoe or boot looking frustrated and lost.
I see a lone rain boot on the shelf – too bad it’s covered in the words “Juicy Couture”. I put it back on the shelf.
On my way out, I nearly topple a display of stacked shoe and boot boxes. The display is covered with various bits of footwear that probably belong on the display wall, but were dumped on the boxes by other people who left the store.
I look back as I leave and one of the young ladies at the front makes eye contact, shrugs and turns back to her conversation.
Pretty terrible, but not unusual.
Another store, another scene:
I walk into the store see a cheerful sign that tells me all the boots in the store are on sale. If I buy a pair, I get a second pair half off. To my right are leather wingtip shoes and on the left are some very nice looking high heels. I turn to the left side of the store. Clearly the women’s footwear section is here.
I walk in a few steps, when I’m approached by a friendly looking young woman. “Hi!” she says. “Just to let you know, we’re having a buy one, get one half off sale on all boots in the store. My name is Sarah and if you’d like to try anything or have questions, let me know.” I thank her, she smiles and goes off to help someone else.
There is a woman behind the cash register patiently explaining the store’s exchange and return policy to a rather harried looking man. The man’s young son is driving a small car across the front of the counter while making traffic noises.
I pick up a black rain boot and notice another sign that says “Our boot sale includes rain boots too!” Sweet.
After considering the boot for a few minutes – simple, black and decent price – Sarah approaches. “Would you like to try that one on?” I give her my shoe size and she brings back not only the size I think I need, but a half size above and below that just in case.
The half size smaller fits perfectly. She tidies away the other two boxes of boots and says “If you take those, you’ll want to store them on a tray in the open after wearing them. If you put them in a closed closet right after wearing them, they get a little smelly. Rainboots don’t breathe very well, and your closet will smell like feet.”
I laugh and thank her for the tip and then go to the front and pay for my new boots.
I think you can guess where I’m going with this.
How your site looks and the content it houses matters a great deal. It’s not enough to say “I have a web presence now and my site has the top Google ranking.” If your site is the equivalent of a pile of shoes in a closet labelled “shoe store” – it won’t matter how well ranked you are – no one will go to your site more than once.
Simple and clean design with a well organized layout and content that makes sense is the best way to keep people coming back.
Also, waiting around for inattentive store staff gives me far too much time to think about shoe store/writing analogies.
Now if you’ll excuse me – I’m taking my new boots out to jump in a few puddles!