Social Media Wave- Social Media Marketing Agency

Here goes for a fun Blog post that I hope has many of our followers rolling in the cubie-halls laughing. Before going into the agency business, our partners and I worked in the IT world for (too) many years. One of the funniest management enlightenment episodes was at a PC manufacturer - no worries on the name- because the story applies universally to any PC/ IT/ Tech support etc. industry and can be extrapolated to fit any business of any size.

We had a new product (a PC funny enough) which was a abomination of parts from the worlds most horrendous suppliers- but certainly looked special in the eyes of the product manager and the VP of Sales. The spreadsheets do not lie- it was a cash cow ready to turn the company from one form of disaster to one of at least predictable disaster.

I personally sold a bunch of these to a particular Insurance Company which had agreed to buy 12 on a "trial basis". I was already picking out the colour of my new 911 when a call came in the following Friday afternoon from the IT manager. He sounded a little upset, but when he told be that 9 out of the 12 units were D.O.A.  My pewter 911 poofed away as I made my way throug rush hour traffic to see him first hand.

Well the units all came back to the service depot where technicians promised me they would all be "repaired" and delivered sometime next week back to the prospective client. The situation warranted a visit to the assembly department where no units were ever final tested prior to shipping- a practice which still gives me nightmares today. So when I asked the VP of Service how he takes these facts in stride (no final assemby/ burn in/ test procedures) he said (guess) "We are no worse than anyone else" and told me if they wanted something more "substantial" I ought to upsell them to our higher cost brands.

This brings me to the point of this post- I had recently purchased my third speaker/ sound system from a substantial US brand Bose and found that the customer service model was starting to fall behind the times on many fronts.

The in package letter from the Chairman/ CEO speaks of quality and sound excellence (no problems there- initially) and then the process flow gets a little crazy after that. You see the Cinemate2 system I bought comes with all the components required to make the thing hum in minutes- 2 sets of inputs- cables and Optical digital- a manual and quick set up guide- the remote control unit comes with a battery which is already installed.

Seems the battery was flat. Now begins my particular beef- if you are supplying a Made In Mexico remote control, at least supply a battery which is made in the last 5 years/ country or manufacturing plant of similar quality standards as your brand. The problem is compounded when the SOB won't turn on with the remote- is it the remote or the battery exercise. A simple fix would be able to roll of the couch and hit the "On" button to over ride the remote issue- but this thing relies entirely on the remote.

Now before I have to put on pants and drive to the retailer, I thought I could go "online" and ask a few questions. Not so easy. There are Bose US and Bose "other than US" numbers, of which the Canadian number is not toll free. No big deal, but I also happened to be in the black hole of non-coverage called the WEEKEND. Going online proved to find a link to ask questions which lead me to the same page rather than a live e mail inquiry link- thus becoming 100% useless.

So on with pants and off to the retailer where they sold me new batteries, had no way of testing the remote with their demo system and no suggestions as to how to test the system without a remote to in fact determine if the battery was dead or the remote scratched. Back to the system with a fresh battery and the thing worked fine.

So Bose, if you are listening to the Blogosphere, you might consider doing 2 things- if you are supplying batteries with your remotes ( a good thing) be sure they are also good batteries. Offer customer support options beyond the telephone and email -which were both completely ineffective. As for ECN's it may be prudent to add a "remote override convenience test switch" which allows us weekend cave dwellers the option to test the system without a remote and keep our pants off where they belong on a weekend! 

In all seriousness, the use of Twitter, a Wiki and some careful feedback to the retailer (they have a Lithium Community there) could alleviate this type of negative Customer Experience from happening again. The outdated customer support numbers and e mail stuff is too dated and slow motion to provide the real time support required by a brand as well known as Bose.

Please embrace Social Media tools before you drift into that "we're no worse than anyone else" status! I am sure you will. Your products are great.

UPDATE: Feb 4th-2010- I received a @reply on Twitter from Bose customer service! Didn't exactly address my issue at hand or offer a tangible response.

They are actually in the early stages of developing a model for listening and responding to customer service issues from customers. For now there are a lot of seeminlgy "auto responder" type messages that I am sure will improve with some tweaking- maybe using socialtext for developing a collaborative response from various internal departments etc.

They are off the potential list of "we're no worse than anyone else".

Craig Stark

Managing Director

Social Media Wave

@socialmediawave