As a follow-up to my post last week on passing the buck and not taking responsibility for problems, had a similar experience yesterday. I recently changed cell phone companies, and since I have pretty basic needs, took the driod’s recommendation on the phone to get (had the features I needed at a price I was willing to pay). Picked up a cable to connect the phone to my computer only to discover… drivers for the cable/phone do not exist. So I walked into the store to ask about that and also about how to get rid of a annoying phone mail alert that showed even when I had none.Turns out the alert is a known problem with a known work-around. The rep was polite and showed me how to do it. On to the issue about the cable. “No sir. We don’t support the cable hookup to a computer. You’ll have to contact the manufacturer for that.” When told I had and they didn’t have a driver either, he went on, “Well, it’s a brand new phone, they haven’t had time to develop those yet, I guess. We don’t deal with phones, we just provide the service. You’ll have to work with someone else on that.” Except I didn’t buy the phone from them, I bought it from you. And I bought the phone at YOUR recommendation. And you told me it would do something that it won’t do, at least not for a few months. And you failed to mention that there is no manageable way to actually enter numbers into the phone in bulk, which I think is a pretty normal and needed feature you seemed to have forgotten to tell me about.Which raises a whole bunch of marketing and development questions, but I now know that you don’t intend to support me past what you know is easy and what you want to support. In talking with everyone about these companies, it seems there is no one trying to stand out, just companies that are tolerable. I think there’s a HUGE market for a company willing to provide actual service and provide needed features. And it’s no different in whatever you do. If you meet people’s needs, they’ll buy and buy and buy. And if you don’t… well I have 15 more days on my 30-day money-back-guarantee-with-no-questions-asked, and I’m seriously considering invoking it. I’m a little afraid of what they didn’t tell me about that, though.
Meet your audience/customers’ needs. Whatever they are.
