Customer Service and Support for Technology Products

The temptations in writing an opinion piece are to pick something controversial and inflame passions, or to pick some obscure issue that one can educate the public on and thus help form opinions, sometimes one picks something everyone either likes or hates to create a sense of allegiance.

In this issue I take the latter approach, and not because I want you all to like me. Okay, I do want you to like me but that is not why I am going to give you this particular rant. I am giving this particular rant for my favorite reason of all, it affects me.

What is this universal issue? One that almost everyone interested in the Internet and technology shares? It is the current state of customer service and support for technology products.

I recently purchased products from one of the industry leaders in online sales of computer products. This company got where there are partly on having a reputation for good customer support. I am going to resist the temptation to use this article as a tool for bashing this one company for I know they are not alone.

In talking, oh lets call it what it is, in my whining about the abysmal performance of this company to just about everyone within ear-shot I have heard a chorus of sympathetic complaint in response. The problems that I had in almost every phase of my transaction are rampant in an industry that has grown so fast that it's very success is part of it's problem. Some companies just can't keep up with their customers, can't hire enough qualified employees, and can't get the quality parts they need.

What I hope to do is make the case for us all to us all. That is right, it is you, and by that I mean all of us, that I am talking to. Everyone from Misters Gates and Dell to you and IBM have to address these same issues.

In the best world we create reliable quality products and services, we have knowledgeable sales people to present them, we deliver them in a timely way, if our customers have questions about how to use our product we have helpful manuals and web based support, if there is a problem we provide effective technical and customer support. When we get a call or an email we respond quickly with accurate information.

Notice that I used the phrase "in the best world". We live in this world, while it is not always what we want it to be, it is the best world we have. So what do we do with it? What does all this mean to us as business owners and as consumers?

As business owners it means that we must plan for and address each of the business critical areas with due diligence. It means that we must address these areas as we grow if we hope to sustain this growth. The company I had my recent experience with is big news now but where will they be in ten years if they continue to fail their customers? We must work to prove to e-commerce consumers that the problems in our industry are just temporary growth pains. We must prevent this current lapse in customer services from becoming the norm for doing business. If we fail the pendulum will swing away from e-commerce back to retail businesses where the consumer can at least yell at someone face to face. 

As consumers we must develop three attributes, clear communication, patience and persistence. We must communicate clearly during the purchase process and document exactly what we are promised. We must have the patience to not throw all this cool technology out the window and go live in a log cabin. We must have the persistence to hang in there while our vendors try to get it right, we have to remind them of our rights as consumers with phone calls and emails and whatever it takes to get what is promised. If after you have really tried to work it out you are still not happy, don't live with it, return it and get a refund. It costs a lot for companies to deal with returns, if we as consumers can affect the bottom line then business policy will change also.

Bill Patz is a web  designer, programmer, Internet business strategist, and intranet manager. He  runs a collective of Internet professionals. Visit his WE Concepts site at weconcepts.com