Perhaps you live in a customer service Utopia, but in my world, because good customer service is such a fleeting experience, I felt the need to share a happy story when it does happen. Nothing earth shattering, but it does renew my faith in humanity, at least a little.
I’m one of those Fitbit people. I wear a fitness watch on my wrist because I’m such a fitness nut. It tells the time, keeps track of my steps and confirms that my heart is still beating, along with a dozen other features I really don’t use to their fullest extent. I can read text messages on this wrist device too. Also, I can see on my watch who is calling my cell number, but I still need to use my smartphone to actually talk to people. I’m a dinosaur in that regard, for sure. I don’t know how I cope with that, but I do.
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Anyway, the bittersweet story is that my roughly year-old Fitbit watch froze one day — just locked up on one screen I don’t even use and there was no way to release it. I couldn’t even reboot the watch. That’s the bitter part.
I was really dreading the prospect of finding a customer service rep or meaningful product support, but I went to the Fitbit website, read some of the self-help solutions, which didn’t fix anything, and finally clicked on the customer service link — and there was a 1-800 number open 24 hours a day.
Now here comes the sweet part. At first, I thought, “Ya, right, like there will be a real person to answer the phone.” I dialled the number, it rang about four times, a young woman, who was a Fitbit customer service rep, answered the call and asked how she could help. I told her my problem with the watch, fully expecting to be transferred, or at least put on hold.
However, over the next few minutes, she ran through a few diagnostics … let’s try this, this and this. The watch remained frozen. Finally, after about seven minutes of effort without remedy, she sent me an email that contained a link to another Fitbit website. There I had the option of ordering a free replacement Fitbit watch — the same model that I had, or, behind door No. 2, I could take advantage of a 50 per cent discount and upgrade to a newer model. I liked the model I had. It has all the features that I need.
I selected the replacement option and filled in my mailing address. The order was confirmed with a message that my replacement Fitbit watch should be delivered within five to seven days.
The whole process was done, complete with a very satisfactory resolution, in about 10 minutes. I can’t think of the last time when customer service has gone so smoothly.
I have probably ranted about it before, but good, helpful, timely customer service is just something that rarely exists anymore. It’s like the sighting of a unicorn. In my experience, I think I’m doing good if I can resolve a problem even with an hour’s waiting time on the phone.
I find it really frustrating these days to be looking for information from a company or organization. I’m not looking for the combination to the company vault, but just some basic information on a product or program, or answers to questions about how something works. Sometimes I strike it lucky, but more often than not it is a process.
Often, I can find a flashy website, with photos and graphics that can be dazzling. But I am looking for this basic how-to information. Somehow, I get directed to “Frequently Asked Questions.” There are only about 50 of those, but none of them really deal with my specific inquiry. Maybe if I could find someone to talk to.
I start looking for a human being to contact. Sometimes I find a staff directory, it may or may not show photos of staff members and their positions, but there is no direct contact information. I click a button that says “Contact us,” and it flips to a screen where I can leave my name and number and go to a box where I can type in my question and then someone will get back to me within the next business day or so. But I am sort of in the middle of something, and it’s just a fairly simple question — it would be good to talk to someone now. Dream on, Lee, … that just ain’t going to happen.
And customer service phone “helplines” can be equally, or more, frustrating. If I have a fairly simple question for my cellphone provider, for example, I plan on at least one hour of wait time on the phone. If I’m lucky, sometimes it gives me the option of leaving my phone number and they will call back, but other times “due to higher-than-expected call volumes” I am just put on hold and can listen to some disturbing music until someone answers.
And let’s not forget the self-service calling options, where you can “press one” for this or “press two” for that. Some of those automated services have up to seven or eight selection options and still none of them ever really address your specific question. It used to be that the last option would be to “press zero” to speak to an operator, but they seldom do that anymore. Most often it is “press the star button to repeat this menu.”
Maybe it is just that it is 2022 and timely customer service is a thing of the past. I just hope that Fitbit and the remaining few others who still provide good customer service don’t get the memo that times have changed anytime soon.
