It's Not How Well the Dog Dances

a blog by hewbrocca

  • About

Connect

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Get hewbrocca in your inbox

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Copyright © 2019 Hugh Brock

Good Customer Service

16 January, 2019

I just had a very nice experience with Concept2, the company that makes the rowing machine I spend a lot of time sitting on. The electronic monitor on my machine has been throwing errors for a while, which doesn’t really hurt much but it’s annoying in the middle of a row. So I finally got around to emailing them about it. Turns out they use Zendesk to manage their support inquiries, which I have seen before only because Kim just started using it at Harp Column.

Anyway, it turns out that the monitor on my rowing machine, which is about 5 years old, was from a batch they have had consistent problems with and they are sending me a replacement for free. Good customer service, that. The only way to do better would have been not have the problem in the first place.

Consider, though, the amount of effort it took to make that customer service good:

  • They had to be tracking complaints about this particular performance monitor
  • They had to have a tracking system in place
  • They had to have a team of people trained to use the tracking system
  • They had to have a way to replace defective bits for customers — spare parts, etc.
  • They had to build into the product a way for customers to check what version it was to tell the support team
  • Finally, they had to have the actual will to be good at customer service

I used to think that just having a policy of caring about customers and being nice to them was sufficient. Turns out it requires much more effort than that.

Filed Under: Rowing, Work

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Meet Hugh

I'm the Research Director for Red Hat, married to harpist and writer Kimberly Rowe, living in Boston. We lived in Brno, Czechia until pretty recently. Read More…

Read About

  • Boston (24)
  • Brno (6)
  • BVI (16)
  • Camden (4)
  • Cars, Boats, Airplanes (17)
  • Coffee (6)
  • Family (4)
  • Influencing Nerds (11)
  • Language (1)
    • German (1)
  • Music (13)
  • Other Stuff (12)
  • Rowing (5)
  • Uncategorized (1)
  • Work (30)
  • Yoga (2)

Recent Posts

Goodbyes

1 March, 2024 By Hugh Brock Leave a Comment

Vaccination And Air Travel

6 April, 2021 By Hugh Brock Leave a Comment

Because 4 Moves In 3 Years Wasn’t Enough

5 April, 2021 By Hugh Brock 1 Comment

Camden Harbor

11 February, 2021 By Hugh Brock Leave a Comment

My new view

2 July, 2020 By Hugh Brock Leave a Comment