Customer Support is more than internal tracking tools

I've got a customer support horror story, and I'm not afraid to tell it, because it has both a good AND bad side, but it also provides a learning opportunity for Acer and possibly others.

My Acer laptop went on the fritz in January, slowly getting worse to the point of being unusable in March. I updated the drivers, checked bios settings, verified all the connections, and nothing helped. I even documented the original problem here. I contacted Acer support, knowing that warranty would end in less than three weeks, figuring that they could determine the problem, I could ship it, and they could fix it even before warranty ended.

The diagnosis process was less than satisfactory - where the Acer people insisted that I do everything that I had already done - again. They even insisted that I just LOOK at the BIOS - w/o providing any suggestions once I got there. Of course I peaked around the BIOS once I was there, and there was nothing to change except to possibly disable the external monitor, which, btw, did not solve the problem (documented here). After two weeks of back-and-forth communication over their support ticket tool, they decided that I needed to RMA it.

That's when things got interesting. I packed and shipped the product after their determination that there was a hardware problem, making sure to ship it w/receipt while still in warranty. The support team that was on my ticket never acknowledge receiving it, even though UPS had tracked it. My first two attempts where met with "your product is out of warranty" we'll check with the depot. The depot finally acknowledged receipt, but the support team did not have an active record of it. Meanwhile, I asked the support team about why they kept telling me that my laptop was out of warranty and if they would still fix it since it was diagnosed and acknowledged to be defective. No answer. Even after I told them that my video pages (above) had received > 3000 hits, they didn't respond.

I contacted them every week with those questions as the video page views increased. They completely ignoring my questions about the warranty and repair. Finally, someone from the repair depot called to tell me that they couldn't get the parts and they would ship me a replacement the next day. The next day came and went, and there was no notification of the shipment, so I contacted support to find out what went wrong. Acer support told me that the replacement was not longer available, and that they were working on it. That's it. Nearly a week later, no update, so I dug through my call logs to find the inbound number from the Acer repair depot. The person at the depot was again clear and courteous, told me what happened, when another replacement option was available, and asked for a pre-authorization to ship it to me. I granted it of course, but the ship day came and went, and again, no notification. So another contact to support, and they acknowledged that a replacement was being sent. Whew!

What does this all mean? Well here's what I took away from this experience:

• Acer's support system is designed to track issues only, and does not have the focus on customers that Dell and Apple have shown when I've had repair issues with them.
• Acer doesn't track blogs or social media venues. All told, my rants on the topic garnered north of 10,000 page views.
• Persistence is still the order of the day. It seems that support is not a right, but must be earned, at least from Acer. Otherwise, I might still be out of the hardware to this day, over month and a half after reporting the problem.
• Acer's repair depot and support system have vastly different levels of person skill levels, where the depot people treated me like a human, and the support people treated me like my support issues were not worth their time.

My replacement laptop seems fine, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth from the support experience. In this day and age, I'm surprised that this level of service could come from a top PC company. and I'm even more surprised that Acer cares so little about it's reputation that it would allow such problems to go so long without resolution.

At least at the time of this writing, my video can be found on the 1st page of Google search results for "acer video flickering" and in the comments for the #1 search result for "acer video problems". Let's hope companies like Acer pay closer attention to their customers because other customers may be listening, and search results may not always show what you want your customers to see.

Startups and 'It's not my job'

After my article on 'hiring Moron X', I was lucky enough to get feedback from colleagues with experience at both small startups and larger companies. One comment led me to this article: "startup types may be ineffective in big companies due to turf wars."

Let me explain, with some background first. In well run startups, there's one phrase you rarely hear "That's not my job". On the rare occasion it pops up, it's usually followed by "well whose job is it and why aren't they in this conversation." In most startups, the team is well focused and aligned, everyone is/should be working toward the same goal. If an important job isn't getting it done, the team rallies, offloading, reassigning, or sharing responsibilities to ensure that the important things get done. When something needs to happen and resources aren't available, someone should, and usually does, step up to execute, even if it means night and weekend hours. It is important, after all. There's usually plenty of work to do, so people routinely step up, taking on tasks above and beyond their normal skill-set or training, even crossing functional boundaries.

In larger companies, operations are often broken down into more discrete tasks, where employees are hired as specialists in one functional area. This can lead to departmental and functional optimization where employees do a few tasks and are expected to do them well. If a task comes up that a specialist is not trained to do - they often have little interest and/or knowledge about how to execute on that task. Literally, it's not his/her job, and the task can be accomplished by someone more experienced with the proper skill-set.

Herein lies the potential conflict for startup types in larger organizations. When a startup type joins a large company and finds an important task not being addressed, they find a way to make it happen. They might do it themselves or try to acquire resource to quickly move forward. Unfortunately, trying to get it done and making it happen have different processes in a larger company. "Trying to get it done" may mean identifying the related projects, the required resource, the managers, and the chain of command that would normally get the task done. The startup person's task is one tiny priority among dozens of others, and when pushing his/her agenda, they often get the "I won't have resource until Y days/weeks in the future" response. In frustration, the startup person may do it himself, imperfectly, w/o the resources and w/o the blessing of the other managers, but doing it in a day or two instead of waiting two weeks before resource became available. This is how egos get crossed, walls get built, and turf wars begin against the startup person.

It doesn't have to be this way, and no one is really at fault, but this same cycle happens over and over again when the mindset and culture of the startup person is implicitly applied in the larger company environment. Often the manager who hired the startup person feels like he/she hired a rogue who doesn't fit, but in reality, a gap in communication and alignment has been exposed. It's really a learning moment and opportunity for the startup person and the larger company to operate more efficiently and effectively.

The solution is communication and goal alignment. When urgency, priority, resource, corporate advancement and opportunity can be weighed, managers and resources can be highlighted to allow a project to be executed in a more scrappy and nimble fashion, or the project urgency can corrected to more realistically reflect the priorities and goals of the company, focusing the startup person on higher priorities. I have seen communication and clarification work well, pushing a larger organization to new levels, but I've also seen the reverse, where the larger company manager is intimidated and insecure or the startup person can't adapt to the new structure.

Have you been involved either way? Successfully or not? Feel free to comment or contact me with your feedback.

Don't Waste Your Time on "Users"

Everyone knows a user or two - someone you only know because of all the favors they've asked for. They're generally friendly enough, but their actions are just a little off. If you spent a few moments thinking about it, you wouldn't really call them friends, you might call them a 'user'.

A 'user' is someone who thinks you're important only when they need something. They often suffer from an overinflated sense of self-worth, even beyond the bounds of self-confidence. There are many 'users' out there for several reasons:
1. Enough people crave even the short attention a 'user' will give them
2. Some people are too afraid of conflict or too polite to point out the usery
3. Other can't tell or refuse to believe that a 'user' is using them

Why does it bother us?
Users differ from you and I since they often act as if the world revolves around them. They tend to be oblivious of the personal and professional difficulties that befall those around them, and they often assume that you have nothing better to do than to spend your time helping them out.

There's nothing wrong with asking people for help, and in fact, a good networker knows that relationships are built by accepting and willingly doing simple favors. Every relationship has some give and take, and that give and take is an unwritten social expectation. The reason we get upset when we encounter a user is that a user does not honor the two-way relationship. He/she simply takes. Some users will do 'thank you' favors after the fact or pre-favors to guilt you, but those favors only become a source of anger when the user disappears from the relationship until he/she needs something again.

In reality, the user's actions are more like those of a company with it's customers, where a company provides a service, and the customer pays. In the company-customer relationship, there is also trust that the company will be paid a fair sum or reasonable compensation. The user does not pay for the favors he/she extracts from you. He/she violates the personal relationship rules and even violates the company-customer rules. The net result is that people hold users in disdain, with many going out of their way to avoid them, and business professionals tend to distrust them.

How to deal with them
If you consider the user a friend, and there is more to your relationship than doing favors for him/her, you should discuss the problem. If you have no choice but to deal with them, consider it an opportunity to test and develop your assertiveness.

The best techniques I've seen are simply designed to put the request in perspective and offer a learning moment. Here's a few request and responses for you to consider:

1. Request: Can you help me with [some task]	Response: Is it a paying gig? I was thinking that I might starting doing [some task] and turn it into a side business with you as my first customer. What would it cost if you hired someone? I'll give you a discount.
2. Request: Can you introduce me to [some person]	Response: I know a consultant who you can pay for that introduction. [some person] is not the kind of person I make business introductions to.
3. Request: You're not busy, you can help me do [some task] right?	Response: I wish I wasn't busy, I need to do [other tasks] or hire someone to do them for me. I tell you what - if you cover the costs of doing [other tasks], I think I can help.

The goal isn't to get paid, but to assert that your time is worthwhlie without being confrontational. Respond as above enough times, and the user will 'use' you less and less.