My wife and I were recently looking for baby beds on the Internet and we found two that we really liked, they looked good and the prices were very good.
Being Japanese, my wife is a little more into the group consensus than I am, and so she was looking around for comments and reviews on the two beds.
We found the usual stuff, and both of the beds were rated around the four and a half out of five mark. But one comment really stuck out to me. One person was saying that they had bought the bed and had it delivered to their house. When it arrived there, they opened it and found that it was broken. They then apparently immediately called the company asking what they should do to get a replacement or refund.
The support person on the other end asked them if they had a warranty card. The customer searched the box but there was no card, and support person informed them that there was nothing he could do without that card.
Obviously there's more to the story, but just the possible threat of us not being able to receive customer service without some obscure piece of paper on a several hundred dollar item was enough to convince my wife and I to go for the other bed.
For us the risk of getting a bad product is an acceptable risk to take, but the risk of getting no service or support on a product is not a risk we are prepared to take, and I'm confident that we are not alone in that thinking.
This is because customers in general are willing to accept a bad or faulty product if they can get good support for it, but they will be turned off even the most perfect product if it has a reputation for poor customer service or support.
At Ninja Forge, we know we aren't always perfect with our support but we do try to put a lot of effort into it, especially Mark. But I know we can do better. Right now we are planning out and designing a rebuild of the Ninja Forge site and something I've been giving a lot of thought to lately is how we can improve and streamline our support.
What about you? Is your customer support as good as it could be? Because if it's not, then it could be costing you sales, just like with our baby bed.
XML Feeds