StellaService, a startup that measures and benchmarks the customer service performance of online businesses, announced this morning that it has raised $15 million in series B financing. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, with contributions from the startup’s existing investors, including Battery Ventures, DFJ Gotham Ventures, RRE Ventures and Forerunner Ventures and brings the… → Read More
The iPad mini hit store shelves today, and I got the chance to get one for myself. The device is a terrific consumer tablet, but it has a lot of potential to be an even more impressive player in retail, restaurant and industrial applications. The iPad mini’s big brother has done a good job of making headway in businesses and customer service, but the iPad mini has a strong chance to help drive… → Read More
Today Freshdesk announced Freshdesk Arcade, a new game mechanics system for its web-based help desk software.
Freshdesk Arcade will award points based on several factors, including the amount of time it takes to close a ticket, whether an issue is resolved in one call, and customer satisfaction. Points can be tracked through internal leaderboards, and agents will be able to rise through several… → Read More
Consumers are not in a research mode when they’re on Facebook. Instead, the first place they go to find out about a product is Google or the company web site.
That’s according to an internal study by GetSatisfaction, which found that close to 90% of customers go to a company’s website to research products or services. That’s compared to the 12% who use social networks to research brands and… → Read More
Thanks to increasingly powerful mobile and web technologies, people can work from practically anywhere. One eCommerce startup, the Utah-based Needle, sees a big opportunity for this mobile, remote, and telecommuting workforce to change the way businesses connect with their customers and influence the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Rather than relying on customer service reps stuffed into… → Read More
“People are sick of shitty customer service,” said FastCustomer co-founder, Stephanie Hay. And she and her team aim to do something about it.
Their first product, for the iPhone, Android, and other platforms, allowed you to search for a customer service number – say Adam & Eve – and press a button. The program waits on hold for you and then calls you on your phone immediately upon… → Read More
I don’t like to call out bad customer service that often because the cases are often very time and place specific and mostly it’s a matter of misunderstandings all around. However, this one is too good to pass up. A reader, Blazej (he’s Polish), inexplicably purchased two Precision workstations and two 20-inch monitors from Dell on December 31. He paid extra for quick shipping waited for his items… → Read More
New research from RightNow and Harris Interactive…reveals that 82% of consumers in the U.S. said they’ve stopped doing business with a company due to a poor customer service experience. Of these, 73% cited rude staff as the primary pain point, and 55% said a company’s failure to resolve their problems in a timely manner drove them away.
Almost everybody surveyed, a full 95%, said after a bad… → Read More
Given how much people depend on their mobile phones these days, it’s pretty much catastrophic when they stop working. Most these days don’t have a traditional land-line, so when your phone stops working, you lose touch with the world. So which carrier has the best customer service? Who can you depend on to help you in your hour of need? → Read More
I’ve been eying FIOS for a few years now – I know Doug has it and likes it – and was just inspired by a commercial on cable to pop by the Verizon site to check on FIOS in Brooklyn. Almost immediately I was shunted into a chat with “Philip” who proceeded to offer me DSL. Phil then encouraged me to “check back” with some regularity, something that would be swell if I cared enough to check back… → Read More
We’ve made it a sort of hobby to post our Comcast experiences here at CG, more often than not because they’ve been terribletastic and we needed to be angry publicly for our own satisfaction. This time however it’s quite a different case so read on if you’d like to hear that rarest of tales: a tale of good customer service. → Read More
I understand that companies like Casio are dealing with large volumes and must enforce a certain level of scrutiny when it comes to returns, or face enormous costs from unnecessary replacements. But this is ridiculous. Like the laptop with “liquid inside keyboard,” Casio’s complaint is completely ridiculous and completely transparent. You can see the technician going down the… → Read More
Not everyone spends all day in front of gadget blogs and the HowardForums, learning the ins and outs of their cellphone. It’s for these “normal” people that Sprint is launching a renewed effort to teach consumers exactly what it is their cellphones can do. The program is called “Ready Now,” and will officially be announced sometime today, when everyone is paying attention to Apple… → Read More
Dell is offering a 12-month warranty extension for those of you suffering (or about to suffer) from faultily manufactured GeForce GPUs on your laptops. Their previous solution was to fool the BIOS into turning the fans up all the time, thus preventing overheating at the cost of noise and wear and tear — not really the best trade-off. So now they’re essentially saying “Okay… → Read More
The Register has a report on possibly the largest ever single-person phone bill, and the winner is…James Abdale, a Vodafone customer from Norwich, who got a bill for £588,198, and fifteen pence ($1,175,455 and two cents). Abdale, who posted his saga on Vodafone’s forum, spent over two hours on the phone with customer service before being told that all managers had gone home and he’d have to… → Read More
Interesting approach to customer service you’ve got there, HP! Hot tipper Zack, who sent his still-under-warrantee HP laptop in to be serviced for a bad hinge, writes: Well today I received a call from an HP Tech Support guy. I was informed that liquid had been inside my keyboard and when they opened the computer to diagnose it, the liquid spilled onto the motherboard causing damage. He also… → Read More
Dell, the baked goods manufacturer, knows that Americans don’t like calling tech support only to get “Pete,” whose name clearly Shoaib, who tells them to restart their computer for every single issue. Fine, Dell says, it’ll improve customer service—legitimate solutions on the other end of the line—but you’d better be ready to pay for it. The Texas-based… → Read More
I’m the resident customer service curmudgeon around CrunchGear. I’ve worked customer service as both a peon and manager, and I’ve been on the other side, so I know what’s reasonable to expect. As I said a few weeks ago, if Circuit City destroys your car trying to install a stereo, they should fix it completely. Circuit wasn’t doing that, but reports are that… → Read More
I’ve never had good luck with Dell’s customer service, it’s one reason why I just don’t recommend their products. One great example of this is a letter a young man named K sent to the Consumerist, detailing how Dell Support destroyed his old laptop while trying to troubleshoot his new one, and finally sent out a replacement. Good on them, you say, for making good on that. → Read More
Those sports at Amazon understand “new technologies don’t always work out as planned.” Or rather, they don’t work out as Toshiba planned. I have a feeling this is how Sony planned it all along. In any case, if you bought one of those bargain HD-DVD players after February 23rd, help yourself to $50 worth of stuff from Amazon. Personally, I’d be buying the Planet Earth… → Read More
I drive a Kia Spectra that I just love. I bought it brand new 2004 and one of the first things I did was have an iPod adapter kit installed for the car stereo. I’m an iPod guy, and I want to take my songs with me always. I took it to Circuit City and while the install was fast, they messed up the facing on my dashboard, so now it just sort of hangs there. They told me there was nothing they… → Read More
[photopress:card.jpg,full,center] We’re going to try to think like Creative here. Let’s say we, as Creative, insist that our drivers for our multimedia cards were Vista-ready. Let’s say they really weren’t, they were buggy drivers with missing features. Let’s say we had no real plans to fix this. We’re a large corporation with better things to do. So let’s… → Read More
[photopress:75867463_18098e337a.jpg,full,center] The guys over at BGR are griping at Apple for an email sent to a customer under Steve Jobs’s name. At the heart of the issue is a MacBook Pro which sustained water damage. The owner was miffed that it would cost him $300 for Apple to look into repairing it, not knowing if it was possible or not. He emailed Steve about what he considered bad… → Read More
Shortly after an — ahem — misunderstanding involving Microsoft’s Xbox tech support department, a gamer, and an autographed Xbox 360 case (you can read all about the original fiasco here), things seem to have been made right — by Bungie. Bungie, makers of the wildly popular Halo series, sent the gamer a bunch of cool stuff to replace the signatures and drawing of Master… → Read More
[photopress:40GB_PS3_SpiderMan_Box.jpg,full,center] So how exactly is it that Sony can have better customer service than NewEgg, the bastion of happy buyers? Consumerist has it from a customer who bought a PS3 from NewEgg that was pictured as including a copy of Spider-Man 3 on Blu-ray. When the package arrived, the movie was absent, and the packaging made no mention of the film being included. → Read More
[photopress:sprint_logo_resized.jpg,full,center] Now this is how you run a company. Daniel R. Hesse is the newly appointed CEO of Sprint, a company not known for its customer service skills. At the first operations meeting he oversaw, he noted customer service wasn’t on the agenda at all. He made it the first thing they discussed. We’re hopeful Hesse can turn Sprint’s rep around. → Read More
[photopress:hdbrexchange.jpg,full,center] A retailer actually giving a damn about its customers? It can’t be an American one, right? No. It’s not. Japanese corp Edion, which owns a bunch of electronic stores over there, will exchange customers’ now obsolete HD DVD players for Blu-ray players. The corp will accept Toshiba players for one from Sony, Panasonic or Sharp. Edion… → Read More
The video is funny enough on its own, but if it’s real, then none of you Dell fans can talk to me about the great customer service of Dell. Watch it. Laugh. Thank me later. Video: Purported Dell Call Center Employee Calls Customer “Little Girl” [BB Gadgets] → Read More
[photopress:rrodko.jpg,full,center] Flickr’d Microsoft, DRM and the non-working Xbox 360. It’s like a Tom Clancy novel. A Kotaku patron, Kevin, has his Xbox 360 red ring of death on him last November. Fair enough, it happens. So he contacted Microsoft, which then arranged for his console to be repaired. A little while later a repaired Xbox 360 arrived in the mail. Hooray. Not. → Read More
[photopress:raelyn_2.jpg,full,left]This is a tale of poor customer service and aggravated lawsuits and lost laptops, all things we love. Raelyn Campbell is suing Best Buy for $54 million after the electronics lost a laptop she’d brought in for repairs. That seems very high, but Campbell believes that the money she’s asking for isn’t just about the lost laptop but rather for all… → Read More
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