How Good Customer Support Saved My Bad Customer Experience (Before Christmas)
WHEN YOU HAVE A BAD CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Have you ever waited too long for your order to arrive?
Or have you ever received the wrong product?
Well, if you did, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
In such a competitive environment, we expect nothing less than perfect, isn’t that right?
If some company won’t satisfy your needs, you know that you’ll easily find another one.
This is one of the reasons why smaller companies have an advantage over bigger companies.
Sure, the big company will use more money and incentives to make you buy, but there are some things you just can’t buy.
You can’t fabricate time and attention.
So what does that mean?
Most of the time, to get a problem solved, you actually need to talk with someone.
And that is where customer support enters the conversation.
Basically, if we’re talking about good customer support, there are 2 types of companies out there that have it:
- Those that can afford great customer support
- Those that can’t afford bad customer support
ENTER HUION POLAND
My story starts with a desire to buy a graphic tablet.
If you’ve heard some things about this industry, there aren’t many good companies out there, but Huion is one of them.
Thankfully, they have a subsidiary here in Poland, where I find myself through an Erasmus exchange program.
As you might expect, after doing some research on what to actually buy, ordering one isn’t a difficult task.
You go on the official website, you add the item to your cart and select how you want to pay.
Since I’ve had problems with online payments in the past (because I use a Romanian card in Poland), I picked the “pay on delivery” option.
Now all I had to do is wait for the New Huion 1060 Plus graphic tablet to arrive.
All went well, it was 10th of December.
Their website stated that it took one business day to send the products.
They even had their headquarters in the same district, not too far away from the city.
2 days later.
Nothing
3 days later
Nothing
4 days later
Finally, on Friday I received a notice that there are some logistic problems in the warehouse so it will take longer than expected.
OK, I could wait, things happen.
Friday was finally the day when the package was given to the courier.
QUALITY OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
On Friday I sent a message to Huion polish support.
I wanted to know if there’s any possibility for the package to arrive on a Saturday.
Sure enough, it seems it was possible.
That made me wait at home on Saturday to (possibly) get my package.
As far as I was aware, with no credit on my phone, I’d have to be around when I get the call, otherwise, I’d have to somehow contact the courier by other means.
On Saturday, nothing happened.
Except.. the tracking of the package said the package was given to someone called “PTASINSKA”
Nothing i could understand, so I waited 2 more days until Monday.
Monday comes and the only moment I had to leave home was between 1 PM and 3 PM because I had a lecture at the University.
Seemed reasonable, what were the chances of calling me exactly between that time?
Well, that’s exactly what happened.
At around 3 PM I received the call and I had my phone on silent.
Since I couldn’t call or send a message back, I sent an email to Huion support and although they’ve been nice to me up to that point, I went to sleep at around 10 pm without receiving any reply back.
Tuesday, I wake up thinking that this might finally be a good day.
The main problem was that 1 day later, on Wednesday I had a flight to Spain, where I would be for the next 2 and a half weeks.
It was now or never as far as receiving the tablet.
Because there was no other chance, I was constantly looking on the window of my dorm room when I was hearing a car passing by.
I easily got up from the edge of the bed around 20 times during the morning, just so I could check.
Eventually, I tried sending an SMS to the courier, since I received the number one day before.
Surprisingly, it said that the message was received.
A few minutes later, I get a reply “ Yes, i am calling to you later”.
Good enough I was thinking.
- I am able to send messages
- The courier is a real person
4 hours later, it was around 4 PM and as you can imagine, I started to slightly panic.
I sent him another message.
He called me a few minutes later and told me he will be there in “1 minute”.
If I knew I just had to contact him and then he’ll come that fast, I would’ve done it earlier.
Eventually, the graphic tablet was finally here.
I go and meet the delivery person, I give him the money, and he gives me the package.
As I happily go back into my room, I first finish some work I started earlier, before I start unwrapping.
I slowly and carefully cut the tape that holds the box.
Finally, I open the box.
And there it is.
The graphic tablet I waited around 8 days for.
I slowly try to take it out of the box, and then while doing it, I notice something.
It says 610 Pro.
Wait, this didn’t seem to be right.
That wasn’t what I ordered.
I knew well enough that I ordered a 1060 Plus.
After going on the internet and checking if I made some kind of mistake, if I ordered something else or if there was any tiny text around there that said I would receive a 610 Pro.
Nothing.
OK, 18 hours left until I had to leave for my flight.
Since it was 4 PM and I was leaving at 10 AM in the morning, there was basically only around 4 hours of working hours for delivering.
I send a message to the courier. I send another, and another, and nothing.
Eventually, I call and it seems to work, he tells me he can’t go anything and I have to call the company.
Great.
QUALITY OF CUSTOMER SERVICE
At this point, I wasn’t expecting to solve anything until I left Poland, in less than 18 hours.
Although Huion Poland, or better said their great support team, have answered most of my questions through email, I knew I couldn’t ask them to come to my door and take the package back.
I couldn’t go to their warehouse either since it was quite far for me to possibly arrive on time and also catch my flight.
Personally, I felt I lost both time and money and I’d continue to lose more time, trying to solve it.
However, a few minutes later, I start receiving new messages from Huion’s polish Facebook page.
Michal, the person who I’m talking with, starts giving me all kind of solutions.
Either sending the package to their warehouse through a courier or postal services.
He also offered me the possibility of sending the package with “payment on delivery”.
This meant I wouldn’t pay for extra shipping, which I greatly appreciated.
With the post office 3 minutes away from my dorm, I couldn’t ask for a better solution.
In the morning, that’s exactly what I did.
I went to the post office right when it opened.
As always, not speaking Polish makes communication a little more difficult.
But I’ll have to take my hat off to Google Translate — it saved my life a couple of times during my lifetime.
After sending the package and arriving in Spain a couple of hours later, I got in touch with Huion Poland.
We agreed that next, we should wait for the package to arrive.
In the meantime, I proposed a refund since waiting for a replacement would be extremely inconvenient if I wasn’t in Poland for 15 more days.
I was expecting some difficulties in handling this issue, but surprisingly I just received the green light right away.
On the 23rd of December (13 days after my initial order if you remember), a message in my Facebook inbox stated that the money has been refunded.
I was impressed.
This was quite fast, considering that the package arrived back to their warehouse on the 21st of December.
And this is what you call great customer service.
- Responsive
- Quick
- Personalized
Sure, there are many more that you could list, but in this particular case, this trio really made my experience go from 0 to hero.
You will get personalized support from Microsoft as well, but that means that they’ll mention your name or have past logs of what you’ve previously said.
No guarantee that you’ll talk with the same person or that he actually cares and responds at different times of the day.
And that’s ok.
You can’t get the same level of support anywhere, at any time, but when you do receive outstanding support, it would be nice to praise it.
Hence why I took the time to show you how a bad experience can be saved partially, by actually showing that you care about your customers.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Even though my actual customer experience was really bad from start to finish, the support I received made it fade away in my mind.
It was more than I expected because I’ve never had this experience of receiving an answer on any day, at any time — even though not instantly.
Sure, it’s not reasonable to expect this at all times, but context is something that should be taken into account as well.
Given the urgency with which I had to operate, it was exactly what I required.
I will not expect this at all times, but I do believe that any company that does this on a consistent basis, increases its chances of attracting, and more importantly, retaining customers.
You might expect me to have some kind of grudge against Huion after the initial experience but I am well aware that things such as this can happen from a logistics point of view.
To tell you the truth, my decision for my first graphics tablet still stands.
It will be the New Huion 1060 Plus.
Soon I will make a new post to show you the tablet because I didn’t let this event stop me from having it.
And regarding this experience, something similar happened during my 10 HubSpot certifications in 10 days challenge.
If you haven’t read it yet, the “problem” part basically has the same narrative.
Something unexpected happened, nothing seemed to go well and all of a sudden, you receive a helping hand sent from heaven.
We all love that kind of story when we watch a movie, but when it happens in real life, we all need a Dumbledore or Gandalf, which we can many times find in customer support, if not in ourselves or our own friends.
And with that, I’m ending this post, expecting this to be the last time that something exactly like this happens — at least, the stressful part.
Hope you enjoyed this post and got a taste of what great customer support can look like, especially when you feel frustrated with the entire situation.
If you ever had any kind of interesting experience with customer support, I’d be happy to listen to it.
We all can learn from each other’s experiences.
