Tag: Customer service

Why you need an “escape hatch” in your user interface

If you have shopped at Ikea, you will notice that periodically you come across an escape hatch. You can stroll through the departments (which is what Ikea would like you to do because random browsing causes you to purchase additional merchandise) but if you get bored you can just duck through one of the little side doorways into a completely different department.

Good software user design includes an escape hatch as well. A good example is the TurboTax desktop product, which gives you an always-accessible choice of “Forms” or “EasyStep” so you can look at your current information in the way that makes most sense for you.

But I’m using TurboTax Online for the first time, and they don’t do that. The ONLY way to navigate is to follow the prompts on the screen, and if the prompts don’t work and you ask for help then Intuit twists itself into contortions trying to answer your question. (I’m talking about the in-program help, not the too-broad User Community sidebar.)

So, I want to import the return created with TurboTax Desktop 2009. I find a help screen with instructions which I’ll paste below (and cut out some info that is not pertinent):

Transfer Last Year’s Tax Info from Desktop to Online
Updated: 11/29/2010 Article ID: GEN12156
Below is the procedure for transferring (or uploading) a tax return created in 2009 TurboTax Desktop software to TurboTax Online 2010.
Follow these steps to transfer:
1. Sign in to TurboTax Online (or click the Create an Account or Try It First buttons).
2. Once you’re in TurboTax Online, click the Home tab and then select the first link in the lower half of the screen, titled Transfer last year’s TurboTax return from your computer.*
3. On the Transfer Last Year’s TurboTax Return screen, click Browse, and then select your 2009 tax data file. (Find last year’s tax file on Windows or Macintosh)
4. Click Transfer Return.
5. Once you see the message Transfer Complete, click Continue to start your 2010 return.

I assume you didn’t read all that, but I had to. I started from the top and followed the instructions to clear my 2010 return that I had started by accident. I looked for the link which they told me very clearly would be “Transfer last year’s return from your computer” but I saw no such link; instead I saw “we can help you transfer last year’s computer return from your computer”. Clicking that just resets the page I just reset, taking me nowhere.

Finally I notice the asterisk, and track down to the footnote at the bottom. It tells me:

* If you don’t see the Transfer last year’s TurboTax return link, it’s because you:
• Previously entered information in your 2010 TurboTax Online return; or
• Already transferred your 2009 data, either by uploading last year’s tax data file or by signing in with your 2009 TurboTax Online login.
Unless you signed in using your 2009 TurboTax Online login, you can click the Clear your 2010 return and start over link on the Home tab, and then resume at Step 2 above. Clearing your return removes all tax data from your return, so make sure you really want to do this.
However, if you signed in using your 2009 login, clearing your return automatically re-transfers your 2009 online data, making it impossible to transfer your desktop tax file. The only solution in this case is to create a new account in TurboTax Online 2010 so you can start with a clear return. [underlining mine.]

Again, I assume you didn’t read that so here is what is going on. IF you created a login last year, THEN you can’t transfer in a desktop return because TurboTax assumes you already have a return online. But I don’t because I created the return with their desktop product, then created a login for e-filing. It’s a Catch-22 which Intuit recognizes, hence their outrageous solution that I have to forget my old username and password and start anew.

This should never have seen the light of day. Whereas most companies urge you to set up an account and save your user name for a better experience, Intuit tells me the only option to get out of this problem is to forget I have a user name and start over with a brand new account. Boo, hiss. That’s what the lack of an escape hatch will do to you.

Dealing with copywriter’s block

I have been feeling very unproductive lately, looking for distractions and getting too few billable hours done in a day. Finally, today I tackled a project I had been putting off and finished it and afterward I felt like I’d dropped 10 pounds of mental fat. Though I didn’t realize it, I had been suffering from a chronic case of copywriter’s block.

Maybe it’s not as poetic as the creative seizings up of J.D. Salinger, Joseph Heller and other legendarily blocked writers. But copywriter’s block is a very real problem with freelancer hacks and scribes because if you aren’t writing, you aren’t getting paid.

I had a couple of real serious blockages early in my freelance career and will share what I learned from them. The cause of most of my episodes was that I hadn’t done enough preparation before sitting down to write. I was trying to think, and nothing was coming out. A far better strategy is to do so much prep work—in terms of research and rough, non-wordsmithed notes—that giving yourself permission to actually write the thing comes as a blessed relief.

Sometimes we stumble over something in the actual process of writing…. very often, the first paragraph in a letter or article. (And yes, editors will tell you your work can almost always be improved by simply removing that first warm-up paragraph after you write it.)

I still have a multi-page printout of my tortured attempts to write the first paragraph of a letter for a TPA—that’s a particular kind of consultant that handles a company’s health plan. What on earth could I have needed to say about TPA’ing that was so difficult? I can’t remember but I know I felt like a dog chewing on itself until I had the good sense to finally step away from it. I took a walk in the sun, then came back and worked on something completely different. The next day, the TPA letter was completed without incident.

This recent writer’s block had a new set of circumstances. It was for a good client, but I found it somehow very uninteresting, yet I knew I had to do it because of our relationship. The concept of “you must” is toxic to the independent and supposedly carefree freelancer, who has signed on to the concept that you can set your own schedule and work any 24 hours in the day that you like.  But finally, writing it became more appealing than not writing it, and the deed was done. Now I’m going to celebrate by going to the library.

This Quality Inn is a poor “choice” for weary road warriors

I visited a client in Irvine, CA last week and stayed at the Quality Suites John Wayne Airport, an establishment I’ve used on several previous occasions. I like this place because it’s modestly priced yet has plenty of room to spread out when I’m working for several days. Evidently lots of road warriors feel this way, judging from the number of single guys in the breakfast room at 6 am.

When I checked out I half-heard someone else complaining about an illegitimate charge on their bill. I couldn’t get my own bill because the printer was broken and they promised to email it to me. When I received the email I saw my own illegitimate charge, a daily fee for a safe I didn’t know was in the room.

I emailed the general manager (who had sent me the invoice) asking for a correction. Nearly a week later I’ve heard nothing. After a few days I went on the website of the parent organization, Choice Hotels International, and filled out a tedious form asking for help. Though they say “we appreciate that you took the time to bring these matters to our attention” and promise a response within 72 hours, nothing from them either.

Isn’t this a great example of terrible customer service? There’s no excuse for the invoice trickery to begin with, but if it was unintentional the management should have corrected it and apologized immediately. And I’m now seeing that there is nobody behind the curtain at Choice International, a somewhat toothless affinity organization since all their hotels are independently owned.

A lost customer to this establishment and more than likely any other hotel in the chain… plus nasty whiny blog posts and tweets… seem like a poor trade off for somebody’s desire to stuff a couple of extra bucks in their pocket. Bad choice, Quality Suites John Wayne Airport and Choice International.

Marketing to idiots

I had a client who was concerned that the information she was collecting on a registration page was going to be a potential problem because people are registering to win a prize and if they do win a prize then a/they might not want to receive it at work (which is the address we’re asking for, this being a B2B mailing) or b/they might have given a fictitious address as some people do because they don’t want to get advertising contacts yet they have to put something in the fields.

This same client had a problem at a previous company, which was the cause for her concern. She was giving away iPod shuffles (then selling for $59) to qualified prospects in return for their time to sit through a demo and apparently many people did not get their shuffles. I say “apparently” because it could also have happened that someone lied in order to get an additional shuffle…. dishonest, but hard to prove. Anyway, once bitten she wants to be sure this time.

My response (before caving, of course) was that there are always going to be a few idiots and outliers in your audience who are not going to play by the rules no matter what you tell them. And you should not do anything that is going to make your offer more complex to the vast majority, such as adding additional information on the reg page to deal with this issue by requesting an alternate shipping address in case they win. (Everybody who has ever designed an online survey or reg form knows that each additional field or question causes a certain number of people to drop out.) Suppose they fill in the form with their preferred address but, being idiots, they write it down wrong. What do you do then?

Along the same lines, I had a client back in my “suit” days who wanted to know if it was a good idea to pay a 1.5% commission based on the value of all sales paid by check in return for this supplier’s guarantee to make good any bad checks. This one was easy to figure out. Do bad checks cost more than 1.5% of revenue from all checks? No. Then this apparent insurance service is a money-losing sinkhole.  Plus, cheats are cheats. If a customer has it in their heart to trick you out of money, they’ll just find another way to do it.

Today’s moral is, the customer is not always right, not when they are idiots and outliers. Don’t screw up the rest of your promotion by making accommodations for a few wingnuts.

Wall Street Journal won’t deliver on customer service

Residents of Saratoga Springs, NY have been noticeably more clueless over the last two months because of delivery problems with the Wall Street Journal.  Apparently there is some kind of turf war among carriers. So every morning I go online to https://services.wsj.com, sign in with my account number and login, and report the missed delivery.

A few minutes later I get an email that confirms my delivery problem and tells me I will be credited for the missed issue and the local office is working on the problem. It then goes on to advise me: “In the future, please go to services.wsj.com to report any problems with your delivery.  It’s easy and quick to use, and our delivery staff is notified directly from the site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

See the problem? Since that’s exactly what I did, WSJ assuming I did not do it puts into question the rest of the message. And the takeaway is that I assume they are in fact doing nothing about my delivery problem, which in fact they are not.

Then, every few days they vary the mix and send an email that says “To make sure we provide the field office with everything they need to resolve this issue, please answer any of the questions below that apply to your situation.

Location questions:
— When did the problem begin?
— Where is the paper usually delivered?” Etc.

Once I rose to the bait and responded that nothing had changed about my delivery situation (the house has been here for 130 years) but it didn’t actually make any difference. Nor should it, since this is boilerplate that some helpful scribe inserted in the rotation (“if missed deliver complaints = >5, then print ‘n’ ”) so I wouldn’t see the same thing constantly. Instead of fixing the problem, they’ve focused on creating an extended library of customer service correspondence for people who get the same message over and over again.

The lesson here: If you have a contact strategy as elaborate as this one, then there’s something wrong at the core that needs to be addressed. Handle it, instead of asking some copywriter to paper over it. Oh, and don’t insert a marketing message when a customer is already pissed off, such as “Here’s an opportunity to give a great gift at a great price: The Wall Street Journal Print and Online for just $119!” Hey, I could give it to my dad… then he and I could both not receive the paper.

Taking bad marketers to the woodshed

Did you ever get punished as a child for doing something naughty, because a parent or teacher didn’t believe you even though you were telling the truth? The problem here is a lack of authenticity—or, to borrow a favorite word from ace copywriter and gore movie maven Herschell Gordon Lewis— verisimilitude.

Consumers in general tend to be skeptical of marketers, which is why verisimilitude is very important. In addition to actually being true, a claim must APPEAR to be true or you break the spell and lose the sale. Today’s badvertising classic is a case in point.

The original State Seal label
Original State Seal Label (from a plaque at the springs)

I live near the bubbling natural springs of Saratoga, NY. Folks have been coming here to “take the waters” for centuries and the greatest number of springs, as well as the classic bath houses, are located in a park which is owned by the state.

Early in the 1900s an entrepreneur had the idea to bottle the water and sell it nationally. To emphasize the official connection, it was called “State Seal” water and the antique-y state seal of New York was actually shown on the label. Millions were sold and FDR became a big promoter of the springs and the water.

New State Seal Label
State Seal Spring Water label, c. 1980

Fast forward to the 1980s, and another entrepreneur had the idea to revive the brand. But he/she picked the wrong thing to revive. The new water is again called “State Seal” but the label design is bland and modern. Within a few years the revived brand was defunct.

The original State Seal water had verisimilitude. It looked like the kind of packaging a civic department might come up with if it had no clue about marketing but was simply trying to promote healthy water to its citizens. The revived water had none of this charm and authenticity. The revivalist probably thought the old design was out of date when in fact it was the essence of the brand.

Fetch me that paddle, ma. I think some marketer needs a whuppin’ here….

Toyota pays for my dead battery

A few months ago, I wrote about the hybrid battery that failed in my 2001 Prius at 71,000 miles, generating a $3700 repair bill because the battery was recently out of warranty. It’s time I explained the reason for my lack of follow-up posts.

Back in mid-February I got a call from the general manager at the dealership which had done the repair. He was calling not because of the rather robust online discussion of my experience, but because I had given the experience an unfavorable rating in a mail survey. (Yes, good to know at least someone at Toyota is paying attention to what their customers think.) After we discussed my issues he agreed that the matter had been handled inappropriately at his dealership and said he’d go to bat and try to get at least a partial reimbursement from Toyota. He also asked me to forward to him the letter I’d sent to American Toyota President James Lentz, summarizing my issue.

Two days later, on 2/18, this manager emailed me that:

Just got done speaking with my Toyota Factory Representative, she agreed with my assessment of the issue as well she agrees with your points you made to Mr. Lentz.

Based on that conversation it’s my guess you will probably receive a 100% reimbursement check in about 8 weeks at your Saratoga Springs address. Please understand I’m making no promises, but I feel it looks real good.

Based on that 8 weeks, I would have received the check in mid-April. When it didn’t arrive, I checked in with him and heard that:

Money is coming soon, should be no problem…..

Well, the money finally did arrive, on 5/25/10, and it was indeed a full reimbursement. I’m happy not to be out of pocket $3700, but I’m also happy that Toyota was willing to pay it which I don’t think they would have done if a huge number of Prius batteries was failing just out of warranty like mine did. (The cover letter made no reference to my history, by the way, just referring to it as a “goodwill check”.) So good news for me and good news for other Prius owners.

Toyota’s epic PR fail

In spite of my own recent issues, I had thought Toyota was doing the best it could with its massive recall. James Lentz, president of Toyota USA sales, was all over the press shows last weekend with the two key statements considered essential in the post-Tylenol era: “we screwed up and are sorry” and, “we care about our customers and are very concerned.” (Tylenol took a similar open, earnest tack when someone poisoned some of its bottles in the late 1980s and, coupled with an intensive “get to the bottom of this” campaign [they never did, but they were obviously trying]  it saved a brand everyone was writing off. For how NOT to handle a PR disaster see “Woods, Tiger”.)

But today I read this Reuters article that points out Akio Toyoda, the REAL president of Toyota, has said not one single word on the recall problem. And that another Toyota executive blamed the problem on (presumably inferior) U.S. made parts, chosen out of a charitable desire to help struggling American economy! Meanwhile the recall expands to the Prius (different problem, but nobody’s tracking the details any more) and Twitter #Prius traffic, which I’d been following because of my own recent posts, goes from sleepy to through the roof.

Concidentally, my original post about my dead Prius battery has become one of the most-read articles ever on this blog. Lots of new readers are discovering it linked to articles on the Toyota recall as they lick their chops for other Toyota schadenfreude. Speaking of which, my request for some financial relief led to timely response and some nice talks with friendly people in the Toyota Customer Experience Center, but a firm turn-down. I was frankly surprised at that.

[UPDATE for new readers: Toyota has now paid for the replacement battery. Details here.]

My casual research suggested a hybrid battery failure at 70K miles was extremely unusual if not unprecedented. It would seem like a good investment to fix an anomalous problem and placate a good customer who’s been evangelizing your product. Instead, here I am writing another post about problems at Toyota. How is that good for their brand?

Early Prius owners get screwed on battery warranty

I wasn’t too incensed about the dead battery on my Prius, just surprised, but after a bit of research I’m getting my dander up. Turns out, according to this article in the Toyota Pressroom blog, that the Prius battery has a 10 year warranty… EXCEPT for the first three model years that have only an 8 year warranty. (Mine died at 8 years and 8 months.) In other words, the earlier adopters who put their faith in Toyota and spread the word and built the Prius brand potentially get a $3700 repair invoice while later adopters would get a free replacement for the same problem.

I predict there is a bit of trouble ahead for Toyota if more owners see their batteries go south* and discover the company isn’t going to replace them. This is a classic example (getting back to marketing which is what this blog is supposed to be about) of taking your best customers for granted and treating them worse than your marginal customers.

Speaking of marketing, there are some other not-to-do’s worth learning from the Toyota Pressroom post. They acknowledge that “battery replacement in a Prius is neither as simple nor as inexpensive as replacing the battery in a conventional car.” That’s disingenuous because the massive and complex hybrid battery has no basis for comparison to the battery in a conventional car; in fact the Prius ALSO has a “conventional” battery. And they quote a bargain $2,299 for that replacement battery without mentioning that installation and tax at your Toyota dealer are going to add another, oh, $1400.

In a day when anyone can and does have access to your press releases, glossing over the pesky details is not a good idea. What exactly is this article trying to accomplish?  How could anybody who actually has a battery problem not feel pissed? And how could any news source that picks it up, then later discovers the truth, avoid feeling duped?

* Fortunately for other early Prius owners, mine may be a fairly rare occurrence. According to the Driving Sports blog only 306 Prius batteries had failed as of 6/09, out of 750,000 installed. “The life of the battery pack is generally about the same as the life of the vehicle,” said Toyota’s Jeremiah Shown. Well, that’s good to know.

Ok, now I’ll stop. No more about Toyota. I promise. Maybe.

[UPDATE for new readers: Toyota has now paid for the replacement battery. Details here.]

Prius hybrid battery fails at 70K miles, Toyota won’t pay for $3700 repair

[UPDATE for new readers: Toyota has now paid for the replacement battery. Details here.]

Last week our 2001 Prius started acting strangely, and today SF Toyota gave me the bad news. The hybrid battery is shot and a replacement will cost just under $3700, tax included. We’re a year and half 8 months out of warranty, it turns out,  so the repair cost is 100% our responsibility.

Our Prius in happier days. Photo courtesy of sfgate.com.
Our 2001 Prius in happier times. Photo courtesy sfgate.com.

This is a vehicle that was on the front page of the SF Chronicle in 2001, as a poster child for early adopters of green technology. We’ve bought another Prius since then and I’ve been looking with interest at the lithium-powered next generation coming in 2012. But this changes the equation. If you can expect to pay for a $3700 repair at 70,000 miles, the car suddenly becomes much more expensive as well as less reliable… what happens if the failure occurs elsewhere than in a major city?

I remember the naysayers when we bought it: “the battery’s going to die and it will cost you a fortune.” The reviewers scoffed at this: batteries don’t last forever, but it is unlikely to fail in the driving life of the vehicle. Too bad that’s not true. The $3700 new battery is warranted for 12 months. I guess that tells you something.

News like this could have a chilling effect on hybrid sales, just when we need a nitty-gritty, ready-right-now antidote for energy waste and climate change. (I love seeing the MPG on our 2006 Prius creep over 50, combined with the fact that the car has actually been made less efficient in order to come close to zeroing out the emissions.)

Toyota needs to fix this. I’ll update if they do.