Recently, I’ve need to deal with the dreaded customer service. You know the deal. Sit on hold for an hour to talk to someone who is reading from a book (or computer screen). It doesn’t work. They have to call you back. They don’t.
Anyway, recently, I dealt with both McAfee, the virus protection people and Bose, the cool audio people.
McAfee
A couple of years ago I bought two computers, one desktop and one laptop. Both from Dell. Both at the same time. When Dell had me on the phone they sold me three years worth of McAfee virus protection. Sigh. OK.
Everything was going well. I would get these e-mail notices from McAfee telling me that everything was A-OK on my computer and thank you for using their product. Then, all of a sudden my desktop start acting funky and I got this e-mail about how my computer wasn’t protected.
I tried to update but couldn’t.
To the Batphone.
Of course, before going to the phone I tried the Internet route. Not such a hot experience. Long story but the short ending was picking up the phone.
After getting cleared through the first level (I had a special number) I was put on the interminable hold, listening to music and being interrupted every minute with the “Representatives are helping other customers….” OK. Fine. I waited.
Finally, someone did answer the phone and, yes, they were from overseas but at least they were understandable and whatever they were reading seemed to work. It wasn’t easy and if I had been a complete neophyte I may have had a lot of trouble doing the uninstall and re-install of the software. As it turned out, though, everything worked out fine.
I was a happy camper. Alls well that ends well.
Bose
I bought some Bose headphones awhile back and they were just fine until one day they weren’t. It seemed the right side of the headphones wasn’t pumping through much sound anymore. Not good.
So I went on Twitter and started to ask if this was a regular thing and what could be done about it. I used the hashtag for Bose (#Bose) and @BoseService picked up on it. Bose and I went back and forth a bit on Twitter and I guess the determination was made that the cord may have a short in it. I could get a new cord for $15 or new headphones for $89. The new headphones sounded good to me. They would be the latest iteration of the noise cancelling over ear headphones I owned. So, they would have the newest technology or, at least, advanced from the previous model.
I had to ship my old headphones back (~$6.30 -priority mail with confirmation at the USPS) and it took about a week for the new headphones to arrive but the whole experience was flawless. Most of it was done on Twitter and the wrap up was done on the phone.
The Bottom Line
I think McAfee could be a bit better but, at this point, I have no complaints. The solution they offered worked. It only took about an hour and a half out of my day tracking down the right phone number and waiting on hold.
Bose was an interesting experience because of the fact that most of the interaction was on Twitter. Whoever was manning the Twitterverse for Bose that day was doing a good job and everything worked out very well.
