The Spectrum of Customer Service
Comments: 2
In the space of a single day I traveled from one end of the customer service spectrum to the other, and I know at which end I would prefer to find myself.
I got mail from J- at Segment Publishing this morning. SegPub, as they are affectionately called, host this site, and I simply cannot say enough good things about them. I have no affiliation other than being an extremely satisfied customer, but I have to say that when it comes to service, these guys are writing the book.
Anyway, J- wrote to say that he stopped by the site and found it looking a bit funny in Mozilla (Moz wasn’t picking up the CSS). He sent along a screenshot so I could see exactly what he was talking about. I’d checked the site in Moz a while back but am always introducing bugs (story of my life really) so was a bit concerned and wondering where I was going to get the time to check it out properly and fix it. When I got home there was another letter from J- saying that he’d tracked down the problem to an Apache config file that was misbehaving after an upgrade they did today. Problem fixed on their end, problem ‘fixed’ on my end. The message I got was they’re looking out for me.
Now, to the other end of the spectrum. I downloaded the Illustrator 10 tryout and decided it was time to upgrade. Used to be that you could buy English-language Adobe products from, say, outpost.com and have them shipped to Japan without any problems whatsoever. But some sort of policy has hatched from a scaly, reptilian egg somewhere in the murk of the company and has begun to crawl all over their business practices.
Apparently English-language Adobe products can not now be exported from the US.
In every company I’ve worked for in Japan there has been a need for mixed-language applications (because there have been mixed language people). It’s a productivity issue. Bottom line stuff.
I called Adobe customer support in the US tonight (Adobe Japan was closed and I had a sudden hankering for an answer now!) and after about 2 minutes of preamble (the longest section of which was a very helpful reminder that Adobe has a web site and I could visit it if I wished to get information) spoke with a rep who sounded extremely… weary. Actually he sounded like he was on Quaaludes, but it was morning where he was (presumably) and the coffee might not have kicked in yet (or the Quaaludes might not have worn off).
I explained the situation and after some background noise of tapping on keys he was able to tell me that none of the three shipping companies that Adobe uses can ship products outside of the US. It’s not some sort of export restriction (“We must not let this colour management technology get into the hands of the Libyans!”) - they just can’t seem to send a package internationally.
I did not get angry. I calmly explained that there was a not insiginificant market for other language versions in Japan (I’ve spent an awful lot of money on their products over the years both personally and at companies) and that perhaps it might be possible for my frustration to find its way into some sort of customer response database where it might, someday, influence which shipping companies Adobe chooses to use. I thanked him and hung up as he tried to dredge the word “goodbye” from a part of his brain once dedicated to normal social interactions (seriously, he was taking a very long time to make words happen and I was paying international rates).
The real reason I didn’t get angry was not some newly-discovered wellspring of self-possession (are you kidding?) but the simple fact that I was completely flabbergasted by what I was being told. Adobe, a billion-dollar multinational company on whose products many, many people in a range of industries rely, has show-stopping trouble with international mail. And forget the web sites (in any language); they’re no help.
The Adobe support rep’s solution was brilliant: the only way I can now get an E-language version was if I knew someone in the States who could buy and ship it for me.
Bite me!
I’ll be calling Adobe Japan tomorrow to complete this sorry saga one way or another. Also need to dig up those reseller contacts from the last agency I worked at (when all I really want to do is go to a web site, give a credit card number, and have a package show up in two weeks). Stay tuned.
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Posted to General Rants • 2002.01.24 (Thu) • 00:22
Comments
Posted by Mary Beth 2002.01.24, 01:05
MAN! This is so typical of corporate stupidity where no one pays attention to what’s really going on.
Have you tried ordering it from say Amazon or even from the Apple site? Surely other places are able to ship internationally.
The only thing that comes to mind is STUPID STUPID STUPID. OK, to be kind, I’ll assume that the Customer Service guy you spoke with had been up all night porting all the adobe apps to OS X, LOL.
Mary Beth
Posted by Andrew Abb 2002.01.25, 00:17
Ridiculous!
Here… you may like this.
Adobe Girl by Dan Douke
http://www.ikonltd.com/past/douke/adobegirl.htm
Cheers,
Andrew Abb
Osaka, Japan
gmtPlus9
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