We recently moved many of our websites to Network Solutions. The move went great, but suddenly we couldn’t FTP anymore, which, being a web design company, is a problem. I had some friends in New Jersey and Texas try uploading via FTP to our new servers, and neither of them had any problems doing so. We contacted customer support at Network Solutions and they were very helpful indeed. They had us try a number of things both on our computers and with our router and modem. We determined that it wasn’t Network Solutions fault, and I was satisfied with that fact, however, we still couldn’t upload to our FTP servers.
Frustrated we went to our local coffee house to relax. While we were there, and just out of curiosity, I tried uploading on their free WiFi network. It worked! I could upload! So that meant it had something to do with our network at the office.
When I got back I tried hooking up directly to the modem, bypassing the router. That worked. I could upload then as well. So I now knew it was our router.
We were using a Netgear WPN824 router, so I decided I’d contact Netgear. That was easier said than done. After a few hours of searching I found a help ticket system on their website. So I opened a ticket with a technician telling them everything I’d tried and what the problem was. I waited a day, and finally got a response that began with a long paragraph telling me how “my problem was important to them,” which was followed by copied and pasted troubleshooting steps from the user manual… all of which were things I had just listed I’d tried. After replying 3 times, and talking to 3 different techs I gave up… sort of…
It seems their “help ticket” system included a handy feature that caused the ticket to expire on its own after 3 days if you didn’t respond again. Handy for the Netgear people, but not for me… their customer. This was obviously an instance of the “Thanks for calling, now go away” syndrome that Seth Godin has talked about.
Luckily during this time I also happened to visit another wireless site that I knew had the exact same router, a Netgear WPN824, and again I couldn’t upload. So now, knowing it was the router, we went out and bought a Linksys brand router and everything has worked great since.
The point of this story? It’s just as important to keep a customer as it is to get a customer. Had any one of the Netgear people even suggested that their router itself might be at fault I would probably have simply purchased another Netgear router. But because of their verbal instance “my problem was important” followed by their demonstration that it was indeed not at all important, their loss was Linksys’ gain.
How is that you can keep the customers you’ve worked so hard to get in the first place? Sometimes it may be as easy as admitting possible fault, or it may be showing you care instead of only saying you care.
