by Walter Naeslund on September 24, 2009
Here comes a short story on how not to answer customer complaints, a story that I’ve had the benefit to study closely over the past couple of months.
Long story short, my wonderful girlfriend got what we in Sweden call “värdelös service” (worthless service in English) from Elgiganten, a chain of stores selling consumer electronics. She had bought a MacBook there with an expensive insurance program, which Elgiganten didn’t want to honor when the computer died in an accident involving a glass of water. You can read the whole Elgiganten story on her blog. (It’s in Swedish, but hey, that’s why we have Google translate).
Anyway, after being met by rude people all over the place, and finally receiving an SMS where they try to make her pay more than the price of a new computer (!) for the failed repairs…
…she eventually loses her temper and writes the blog post above. But she also tweets about it…
Recently, I’ve had very good experiences with Twitter as a traffic driver. Retweeting of juicy content just works really well to boost a story. And nothing says juicy gossip like bad service. I don’t know why, but this stuff really pisses people off, and makes them really help out with RTs.
And Elgiganten are not there to answer. The closest thing I could find to Elgitanten is this…
…which doesn’t look so good (or genuine) to say the least.
Within a couple of hours, this thing has grown so big that Elgiganten’s head of service posts a comment on my girlfriend’s blog, personally taking responsibility for settling this affair and sorting out what has happened – complete with his phone number (again, foreigners, use Google Translate):
Hej Katja,
Mitt namn är Robert Jensen och jag arbetar som servicechef för Elgiganten. Jag blir uppriktigt sagt ledsen och besviken över att du som kund hos oss har fått en sådan dålig upplevelse. Detta går helt emot våra principer och policy om kundvård inom bolaget. Om du ringer 08-580 866 00 och söker mig och lämnar dina kontaktuppgifter kommer jag att kontakta dig under morgondagen för att hjälpa dig få ett avslut på serviceärendet. Det ska själklart inte behöva gå till såhär, varför jag också kommer att följa upp detta intert så snart jag har all information om ärendet.
Jag beklagar det inträffade.
Mvh
Robert Jensen
Servicechef
Elgiganten
Great response I would say, with one major problem: Being reactive is not a good and sustainable way of working with customer relations. What you (yes, I’m talking to you now Robert Jensen) are experiencing right now is just the beginning. You need to figure out a way to manage how you participate in the discussion about your brand, and you’re among the lucky ones to get an early heads up here. Take advantage of that.
Who did you say your agency was? 
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on September 17, 2009
[EDIT: Sorry. My bad. Was a bit quick there. The true result for this post is position 4, not 3. Thank you Simon Sundén for your correct result].
Correct results from Simon Sundén.
Didn’t mean to return to the Lowe Brindfors case, but since I got a few comments in defense of ignoring SEO, saying that Lowe Brindfors don’t need an optimized site “because people will simply search for lowebrindfors” I just wanted to show you a demonstration of why you still need it. Here is a screen shot from Google on exactly that search.
Did I say that Wordpress and Thesis are fairly well optimized?
This is the English language search where my site ranks higher because it is in the English language, but it’s working it’s way up in the Swedish results as well and is now on page two. You can imagine what would have happened if my site would have been in Swedish, right?
And if you think that I should have searched for Lowe Brindfors or “Lowe Brindfors” instead in my experiment above, you can click the links to see those screen shots intstead. Basically the same result.
Simply put – poor SEO puts you at the mercy of pain-in-the-ass-people like myself.
Now do you believe me?
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on June 5, 2009
I often refer from my private Swedish blog to this one, but rarely do it the other way around. Today, I will make an exception because of extraordinary and dangerous events that have taken place in Swedish politics and courtrooms recently. So if you read Swedish and intend to vote in this Sunday’s elections, please read this.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 17, 2009
I really think that the Pirate Bay trials are a big waste of money. Possibly worse. What is the music industry hoping to achieve? Will people start buying records again? Buying DRM-sabotaged (yes, that is what DRM is) digital files? Hosting them on their own hard drives? It’s the worst of two worlds.
In the unlikely event of a Pirate Bay defeat, things will just move underground. Technically, this is just a matter of time (not so much time). All of a sudden we’ll have a whole movement (huge because everybody loves music) creating great technology for anyone wanting to avoid detection, including terrorists and criminals. Stealth file sharing technology development will explode. In the long term not a smart move for our democratic world.
Instead there should be focus on development of the music industry. If the commercial product is better than the stolen one there is a real value that people will be willing to pay for. I think this is the case with Spotify for example. With Spotify I don’t have to host and structure a huge music library and sharing music is suddenly a breeze. That is real value.
Read more about the trials (in Swedish) here, here, here, and here.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on February 14, 2009
For those of you who speak swedish, here’s an interview with me and my favorite monkey from yesterday about the kind of communication I believe in.
I have now left Verymuchlogo to move on to the next big adventure. Stay tuned for more details on monday.
Happy Valentine’s!
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on January 30, 2009
Haha, I love it when I get attributed with stuff like “rockstar entrepreneur” or ending every party blog post with a “mijau”. Never realized I did.
I generally love the rockstar attribute. I’ve gotten it once before by the excellent swedish copywriter Johan Fredrikzon:
“Walter is one of those rare individuals who combine the analytics of an engineer with the spirits of a rock star”. I still buy him drinks for writing that about me.
Anyway, there are som interesting observations in this post. You might want to check it out. (In Swedish).
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on December 5, 2008
My mind just went blank. I couldnt’ for the life of me remember wether Michael Dahlén’s new book Nextopia was in Swedish or in English. I just couldn’t.
But before I ended up in this situation, the following happened.
Last night I went down to the new magazine Distill’s launch party on Strandvägen. I flipped through the pages, realizing that this is truly a magazine of our time. It sums up the best of the fashion press and presents it in a slick format. Because, really, who has the time to plow through all the glossies anyway?
So, Distill is perfect. Or at least the idea is. Because as much as I love the concept, I do think that this issue falls a bit short on selection. It didn’t quite seem to be the best of the best. To me anyway. But that said, it’s a wonderful concept with great potential. It’s the perfect mag for me, and I hope that they will expand the concept into more fields. There should be Distills for more genres than fashion.
For anyone of you who have read Michael Dahlén’s Nextopia, you’re familiar with the concept of minisodes, where short versions of shows are distributed by Sony, because we simply don’t have time for the original intended durations. Distill is a concept along these lines, and that’s why I ended up in an animated discussion on the topic with Distill’s managing director Christopher Lockwood. I issued my warmest recommendations for him to read the book, only to realize that perhaps the book was in Swedish after all. Turns out it was. Sorry Christopher. You’ll just have to wait for the English translation. In the meantime, you’ll have to settle for the Nextopia blog.
Thanks for a great party!
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on August 13, 2008
I usually try to keep my private stuff to my other blog ‘Walterlicious’ to keep it out of your face, but there have been some complaints that this blog is too ‘dry’, so if you think so, come on down to Walterlicious and it’s underworld of ludeness and ridicule. It’s in Swedish.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on May 6, 2008
Veckans Affärer wrote today (in Swedish) about Greenwashing, the phenomenon that I posted about last week. This is a becoming a big problem. The brand of green is losing attractiveness.
Similar Posts:
by Walter Naeslund on May 5, 2008
My old classmate from Lund University, Judith, has started a blog (in Swedish) that I like. Read it here.
She posted a recommendation to check out Marty Neuemeier’s Brand Gap presentation on Slideshare. Though perhaps not all new, it’s a great presentation that I highly recommend:
I really like his second book, ZAG, which I’ve written about here before. The presentation is worth checking out:
This is what I wrote about it the last time around:
“This book, sporting the best business book title ever, is short and has hideous typography (while I admit being a typography geek, this is barely readable). Still, it is well worth every second you spend on it. And it doesn’t take much more than a medium international flight’s worth of seconds to plow through it.
Oh, and where do you think www.zag.se will take you?”
Similar Posts:
