12-03-2011, 08:28 AM | #1 | |
Trying for calm & polite
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Kobo VP Mark Stevens blogs about customer service
http://blog.kobobooks.com/an-update-...+International
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12-03-2011, 08:41 AM | #2 | |
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And see this too http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397189,00.asp
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12-03-2011, 10:16 AM | #3 |
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I will take him at his word, as I now need to get support from Kobo (good timing, if any). My Touch froze two days ago and persistently refuses to respond to a reset or a factory restore.
I started with an enquiry at getsatisfaction.com/kobo to learn if I should contact my local support (german) or the international/canadian support (place of purchase). I'm looking forward to contact their new, improved customer support. Last edited by Geeky; 12-03-2011 at 10:28 AM. |
12-03-2011, 10:52 AM | #4 |
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It will be interesting to see. The wait times seem to have gotten ridiculously long recently from what I've read (especially on phone where you used to get virtually straight through), but beyond Tier 1 answering the phone right away the issue of extremely long waits/no contact for problems Tier 1 couldn't handle isn't new. I'm hoping they are putting some resources into bumping up Tier 2 and beyond service. It's good to see they are acknowledging some of the issues, but when it took pretty much a week to get any acknowledgement that lots of users were unable to sync books (and postings on GetSatisfaction that this seemed to be a new issue that they were unaware of for most of that week), the issue is deeper than just getting a reasonable front end phone centre working properly.
I really hope they get it all sorted out, because I love my Kobo's and I want to see them around long term and the customer service issues are bad enough that it has to be hurting them no matter how good the device is. |
12-03-2011, 02:18 PM | #5 |
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Calling Kobo's support centre from North America makes the cause of the problem obvious - they sub-contracted their front line customer support staff to the cheapest provider in India that they could, and got what they paid for.
On the two occasions I had to call their support line, I encountered long hold times, terrible call quality, broken hold music and customer support staff that referred to me as "Brad" and "Jon", neither of which are my name. |
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12-03-2011, 02:54 PM | #6 |
Trying for calm & polite
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They recently started using a tier one help desk in St. Lucia (which is not in India, btw). I would not assume that customer support is lousy because it is there, rather I would assume customer support is lousy because everyone working there is just out of training on Kobo products and, most likely, they are still not up to full staffing.
Kobo knows that the support has been rotten, so telling horror stories is (from my POV) somewhat off topic. The news is that we have now been told that the company is acknowledging it and, more importantly, that they expect big changes to happen soon. Last edited by taming; 12-03-2011 at 02:56 PM. |
12-03-2011, 07:47 PM | #7 |
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too late for me. i've awaked away from Kobo because of their support.
They're going to have to offer me some FAnTASTIC discount or deal to ever win me back |
12-23-2011, 11:42 AM | #8 |
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Funny story.
I emailed the VP on the the blog post this week. I got no response from him (not unexpected, he's busy and customer complaints aren't really his department) however, I suddenly got an email today. one of those automated responses saying my ticket (from a month ago) is still open waiting my approval. and "thank you for letting us be of serviec to you". The email contained nothing but the exact copy and paste of the existing response i got the first time. I mail them my device, and they would fix it out of warranty for 69.99. So um? thanks for re-opening my ticket to tell m exactly the same issue which had me walk away from kobo in the first place! Still not sending it to you (despite the fact i have since ripped it apart anyways lol) |
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