A few days back you would remember how, in a recent blog post, I stated that nowadays it seems it is becoming more and more difficult, and rare!, to find excellent customer service, as I was trying to share further insights on the recent fiasco I have gone through with both movistar & Apple with the 3GS iPhone. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist altogether, right? Well, today I thought I would share a story with you folks. A story that features yours truly, once again, but this time around on what excellent customer support is all about. But one step at a time…
It all starts with an email sent to my personal account by the Telestream folks, announcing that the super fine ScreenFlow 2.0 is now available for download and upgrade. Now, I probably haven’t mentioned this here before, but ScreenFlow is actually one of my favorite screencasting tools for the Mac, if not my all time favorite (Yes, I know, Camtasia for the Mac comes pretty close, too!). The thing is that ScreenFlow has been there for a while now, while Camtasia is just getting started, so over time I have gotten used to the excellent features, and capabilities, the former has got to offer.
So after checking out what ScreenFlow 2.0 has in store, including some of the features I have been looking forward to for a little while now, I decided to go ahead and upgrade to it. I was advised to check the upgrade link to see how it would work, so I did that. And that’s when the problems started. Apparently, I was not the only one who didn’t go through a successful upgrade to the latest version (A whole bunch of us seemed to have problems with it, too!).
From there onwards, I decided to check what people were saying in Twitter, and when I realized I was not the only one having such problems I tweeted it to a couple of people I follow indicating it was not an isolated problem. By then, I had already sent out a note to customer support asking for further advice on how to fix it. Usually, that have been rather responsive as well, which is always a good sign. So I decided to wait…
In the meantime, I carried on with my daily work and, all of a sudden, I get this tweet from @screenflow where they are kindly offering to help out right there. Yes, almost an immediate response to my tweets. Whoahhhh! Truly amazing! I know that if you have been out there in the Web 2.0 world for a while, as a customer or a vendor, this is pretty much common thing, but yet one has got to experience it in first person to realise the kind of impact it has got! What followed afterwards was a bunch of tweets that helped me sort out my problem and helped me go through the upgrade successfully in a matter of minutes. Goodness! And that thanks to a couple of tweets!
So what originally started it as potential problems and issues to finish off a successful upgrade of my license for version 2.0 of ScreenFlow, it turned out to be an amazing experience with regards to customer support, having helped me solve it within the same day, in fact, shortly after! I am not sure what you would think about this story folks but the people over at Telestream have managed to do something, with a couple of proactive interactions, that movistar hasn’t managed to do in over nearly a year that I have been with them: gain and retain my loyalty, as a customer.
Like I said, I wanted to share this story to also show the other side of the coin. To prove the point that there is excellent customer service out there; that there are some vendors out there that get it, that understand how things have progressed and improved over time in managing customer relationships through engaging actively in the social media space; that there is an opportunity to have an open dialogue between customers and vendors and engage in solving customer problems in the shortest time possible, because, after all, that’s what exceedingly good customer support is all about: gaining the loyalty of those customers that you would want to keep for a long while!
And that is just what Telestream (And ScreenFlow) have managed to do for me. I am a rather happy customer now, who knows he can always count on wonderful customer support from those vendors that care about what matters: their customers. I wish both movistar and Apple would understand that once and for all. Forget about your exclusive rights of distribution and the hype; get down to work, do your business properly and show you care, because right now you aren’t.
Tags: Telestream, ScreenFlow, ScreenFlow 2.0, Camtasia, Mac, MacBook Pro, Screencasting, Screencasts, Customer Loyalty, Loyalty, Customer Support, Customer Service, Customer Service Center, VRM, Vendor Relationship Management, Twitter, Microblogging, Microsharing, Relationships, Connections, Dialogue, Apple, iPhone, 3G, 3GS, Excellence, Customer Stories, Stories, Customer Experiences, Vendors, Movistar, Telefonica, Brands, Branding, Corporate Brand, Lack of Customer Service, Constructive Feedback, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Innovation, Communication
