Lenovo’s Woeful Customer Support and Brand Messaging
As much as I’d like to simply rant about my latest laptop buying experience, that’s not the ultimate purpose of this post. And although I was greeted at every turn by customer support personnel more inept than the last, eventually leading me to simply accept my fate and keep their inferior product, that’s not the point of this article.
I purchased a Lenovo laptop as a gift for a family member. It happened that this was a value-based purchase decision, as my relative didn’t really need the latest and greatest. I decided on the Lenovo as their deal for the specs offered was the best at the time. Little did I know that 12 hours of mind-numbing “support” later, I would be left with the same malfunctioning laptop.
One thing I noticed from my hours of phone time, other than how much one can come to loath specific Christmas carols, was that customer support plays an absolutely crucial role in any marketing effort. Your support personnel are a direct reflection of the overall company attitude towards delivering value to its customers. The job of marketing is to communicate that value – why one product is superior to the others available in the marketplace.
In my unfortunate case, I unpacked a Lenovo Y550 only to realize the network card wasn’t working properly. I looked into the issue on Lenovo’s support forum where I learned that this wasn’t an isolated problem. What I didn’t see was an outpouring of support from the forum’s Lenovo moderators.
Wouldn’t an online support forum on your own site be a perfect place to engage and put to rest any recurring technical issues? Isn’t that the idea of a support forum (other than keeping customers off your more costly phone support system).
But undeterred by the lack of support on the forum, I pressed on; this time, via phone. I want to be fair here, so I’m going to list the number of minutes spent prior to talking to a human as precisely as possible.
First call – 37 minutes on hold (Christmas music sounded great for most of this call – but alas, I had to hang up before I talked to anyone)
Second call – 22 minutes (Christmas music wore a little thin, but I was rejuvenated by an actual person picking up the call)
At this point, the details of my runaround become less important than the support system and inadvertent messaging by the Lenovo “support staff,” and I use that term loosely.
Suffice it to say, I have been told contradicting information by four (4) separate Lenovo support representatives, including a support manager at one point. Asking me to call various phone lines, dropped calls and a general lack of sincerity to fix the actual issue characterized all but one experience with support staff.
So how does the experience tie into the marketing message I got from Lenovo? Here’s what came through loud and clear, although inadvertently, I’m sure, from my interaction with the company.
1.) They want you to buy their products
2.) They want you to keep their products
3.) It’s not of vital importance to the company that the product you order,.. works
4.) Once you order a product and you unpack it, working or not, it’s yours (as an interesting aside, if you don’t unpack the product, but can tell that it isn’t working through some neo-osmosian brain scan procedure, you can return it free of charge)
5.) If you want to return a product that isn’t working, assuming you aren’t Karnak and know the computer doesn’t work before opening the box, you get to pay for the privilege (15% + applicable shipping)
6.) Support is a relative term and is administered according to what makes sense for the company, not the consumer
The marketing lesson here is simple. Your brand messaging doesn’t stop when the sale is made. Lenovo had a perfect opportunity to convert me to a repeat customer through thorough and value-based customer support. That,.. is marketing. It’s letting your customers, who have taken a chance with a new company, know that you stand behind the marketing message you put out there prior to a purchase decision.
Lenovo failed miserably in this regard.
For the record, I have direct experience with other companies. I never like to hit all negatives in a post without coming back to some positive experiences.
I have purchased a number of Dell products and have always received exemplary customer support. Of course, I have never unpacked a Dell product and not had it work either. But the point is, my next purchase will be a Dell, even if the price point is at a premium to the comparable Lenovo system. And this is a direct result of customer support as a marketing tactic.
Every time you touch a customer, you’re broadcasting a marketing message. Some companies understand this and use it to their advantage… some don’t. Sadly, Lenovo and their lackluster support network seem less interested in the marketing message delivered after a purchase decision, than the message used to entice it.
Image by theogeo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons
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