Support Snakes and Ladders

It seems organizing the first level of support is one of the most tricky parts of any business. Big or small. There are conflicting goals for Level 1: withstand the wave of support incidents and pass through as few as possible to higher levels or product / engineering teams, while still keeping the suffering customers happy.

Level 1 I typically consider a test for my patience. as almost never they are able to provide any useful solution. They offer suggestions like "remove the batteries" or "keep the reset button pressed for 30 seconds" or "here is the link to the manual". I wonder if this is useful to anyone these days, as resetting devices and searching the internet for answers is probably what people are doing anyway before even trying to contact dedicated product support.

Passing Level 1 requires a lot of patience. It is like the Snakes and Ladders game. You try moving up and they want to keep you down. I found they often do not read what you wrote them, describing the problem. They just throw one of the suggested workarounds and move on. Hoping the problem will go away or the customer would give up. Which - ironically - is probably supported by their internal KPIs - how quickly they address the problem and if it comes back. I don't think there is any KPI that measures if the customer just gave up on the company or the product. Support is usually so busy with fending off incoming traffic that they never even try to reinitiate communications with customers by checking if the solution worked. If it did not and the customer still cares, they will come back anyway.

As I write this I have two active support cases with Garmin.

One is related to not being able to play audio while running an activity on a watch. I believe they have processing resource issue preventing both from working simultaneously (e.g., due to lack of available RAM). They believe this is a hardware issue with my unit and offered an RMA. I have never believed this RMA would solve anything, but have considered it a step in passing Level 1 test. Unfortunately the way they handle this (routine) process is terrible. Back in October they authorized the RMA and instructed me to send the watch for a replacement. I did that and their "standard" RMA window is advertised to be 2 weeks, so I was hoping to get the watch back in November. It did not arrive, so I emailed them and they responded they are short of replacement units and expect to have some in January. That means I will be 4 months without the watch. Which of course I can survive (:P) but this is NOT how you handle this. First make sure you have a replacement and only then start the process - to minimize the time. So I still consider this as the Level 1 test. Once the replacement arrives I will try to complete Level 1 and pass with the issue to a higher level to have someone have a serious look into it.

The second one is related to a second-hand Index scale. I am just not able to link it to my account - have tried Android, iOS, Windows (with an ANT+ dongle). There is a HTTP_CONFLICT_409 message showing up in the process of device registration. They clearly have a protocol problem when re-linking a device linked previously to another account. I think I have just passed the Level 1 gate: "I've sent the data to the product team in the USA and I'm awaiting their response", but before that the responses I was getting from Level 1 were simply offensive, showing complete ignorance and demonstrating the people did not even read what I wrote (I wrote the issue was on Android and they sent me instructions to capture Windows log files).

So Garmin clearly struggles with their Level 1. Annoyance is probably on of the last things you want as an outcome of customers interacting with support. But at least at Garmin there are higher levels. My worst experience to date has been with Solis. They have only Level 1. I had multiple interactions with them and many times they were telling me they would pass my problems to the "VIP support team" which has never responded. If you do not care about the value of the brand you're building, having just Level 1 and nothing else may be a short-term successful business strategy. Something that should be avoided by all means by customers, as this means, once you experience a problem, no one is going to help you.