good customer service: Matt at Sq. Hill T-Mobile

[cellio]

Last night my four-month-old phone (my first smartphone) died -- wouldn't power on and didn't light up when plugged into a charger. This said "dead battery" to me; I briefly considered popping and replacing the battery on the theory that that's probably the control-alt-delete of the phone world, but I was stymied by the case.

A word about the case: I didn't get the phone with a case and wasn't looking for one. I'm pretty careful with my portable electronics and don't expect to be using a phone in situations where I'm likely to drop or crush it. A month after I got the phone the screen-protector peeled off and they replaced it since those are supposed to last a year or more. (So maybe the initial application was faulty, I figured.) A month after that the second one peeled off, despite my being very careful in how I handled the phone. I carry my phone in an otherwise-empty pocket, same as bunches of other people; this should not happen. So that time the guy suggested that a case would help hold it down; the price of the case was comparable to the price of a two-pack of protectors, so I grudgingly bought a case and he put it on for me.

I've not had cause to try to remove the case since then, until last night when I found I wasn't sure how to do it without damaging something. And this "pop the battery" idea was just a theory anyway. So today I visited the T-Mobile store and spoke with Matt.

Matt's first guess was "confused phone", not "dead battery", and he took the case off, popped the battery, put it back in, and plugged the phone into a charger. This time it responded. I asked him to show me how he'd taken the case off and he said that it's very fussy. He then went to put it back on so he could show me, and discovered that it wouldn't go -- something had cracked or bent or something. He apologized for breaking the case and replaced it with a new one. I decided at that point that if somebody who probably does this dozens of times a week couldn't succeed, there's no hope of me doing it -- next time I need to access the battery I'll take it back to the store.

From Matt's point of view this is probably "stupid-customer 101" stuff, but he never said anything that implied that I was anything less than a smart person in an unfamiliar situation. He was very friendly and helpful and not at all condescending. While we were waiting to confirm that my battery could hold a charge, I overheard as he helped someone with questions even more basic than mine -- a customer trying to learn how to use a new "plain old phone". He was just as courteous and patient with that customer.

The salesperson told us when we bought the phones that we could come in any time for help; this wasn't just a sell-and-forget operation. Today they delivered on that, and I'll be asking specifically for Matt if I need to go back there again.

Comments

[devreux.livejournal.com]

Have you forwarded this message to anyone at the T-Mobile store? Customer service folks don't often get a lot of appreciation for the things they do *right*.

[cellio]

After posting I had intended to email a link to somebody at T-Mobile customer service, but they don't post an email address or have a feedback form, so I had to call and tell them about it. The person I spoke with seemed rather stunned that somebody was calling them with praise and not a complaint, and he assured me that this would get back to the appropriate manager. (There were only two people in the store today and this seemed to be the more-senior one, so there was nobody to speak with in person. I did, of course, thank him for his excellent customer service, but that's not the same as sending the word up a level.)