Marketing Intelligence by Iain Johnston

Ben Terrett, is one of the more interesting chaps I have met recently, and duly went to his blog to find out about more about his views on stuff. Tracking back through his posts, I came across this one about his pleasant experiences with Samsung who had the temerity to try to build a lifetime relationship with him through their products and their servicing. Nice.

Like Ben I have switched to using my iPhone as my everyday camera now, although my previous version didn’t look quite as <cough> dated as Ben’s (must be the lighting or the camera angle).

Anyway, Samsung’s attempts to treat their customers as real people and to remember their history are to be applauded. I have had a similar experience with Dyson. Now, I know the products themselves polarise views in the design community. I agree these unorthodox appliances take some getting used to. Their unusual colour and configuration is a small part of their appeal -  daring to be different is something we should all try in our design and branding. But the point for me as a loyal customer of Dyson, is the service which has been frankly impeccable. Previous occasions of minor faults with the vacuum cleaner have been in the one-phone-call-someone-turns-up-and fixes-no-charge category of pleasant experience. All good. The washing machine hasn’t missed a day’s work in many years. Also good. So when the vaccuum cleaner started making a strange noise yesterday, some 8 years after I bought it, I was delighted when i made that call: the operator at Dyson answers, “hello Mr Johnston, is it the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine you are calling about?”

One short conversation later: “we’ll have an engineer there tomorrow” response. Ok, it’s 3 years outside of the 5 year warranty, so they want to charge me £50 for a complete service/fix/replace stuff call out, but on past form they will leave me with an effectively new cleaner once again, Lovely.

Regular readers will know I’m a sucker for good customer service. Like Ben, I also appreciate it when a company at least makes the effort to pretend they remember me from last time.