cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I'll start off. Couldnt be more impressed with the edutainment manufacturer Leapfrog. I bought my son a toy (we call it 'the space station') its a round thing with a rotating seat in the middle with a bunch of buttons and levers and whatnot that play music or does numbers and alphabets. By the way, I have no expectation that this is going to teach him his numbers and letters by next month or anything, but its one of his favorite toys and keeps him busy fiddling with stuff. Now that he's a little big to sit in it, I took the seat out and he crawls under it and pops up and plays with it or just fiddles with the stuff from the side.
After 3 months, about half the stuff stopped working. I pulled out the control module and it had a burned resistor on it. No problem I figured, just solder in a new one. Of course, nobody in town had that resistor.
So I called the company to see if I could buy just the control module from them. "No problem", said the customer service lady who answered directly on the third ring without fifteen layers of "press 1 for this and 5 to go screw yourself", "you're almost still in warranty, so we'll just send you out a new one. It'll have a return UPS label in it, freight prepaid. When you have a chance, stick the old one back in the box we send and put it out for the UPS guy. We'll pay the UPS pickup fee if any, dont go to the trouble of taking it to a UPS store.".
WOW. Someone who actually "gets it". Their product went bad, they replaced the whole thing with a brand new product. I didnt have to pay for it. I didnt have to pay shipping. I didnt have to send the old one back first. I didnt have to pay to send mine back. I didnt even have to leave the house.
I checked in with some other folks on a 'hot deals site' and heard a lot of similar stuff. One woman's kid had worn out or lost some of the parts to an edutainment 'desk' and she wanted to donate it to a preschool, but wanted to buy the missing/worn parts to replace them first. Leapfrog sent them to her for free. On a three year old product.
Smart customer service: take care of the customer and they'll want to keep buying your stuff. When a customer wants to put one of your products in a place where it'll receive a lot of potential customer attention, make sure its going to be seen in its best light.
Guess which manufacturer has gotten almost all of our toy business since then?
After 3 months, about half the stuff stopped working. I pulled out the control module and it had a burned resistor on it. No problem I figured, just solder in a new one. Of course, nobody in town had that resistor.
So I called the company to see if I could buy just the control module from them. "No problem", said the customer service lady who answered directly on the third ring without fifteen layers of "press 1 for this and 5 to go screw yourself", "you're almost still in warranty, so we'll just send you out a new one. It'll have a return UPS label in it, freight prepaid. When you have a chance, stick the old one back in the box we send and put it out for the UPS guy. We'll pay the UPS pickup fee if any, dont go to the trouble of taking it to a UPS store.".
WOW. Someone who actually "gets it". Their product went bad, they replaced the whole thing with a brand new product. I didnt have to pay for it. I didnt have to pay shipping. I didnt have to send the old one back first. I didnt have to pay to send mine back. I didnt even have to leave the house.
I checked in with some other folks on a 'hot deals site' and heard a lot of similar stuff. One woman's kid had worn out or lost some of the parts to an edutainment 'desk' and she wanted to donate it to a preschool, but wanted to buy the missing/worn parts to replace them first. Leapfrog sent them to her for free. On a three year old product.
Smart customer service: take care of the customer and they'll want to keep buying your stuff. When a customer wants to put one of your products in a place where it'll receive a lot of potential customer attention, make sure its going to be seen in its best light.
Guess which manufacturer has gotten almost all of our toy business since then?