Microsoft @Surface…Sinofsky Surcess or Surfail?
Microsoft Surface…Sinofsky Surcess or #Surfail?
OK, I’m not a techy geek or anything like that but The Bloke had pre-ordered the new MS Surface and was looking forward to the delivery of his new toy on 26 Oct.
Friday 26th came and went with no delivery. There was furor on twitter from the UK twitterati on the lack of arrival of the ordered Surface in the UK and the Surface twitter account @Surface went remarkably quiet.
Emails into inboxes from Microsoft ensued. Did they inform you of your tracking number, date/time of delivery? No, a vagary saying that all UK orders would be received between 26 – 30 Oct. This is NOT very helpful considering where we live there is nowhere for any deliveries to be left safely. I had dutifully stayed indoors on the Friday and with the email received, did the same on Monday AND Tuesday.
During this period UK purchasers, quite rightly so, were getting more and more irate. There were posts on twitter about non-existent tracking numbers, various couriers quoted, FedEx and UPS but no news on WHEN their order would be delivered.
I too voiced my irritation on twitter about the lack of communication or ANY kind of information for that matter.
The Bloke got home yesterday 30 Oct at 4.30pm. Me having spent yet another day waiting for a non-existent delivery, he made a call to Microsoft. The operator did not have a clue where our order was, there was no tracking number, she did not know which courier company was delivering the package and offered a 48hr call back…yup a 48hr call back!! As I was about to self-combust, the doorbell went. Hallelujah, our Surface had actually arrived…via DHL.
I informed my twitter posse that ours had arrived. However, the twitter conversation continued as the rest of the miffed potential Surface users I had been engaging with were still without theirs.
After sympathising with Chris White a.k.a. @Synkrox my phone pinged with another twitter notification. It was from a Steven Sinofsky. As I said at the beginning, I am not up to speed with the Who’s Who of Microsoft. I lent across to The Bloke and asked who Steven Sinofsky was as I had just had a tweet from him. I got the look that only a software engineer/developer could give! Of course I now know that Mr Sinofsky is President, Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft
@partroot @synkrox @mbrit @lokar @lozblake @cfoxleyevans @neilhewitt feel free to email me order num. will look into it.steven.sinofsky
— Steven Sinofsky (@stevesi) October 30, 2012
We were OK and had received our Surface and Mr Sinofsky did not need to help us but of course all the others I was chatting with were still drumming their fingers on the desk.
This is where I have some respect when a CEO, President or company leader decides to put their head above the parapet and make themselves accessible. As you can see Steve Sinofsky asked the complainants to email him with their order number and that he could hopefully rectify the situation. I know that several if them did and have received a response back.
The moral of this story is COMMUNICATE even if the recipient of your information is not happy with what they hear. At least they know what is happening and call centre etc would dramatically reduce the number of calls clients make to try and find out something. No company is above doing this and giving your clients/customers the silent treatment just won’t swing it.
So I dock my hat to Mr Sinofsky and I hope that with his influence my fellow tweeters receive their Surface that they PRE-ordered and also, look into what went on with the distribution in the UK and to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
By the way @Pdmckenzie and I, rather like our Surface.
NB:
At the time of posting this only one of the five people, apart from ourselves, I was talking to has received their delivery that was originally promised on 26 Oct 2012 and more were joining the conversation this morning.
