Now that the iPad has established it is the alpha dog in the market, Amazon has slashed the price of its Kindle to $189 from $259, and Barnes & Noble’s Wi-Fi-only version of the Nook will retail for $149. Those are prices that are almost to good to pass up. With the arrival of iOS 4, which brings Apple’s iBooks app to millions of devices, e-readers are also getting a new competitor: the iPhone. Although the iPhone lacks the larger screen and more book-friendly interface of the iPad, the barrier to entry is now ridiculously low, since all a current iPhone user has to do is download the free iBooks app and start browsing for titles with no extra hardware required. This drop in price has everything to do with, in my opinion, the dominance of the iPad in its early release. However if you are purely using these devices to “read” with then I just don’t think you can shy away from these prices. Would you get a Kindle or a Nook at those prices? I think I would! Remember we have all the accessories you could ever want for your E-reader or any other electronic device!
The idea to start this blog came from the fact we are good at our day to day operations that people rarely notice how we pride our selves on our customer service. So getting back to this theme I wanted to share an experience I recently had with our customer service guys that I felt went unnoticed.
Here at Abacus we have been embracing social media for some time now, and we have built what we feel is a great community.
Our fans/followers/customers/clients/partners make it really special for us. We have been getting some amazing responses on all of our platforms, specifically Facebook and Twitter! Recently one of our amazing community members had a great Idea for us and wanted to get a hold of me. She wanted to discuss her idea on the phone because it would be much easier to explain. Well she sent me a Facebook message to me saying give her a call. The only problem with that is I wasn’t able to check my messages on Facebook for a few days!
So she called our out of this world customer service line. She got a young man who asked her issue. You might think that since her reason for calling would not affect our bottom line or was not regarding a product problem that this young man would just brush her off…… WRONG!!! True to the Abacus customer service style, our customer care representative tracked me down. Since I was slightly “off the grid” it wasn’t easy, but he didn’t stop until he found me. Why? He did it because it was important to our customer. He had no clue what the idea was, just that she wanted to tell me directly and that it was about social media.
This may seem small but trust me, most companies would simply brush this aside. “Oh you have an idea for social media, um…… whats you number?”
Then we never hear from the person again, and guess what? That fan/follower/customer/client/partner is no longer any of those things. She would have become something horrible… a competitor!! The good news is she is not a competitor and its thanks to our customer service.
I want to hear some customer service stories from you guys. Good or bad. Lets hear it. I love reading this stuff. To me its this one issue that sets apart companies. No matter if you sell Printer Ink, electronic accessories, or even dog food, you MUST have good customer service!
