I am pretty big on expectations. I like to have them and I like to give them. A little lesson I learned yesterday brought that out.
I have been a T-mobile customer for a long time. In our area they have great service-I rarely get a dropped call. Also, no one from T-mobile ever used my Amex card to buy stereo equipment (ATT rep did-major hassle, police report, yada yada).
For the last year and a half I had a Dash smartphone, complete with wifi hotspot access for my laptop. After three replacement handsets in eight months(warranty) I upgraded to the G-1. In setting the phone up, the guy told me it “used a different data network”. Ok, no worries.
A week and a half into it I duck into a Starbucks. No laptop connect. Username and password incorrect. I call support. “You no longer have that feature. That will be an additional $9.95/month.” Oh, and the G-1 is not designed to work as a modem.
I am in a coffee shop and can’t connect my laptop to the internet. Horrors.
I am all about expectations. I like to have ‘em and I like to give ‘em. As a rule, when I hear the word “upgrade”, I think “everything you had before and more”.
To be fair, I might could have figured this out with the fine print. I am usually pretty good at that. However, once I found out that (use your Amex card to buy stereo equipment)ATT was going to cost me $30/month more for an iphone, I stopped looking.
Makes me wonder if we do the same to our members and colleagues when we drop some program in favor of a new one. Do we lose sight of the fact that to them, they might be looking at it as “everything we had before and more?”
To be fair, we “ran a note in the bulletin saying ‘x’ would be discontinued”. Are we unfairly expecting them to “read the fine print”?
One or two simple questions from the T-mobile rep would have prevented this. “Do you connect your laptop at hotspots?” “Is that important to you?”
One or two simple questions for the people we serve can prevent a lot of grief. “If we move toward ‘x’, that may mean moving away from ‘y’. Will you feel left out?”
But then, I’d have nothing to blog about…..
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You have some brilliance buried in this post about why you should have sprung for the Apple handheld COMPUTER… telling our constituents about change is different than asking them about changes. It isn’t we want permission, it’s that inclusion creates a healthy feedback loop and buy-in if a decision proceeds into a full on change. We have to make sure we follow that order though, or people will feel manipulated. Good post Jeff.