Sony Singapore Doing A Good Job Of Customer Service
June 12, 2008 – 11:06 am | by Daryl TayWhen I was contemplating a new laptop, it was between Dell and Sony. After Dell failed the customer service test (for now), Sony was next. I’ve had my laptop for just over two weeks and have had experiences with their service reps pre-purchase, during purchase and post-purchase, and it’s been pretty consistent. Consistently good, that is.
Pre-purchase I gave them a call to ask some questions about their extended warranty programme and the lady on the phone was pretty helpful, even if she had to ask somebody else for details a few times. When I went down to purchase the laptop, the salesperson, Johnny Guo, approached me to help very quickly. The laptop came with a free RAM upgrade and I love using technology, but that doesn’t mean I know how to set it up. So he was happy to help me with it, and spent the next 40 minutes setting up my laptop for it’s first run as well as answering a constant barrage of questions from me. Look for this dude if you want to buy anything from Sony at the Wisma Atria shop.
After that I had some problems with registering my online warranty and sent an email which was replied within a couple of hours by Nelson, who helped me very quickly and efficiently. The warranty was probably my fault (I couldn’t recall what the ID was) but he helped me fix it anyway without me feeling like an idiot.
(Sidetrack: Sony was offering a free two year warranty if you register it online, it’s a great way for them to build up a database with useful information like email and demographics at the cost of two years warranty.)
All in all this experience has been really good for me. I don’t know whether it’s a conscious initiative on Sony’s part or if I had the good fortune of interacting with great employees, but it’s left a lasting impression on me and one I hope is not tainted in the future.
The interesting thing is this. Sony has no snazzy “customer chat” that Dell has, but does the basic things right and portrays a consistent image across functions (at least those that I’ve interacted with), but it’s serving them better than it is Dell, at least in Asia.
Tags: buying a sony laptop, customer service, dell customer service, sony customer service, sony in singapore
3 Responses to “Sony Singapore Doing A Good Job Of Customer Service”
By Kelvin on Jun 14, 2008 | Reply
Woot. Sony versus Dell - always an interesting read.. but personally, I think Sony’s a cut *above* Dell, and should be compared against, say, Apple (not only for their product “class”, but also the support/customer service standards).
That said, I’d add on a little more for Dell - Having contacted Dell as both a individual (home) user and as a corporate client, I must say that the treatment is a total 180 degrees different. Dell’s Corporate sales department is the *MOST* helpful, negotiable, and (lightly) persistent - and to the extent, willing to discuss from anything to everything. Their end-user support, however, sucks.
When you bought your (Vaio?) from Sony at Wisma Atria, it was an “official” Sony gallery, hence, they keep up the standards there - but it’s rather different at certain places, say, Bugis or Sim Lim Square’s Sony V3 (was it?) “resellers”. The motivation at resellers and at the official stores are vastly different for the staff, and the managers in charge. (Though, at SLS you will get to bargain for more free stuff)
Having many laptops, including a Vaio, 2 x Fujitsu’s, Acer Gemstone and a Macbook Pro, I would say that Sony’s and Apple’s support remain undefeated, for one reason - they do NOT outsource it. Similarly you might wish to draw a comparison between, say, SingTel/M1, clearly, one outsources and screws it up.
For the warranty part, Sony Asia Pacific (electronics, and appliances, blah blah) does share your information (if you permit it) to the other subsidiaries/divisions (i.e, Sony Pictures) for their Electronic Distribution Mailers (EDM’s), and hence, from a long-term perspective, it makes sense being able to up-sell you NOT JUST Sony AP products, but also movies, etc, based on your demographics.
Okay, this has being a long comment, and my first one on your blog - got here thru the post on LadyIronChef about Social Media Lunch - when’s the next one?
By Daryl Tay on Jun 14, 2008 | Reply
@Kelvin: Thanks for the long comment! Wow you sure own a lot of laptops! Nice perspective on the Dell customer service. I guess it has a lot to go before fully permeating the entire company and not just one aspect of it. Companies have to learn quickly that such attempts are easily visible to the consumer if they do not embrace good customer service as a culture company-wide.