Zune Customer Support: The House is on Fire!

It’s been only three days since the Zune launch. And the least we can say is “confusion, frustration and excitement” is in the air.

We have seen a lot of good and bad reviews from people and websites comparing the Zune to the iPod. Everybody has an opinion on what makes a good mp3 player or not. But it looks like the biggest challenge by far for the Zune at this moment is “customer support”. Or maybe Microsoft simply forgot about that?

Early adopters are crying for help. They are confused on what should work or not as an operating system for the Zune software; they are still confused on DRM issues, transcoding, installation and synchronisation. What is clear is Microsoft isn’t ready to respond to that right now. The customer support is a phone line with limited help. The online help is most of the time useless. The lack of detailed documentation is outrageous. People simply don’t know where to rush.

Strangely, the best place users have found, is the blog of a Zune Marketing team member (Cesar at Zuneinsider.com)! Desperately trying to “be” the Zune customer support, Cesar tried to organized is blog as a CRM and customer support system. One hell of a job for a blog operated by one person!

On Monday Cesar posted two posts, asking people to categorize their requests:

A first one titled Got Zune? Talk About it in This Post and a second one, Don't Have a Zune? Got a Question? Post Here

He had more than 150 comments just for those two posts. And most of them are technical questions.

Yesterday, when more and more people were having questions and problems with the Zune software, Cesar posted: Zune Software Questions (some answers) . Trying at first, to answer technical questions about the Zune software, he again received dozens of comments!

A user said, “Give us a forum so we don't have to blast your comments section!  I'm not trying to take anything away from the indie Zune sites and their forums but there are so many forums out there that I'd like to have "the one" where I know our concerns are at least monitored if not answered. “. Another user said, “At least, I don't feel like anyone is listening.  You would think that this is the most critical time.  We just bought the player and initially we're going to have a lot of questions, but there's apparently no way to get them answered.  Zune tech support knows about as much as I do.  Trust me, I've called“.

Cesar answered back, “I've asked someone from the Zune team to jump in to these forums to answer some of these questions. Good idea.”

It is only this morning tough that a customer support team member (YoYo!) wrote a long comment on the blog trying to answer a few of the questions. He said, “Thanks for recording the bugs and glitches you've found. People from the team look at the sites closely, even though we may not be vocal. Keep the feedback coming.“ He finally added. “Whew! Hopefully that gives Cesar a much needed respite.”

Users seem to appreciate the Zune when they don’t bump into technical problems. They are having fun with it and they are all excited about the Zune.

I understand that early phase customer support deployment is a challenge for every new product. Tip 8 from our iPod vs. Zune: 10 tips to help you choose post is about that. But Microsoft needs to act fast on this one. They need to show that “Welcome to the Social” includes being taking care of and being supported. Actual buyers are early adopters and they are used to a “flaky” product. But they need support. Otherwise they will leave.

Please guys! Do something and help them now! Help Cesar! Let him talk about the Zune parties and Zune philosophy. Let him generate the internet and blogosphere buzz you need are that is doing so well!

Don’t give-up Cesar; I’m sure help is on the way! Zune is a terrific product and you are doing a terrific job too!

Comments

[oddballgeek]

Cesar is a fool.

[Jeremy Hill]

I bought my zune in nov 07 it has been nothing but trouble for the last 2 months now it will not work at all.Wish I would have got a Ipod instead.P.O.S.