Rethinking user experience from buying to first time using your product
asked 2015-11-12 17:04:29 +0300
Hi,
my name is Thomas and I received my new jolla yesterday. First of all: I think it looks very good and the navigation in Sailfish OS wowed me from the first second.
BUT, your order process and selling concept is the worst I ever experienced:
After buying it - with the info, that delivery will take a bit longer (up to 15 days longer?), because of the transition to Sailfish 2.0 - it takes over 40 days until it arrives. Thats ok for me.
But the first thing you see when you start your brand new Jolla: you first have to upgrade do 2.0, because it was still shipped with Eineheminlampi. Already a bit disappointed.
After that you want to test your internet connection and first thing you see: Jolla now offers it's smartphone for 80 Euros less. Now it's the worst FTUE I ever expected.
So it's only about the money? A bit. Things like longer delivery times, problems with updates are unexpected events. Pricing and information about such problems are more about having a customer experience strategy - or like in your case - not.
Despite everything, I like your phone, but unless you don't get a better selling concept that doesn't matter. If I wouldn't like the whole concept behind this smartphone it would be on it's way back already. But if you want your users to recommend your products to their friends or get more "normal" customers (and not only "tech fans") you have to rethink your whole customer relationship starting from buying the phone in your shop to first time use.
You are sooo right! Being a small company should never be an excuse to disappoint customers. It requires a good operational strategy, and strong attention to execution. Then even a small business can excel at delighting its customers.
Perhaps Jolla has focused too much on just the technical side. Of course, building and commercializing an OS is complex and needs both excellent technical people, and excellent commercial/marketing people. But operational excellence should be the core value that they all share.
All the symptoms you mention are pointing to a company in distress. Or at least one with very poor operational leadership. In the beginning it was just that they were foregoing the opportunity to make some extra money. Take the battery example: people here have been asking for the opportunity to buy a second battery (it was even one of the selling points), but it was only offered once in very small quantities. What if they had offered it regularly? 10.000 batteries x €30 = €300.000, with probably 80+% margin. And any new TOH was also out of stock in no time. In short, this was already costing them money.
But now, this poor operational execution is costing them their fan base. Just look at reactions to the latest blog post. Negativity is rampant.
It is up to the CEO to make sure that the company is running well. But what does Antti Saarnio do instead? He starts another hobby project of his own that has nothing to do with the core challenges of Jolla and Sailfish!
I'm worried about where this is going.
bilgy_no1 ( 2015-11-14 09:52:16 +0300 )edit