Jawbone UP health wristband gets users DOWN

Jawbone makes wonderful products including the Jambox portable wireless speaker and UP health wristband, both of which I have the pleasure of owning.

However great products by themselves don’t necessarily make for great brand experiences – especially when things go wrong and you need some service support and advice.

Customer Service tumbleweed

This is where Jawbone, and Aliph the company behind the brand, appear to let themselves down.

I recently had a query regarding my Jawbone UP, so went online to their sponsored community home page called ‘MYTALK’ where it reassuringly claims ‘FIND ANSWERS QUICKLY’.

Not being the first person to have the same query I quickly found a conversation thread to follow and hopefully find an answer. So far, so good. However I was soon disappointed as I followed the thread from its start in September 2012 all the way through to April 2013 where it came to an abrupt and frustrating halt. You see, while there was plenty of conversation between users, not once did Jawbone offer its opinion, support or even apologies for not being able to find a solution. It just kept a stony silence from the side-line. 

  

Beware the spurned ‘little guy’

Many people hate being snubbed or ignored – and hell hath no fury like a customer who feels a brand doesn’t care about their plight.  And so if they choose to, the internet gives these people a giant megaphone to make themselves heard loudly, far and wide. A live example of this is from a man called  Hasan Syed who bought a promoted tweet to complain about the loss of his father’s luggage after a perceived lack of good customer service from British Airways.  This resulted in thousands of retweets and a belated reply from BA with an offer to look into the lost baggage issue.

Catch the whispers before they become shouts

It’s not too late for Jawbone to learn a lesson or two from other companies including retail brands such as John Lewis whose staff care about and excel at providing customer service that goes the extra mile.

If they continue in their failure to sufficiently manage their customer service, then when it comes to future purchases customer’s will vote with their wallets, while those prospective buyers who overhear their disgruntlements will about heel and fall into the arms of a rival brand.

So Jawbone if you are listening, can you please respond to the whispers of your customers before they become shouts?


(Extract of a blog originally posted on the service design consultancy we are experience website - http://www.weareexperience.com/).