As I set here in my hospital bed after receiving my 4th 2mg injection of Dilaudid today, after having 2 strokes in 3 days. I can’t stop thinking about customer service. For those of you may not of known, I was in a car accident about a month ago and ended up going to a sister hospital and the customer service was quite horrendous. When I get back into the office on Monday there will be a renewed focus on customer service, from the production department through the management team. While we are currently working behind the scenes on various things to make the user experience even more enjoyable, this is something that has moved up towards to the top of the lists. Please feel to post your thoughts in this thread. I simply ask that you keep them “short and constructive”. 
Holy crap! Hoping for a full and speedy recovery!
Wow! I hope you get well and have a full recovery!
Oh dear, yes, hope your recovery is speedy and complete. Sorry to hear that you had to suffer a bad experience in the name of a better one for us, but good on you for taking that lead !
@ Valkyrie-MT - thank you
@ mikef - thank you
@ Brett - It took me about 30 minutes to write that post as I kept falling asleep while typing because of the pain meds lol
Gary, I sincerely wish you a speedy recovery and will pray for you. The fact that you’re posting here instead of flirting with the nurses tells me that you must be doing just fine 
If you follow my Tweets or blog you will know that I’m a huge fan of good customer service and love to praise companies that do it right. That’s a big part of why I spend so much time on the GHI forum. There are certainly plenty of things about NETMF & Gadgeteer that can be improved but one constant through it all has always been superior customer service from GHI. Of course, there’s always room for improvement but you’re already several steps ahead of most other companies. So, I say just keep it up and as long as you’re always asking yourself how you can be better then you will always be steps ahead of the rest.
Here’s a great example of something I tweeted about earlier this week that you might want to consider.
https://twitter.com/ianlee74/status/542452462448152577
Get well!
@ ianlee74 - Thank you and as far strokes go I am doing great
Although I really like the idea in theory, the only thing that I worry about are the comments like “lower your prices”, do we really have to give this person a discount of some sort?
Just get better OK, we’ll work on the other stuff.
@ Duke Nukem - This is me getitng better.
obviously, you’ve made several posts not far apart 
Might be time for your meds again soon ! 
[quote=“ianlee74”]already several steps ahead of most other companies[/quote]No doubt, I have to admit I’ve looked at some of the other folks in this market space and I just can’t believe that they are still in business. When I saw a tweet from someone asking if a Gadgeteer network module would work with their platform as they haven’t seen a networking component even though one was promised 2 years ago, I just cringe. The first step in customer service is actually shipping a product, and its surprising how many companies can’t even do that. GHI has fostered a very nice and supportive user community here and they are themselves very active in it, which indicates to me that you actually love the product your selling, again something very unique. You just focus on getting better and we’ll keep slamming away at making the other stuff happen.
@ Brett - lol…one more hour
Well, yea, that sort of suggestion isn’t helpful. However, I like the idea of “paying” your customers to give you free good ideas for new products or taking the time to fill out a survey.
@ Duke Nukem - We are passionate about our products the user experience from that aspect. For example, everyone always complains about shipping which shipping costs are provided by the API side, I already have several meetings scheduled after the first of the year to talk about shipping USPS, etc. So there have to be things CS related that you think could use some improvement.
@ ianlee74 - I see no issue with the coupon for stuff that makes “us” think but I am not giving a coupon for “lower your prices”. I want the ideas that someone has obviously spent some time thinking aobut.
@ Gary - Sorry to hear about the accident, and complications. Will keep you in my prayers for a speedy recovery. Meanwhile, shouldn’t you be resting?
Gus can take care of everything, right?
I don’t consider ‘price’ to be a customer service issue as really price is a mechanical process of inputs/outputs/costs/etc and really the race to the bottom only benefits big players and kills innovation.
If price is an issue then perhaps the real problem is a consumer underestimation of the product value (or perhaps its the vendor who over estimates the value, but I don’t believe that isn’t the case for Gadgeteer). Where customer service comes into effect for price is educating existing consumers on how to more fully utilize the product value and increasing awareness to find new consumers who can benefit from the product values. If you can grow your client base through this increased appreciation of product value, then you can get economies of scale to reduce price, but I don’t think that is what people really want in this space as I think it would be better to drive increased value through new modules, features etc. The effect is the same in that price per value point goes down, but instead of pushing price down, the profits are invested as to increase the value points and given this is a growth market, that is the better plan.
I really see Gadgeteer as Lego, and Lego understands that growth for them was in increasing the number of different components, not just slashing prices (they tried that and the results weren’t good). Lego is still the same thing, but its the same thing to even more people now then it was before.
For me Gadgeteer is about ‘I can do that now’ and that is where I’d focus customer service.
@ devhammer - Thank you and this me resting! 
Gus can take care of the rest and then some but he hired me so he doesn’t have two.