IBM/Lenovo’s Innovative Customer Service – New T61 Thinkpad Laptop!

I’m writing this post in the comfort of my own room, on a Ubuntu LiveCD, using my brand-new T61 Thinkpad from IBM/Lenovo.

There’s quite an interesting story to tell. Purchasing a laptop online, especially from Lenovo, is not as easy as it may sound. However, in today’s world (a world that is flattened and driven by technological advances), bloggers replace the old ways of the main-stream media, people from both ends of the world collaborate using open-source software, and, of course, the Global Web Marketing team at Lenovo cleans up the mess left behind by the sales team, creating a new form of customer service rarely — if ever — seen before.

The Background

I took advantage of a “limited time” offer from Lenovo and purchased a Thinkpad T61 online. That part was a smooth-sail. Apart from the fact that I was bundled with Window$ Vi$ta (I can hardly wait for the latest release of Gentoo Linux to come out — hopefully in a few days’ time. Until then, I’ll stick with the Ubuntu LiveCD), everything else seemed all right.

Point. Click. Pay.

Wait.

Wait some more.

While I was waiting for my laptop to arrive, I began to do some research (bad time to starting researching, after the fact that I had already purchased my laptop :P ). I heard a lot of horror stories about Lenovo Canada’s new supply-chain system. People’s orders were lost… delayed… the whole system was, as of Jan. 2008, a mess. At this point, it had been 2 weeks since I purchased the laptop.

I began to become slightly worried. The fact that Lenovo sent me an email notification of shipment without a UPS tracking code was concerning.

The Action

What is messed up about Lenovo Canada’s sales/support system? Well, apart from not providing me with a tracking code, the supposedly “support/info” number that they provided me with in their emails, 866-428-4465, is simply a “general information line” out-sourced to some call centre in India.  Everytime I called to ask about the status of my laptop, I was told to call 1-866-96-THINK (84465) instead. This 96-THINK number is the “official number” provided on their website. However, I couldn’t even connect to that number! What’s up with that? Each time I called, I was greeted with a friendly “beep… your call did not go through, please try your call again”. I even tried calling with through a long-distance number, to no avail.

All of the “horror stories” that I had heard were posted on the official Lenovo forum. I noticed that a forum administrator, Mark_Lenovo (Mark Hopkins), responded to a lot of order problems and timely resolved their issues.

I sent him a PM and explained the situation.

At the same time, I got in touch with David Churbuck, the Vice-President of Global Web Marketing at Lenovo. He was kind enough to post his personal cell number online on various forums and websites, offering help to us, the desperate Canadian customers.

I rang him up, explained my situation, and ended up explaining everything to him in an email. His response was swift and decisive: he replied the very next day, letting me know that he had passed my case on to Maria Marinos, Lenovo’s Director of Sales for Tele/E-Commerce. Maria then, equally quickly, passed my case onto Bonnie Ho (Team Lead – Americas Inbound Direct Sales Support).

There turned out to be a slight issue with my order after all. Bonnie jumped onto the case and explained to me that even though I provided my exact address to Lenovo at the point of purchase, UPS, somehow, could not find my address. I found out that my laptop then, on the second day of the third week since payment, sat in the UPS distributing centre in Richmond (persumably by the airport), lonely and scared.

I replied Bonnie with more details of my location, short of sending a Google Maps link.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

On the morning of May the 13th, the second day of the third week since payment, my laptop came knocking at my door.

Woohoo!

Ironically, at almost the same time, Mark replied me. Looks like the web marketing team is way too busy cleaning up the others’ mess.

(Legends say that the Lenovo web marketing team scour the blogsphere using Technorati!)

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