Why a broken Sony strengthens the brand.

I’ve known plenty of people that called themselves ‘Sony men’. That is to say, they bought in to the brand in a big way, particularly years ago. They’d only buy Sony hi-fi gear or their TV had to be a Sony. Personally, I’ve never considered myself a Sony man, but you’ve really got to respect the strength of the brand that makes someone want to only buy Sony products.

I discovered one of the methods they use to maintain that brand strength.

A slight contradiction here, but I’ve always owned Playstations. I had two of the first version (one got stolen), and two of the PS2s (one scratched discs until they were unusable) and Father Christmas kindly bought me a PS3 this year.

So here’s the lesson; the PS3 was bought from Amazon and yesterday, it just stopped reading discs altogether. After searching a few forums, I established that it’s probably a problem with the laser. I called Amazon, who took a whole bunch of details and then said I needed a reference number from Sony and gave me their telephone number.

The number turns out to be a generic one, and there’s another, dedicated number to speak with the Playstation team. A tiny bit irritated, I redial the Playstation team.

Another guy takes a few details about the fault, I’ve already tried all the options he suggests, so he registers the unit and then simply says:

“That’s fine. We’ll have our courier deliver a replacement to you tomorrow and collect the faulty one at the same time”. No repackaging the box with the accessories and cables - just the unit on its own.

What a pleasant surprise. No grief whatsoever! I really don’t mind stuff breaking down if that’s the service I’m going to get.

The alternative version of this story, full of grief and endless form-filling, tests, paying for shipping it back, being without the unit for days or weeks, would almost certainly have affected a decision to buy the next generation of Playstation. As it happened, the outcome of it breaking has actually made me even more likely to buy Sony again.

It’s a sad state of affairs when this level of service is extraordinary - surely this should be the standard level of service anyway?

So the lesson is this: your customer service doesn’t have to be extraordinary, it just needs to fulfil (or exceed) expectations - and you’ll have a customer for life.