Hard to know if Steve Jobs ever experienced customer service from AT&T but if he did, one imagines he got more out of them than the rest of us. In trying to activate my new iPhone 4s I received the standard delays from AT&T that many have reported but with a few more wrinkles along the way that speak loudly to the poor user experience design underlying that company’s service operation.
First, the instructions I received were wrong. My phone, ordered through the mail, arrived supposedly set up for me but the screen I was directed to online for activation seemed to imagine something else entirely. It asked me to enter two multi-digit ICCID and IMIE numbers, one of which I was advised to locate by sliding open the “back of the phone to reveal it”….huh? I’ve seen people do some awful things to phones but sliding the back off an iphone is not one of them. Never fear, there was a sticker on the box with the relevant codes, but somehow that innovation never made it to the web design team. Heaven help anyone who tried to follow those instructions.
Number entered (spacing and layout could be improved here), I got the standard “we will send you an email when your phone is activated” msg along with the advise to continue using my old one until then. They also listed a number to call if I had not been activated within 4 hours. The trouble with this was that after 4 hours, the hotline for help would not be open according to their listed hours. Oops. Turns out, I was in good company, there’s a gaziilion videos on YouTube and posters on various forums complaining about waits up to 30 hours (who’s got that kind of time?) to receive activation.
12 hours later, still unactivated, I decided to call the hotline only for that number to have disappeared from my laptop screen, replaced by a generic ‘waiting’ message and spinning icon. No problem, I logged into my ATT account for live chat assistance whereupon I was led to a screen that told me to click a link “below” to start the chat. Oddly, there was no link, neither below nor above, and random clicking around the screen like one of Seligman’s chickens in a learned helplessness experiment gave me no joy, but it did confirm Seligman was onto something!
OK, desperation drove me to call the helpline (I hate calling some disembodied voice from who-knows-where anytime, never mind when in need) but wait, my older iPhone was now deactivated (because I had initiated activation of my new one, naturally). Quaint as it might be, I have a land line so after giving the same identification details several times over first to the voice menu and then a real live human (I think) I was told to hold on, they would be activating my phone “right now”. Now I can’t speak for everyone but that phrase means something specific to me. 10 mins later, old-fashioned phone pressed to ear, still no activation of sleek new one I mutter my dissatisfaction. The clearly frustrated voice at the other end disappeared to ask some other “expert” for help only to return and suggest I take the SIM card from my old 3 and put it into the new phone. Why would that work? Don’t ask. My protestations that these cards were different sizes and would not fit fell on deaf ears and I was told if that was my attitude (not quite those words but you get my meaning) I should just go to a store for assistance! Ah yes, the very store experience I had eschewed when purchasing due to the promise of easy home delivery and set up.
It being 8.30am, no store was open (and did I mention no iphone was working either?) but I called on the stroke of 9am and the first voice that answered told me “we’ve been hearing this problem a lot” and recommended I check that the new SIM card’s number really was the same as the number on card installed. Apparently it ain’t always so and you can imagine the confusion that causes. Cut to the chase — I checked, it was, but re-seating the SIM card anew, magic happened and activation was ensured (Oh Seligman, so this is how superstitions really get ingrained).
So what can we conclude from all this. Dodgy card fitting? Unlikely. Coincidence in timing? Even less so. A satisfied AT&T customer? No. Pity the person without a spare phone and time in the morning to get it all going. Yes the new iPhone design is great, yes it is popular, but an information artifact is meaningful only in use, not in some abstract physical aesthetic category that wins awards. As a system, the iPhone/AT&T experience is a painful reminder of how easily interaction breaks down and how little some companies really think of their customers when trying to repair them. Apple, you are not blameless here. Is there an award for that?