Consumer advocate, David Horowitz, recently sited an interesting study. A Dutch scientist found that 50% of all “malfunctioning” products returned to stores by customers worked perfectly. Typically a customer will struggle to get a device working for about 20 minutes.   After that they give up and return it to the store.
  
   Product designers, are you paying attention? Not only does the company and the vendor lose the sale, they probably take the customer out of the market or at least steer them away from their brand.
  
   Obviously, the customer experience should have been designed into the product. But, here’s an opportunity for a vendor to turn a problem into an opportunity to serve the customer. Recognize the problem and help the customer rather than just accepting the return. Better yet, have a non-expert employee try to figure out how to use new product and write your own “branded” instructions.

Posted by John Todor on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 5:25 am.