Gordon-TurnerSony Employee Shows Excellence in Customer Service.
A heart warming story about present day customer service happens about as often as a snowball surviving a supernova; so this should make you smile.
I found this story over at Gamespot .
A PlayStation fan, Peter Byrne, who suffers from Cerebral Palsy wrote to Sony to complain about the Dual Shock 4 controler design. He explained that gameplay was being ruined because every time his left hand brushed the touchpad on the controller, it paused their game. You can read the story in this gamer's own words in this Facebook post .
Well, that message seomehow arrived with Alex Nawabi who works in PlayStation Retail Marketing. Alex decided that he needed to do something, so he replied to Peter and told him he was working on a solution for him. Then he personally broke down several DS4 controllers to constuct a custom controller for Peter. This custom controller disables the touchpad and replaces it with a button on the back of the controller. This was the first time he'd attempted any project of this sort, but he went ahead, and sent the modified DS4 controler to Peter.
Alex attached a message indicating that he wasn't sure how long the controller would last since it was custom rebuilt, and obviously out of warranty. He also said that he was working on a second one, just in case the first one broke. Alex says in his message;
"The Email you sent definitely struck a chord within… It killed me to hear how something you used to enjoy thoroughly was being ruined because of our new controller design."
Peter says, "I honestly got choked up reading the letter as I did not expect anything like this to happen,".
PS4 has many accessibility settings now, including the ability to remak buttons. Gamers with special needs can disable, or remap certain functions to make things work better for them.
This story ought to be reprinted and pinned to the cube wall of every Sony customer relations agent.
Thank you Mr Alex Nawabi, you went far above and beyond to help a gamer in need, and showed what excellent customer service is. Need is most certainly the mother of invention.
Related Game(s): PlayStation 4
saw this a couple days ago and read the post the customer made and it honestly made me a little misty eyed
What a nice Private Event between these two lads. Good job to Alex!
Instantly, I saw a comment of someone downplaying this as the usual PR, 1/2 of cases possibly fake, etc. Hah.
I'd actually like them to implement the additional button on all DS4s.
Either way, this was an awesome story, the Sony employee, Alex Nawabi deservse a raise, and possibly a position in whatever product development team(s) they have, since he took the initiative in a way that reminds me of how part of Sony's new product R&D in Japan likes to operate
This may be off topic but your comment reminded me of a particular practise in Chinese medicine, where a doctor would not get paid if the patient remained sick. In other words, the doctor was paid to keep their patients healthy. (I think this is still practised in some asian countries like China, Vietnam, Japan etc.)
Now contrast this with the medical model we have in the west where it literally profits off of the ills of people. It's become just another business looking to sell it's chemical based products, and it doesn't really 'care' about the well-being of it's patients. (and perhaps only ever will if it could sell more product)
The system we live under rarely provides a healthy incentive to help another human being (unless it happens to line up with a financial incentive).
That's why we need more people like the one mentioned in the article. People who are willing go that extra mile to help a fellow being, ideally with no strings attached (or money).
This a good will of a private individual, not a 'PlayStation Employee'. I seriously doubt he had to go that far to help the guy, but he did out of his own free will.
That says more about the individual than it does about the customer service company.
With respect, you're trying to hard to be cynical. All customerservice is a combination of people and procedure. Poor customer service happens when your people give no discretionary effort and only follow procedure tothe letter. Good customer service happens when your people supply their discretionary effort, and apply procedure intelligently. Excellence happens when your peopleareinvested enough in their job to go above and beyond, which is what happened here.
Be cynical all you like, you'll get very little in the way of goodwill and discretionary effort.
Yes I agree with you Highlander, it's going above and beyond that prescribed procedure that gives rise to excellent customer service. If procedure was the only important thing, then everything should just be automated/computer driven (which is happening more and more it seems…)
I was being a little pessimistic yes, but what I wanted to emphasise was that, the employee 'had' to take the matter personally. Obviously, PlayStation wouldn't give a damn about the disabled individual (unless it somehow worked out as a marketing thing to boost their image/in this case I think it 'accidentally' did so).
The point is, the individual should take full credit for he did & the company should be criticised for not considering this in their 'procedures'.
Love it.
Well that's great for him personally, but what about everyone else who may have the same or other type of special needs?
A better solution would be to tell the Sony OS development team to implement options to disable for example the touch pad for people like him, or other things like disable the friggin light for everyone who would like to do that…
That's a solution that would help everyone, and take minimum effort for Sony as well..
I believe that they have already done this since you can remap the controller on the PS4. I don't think you can disable the light, but I think you can remap even the touchpad to a different function.
This story appears to have happened before the accessibility options for the PS4 were enhanced, I think Alex Nawabi even makes mention of that.
Here's the quote I was thinking of;
"Please keep in mind that the Research and Development team at PlayStation is filled with some absolutely astounding individuals who wake up every day and try to come up with a solution for everyone.
What I did only works for a single individual and it should not undermine their work in any way. I cannot stress this enough. Without them, we wouldn't even be close to what we are today. If you're not aware, they've recently added more accessibility settings that let you remap buttons to help with a large portion of needs. Their team members are the true MVPs."
Last edited by TheHighlander on 4/5/2016 11:44:28 AM
I'd actually like them to implement the additional button on all DS4s.
Either way, this was an awesome story, the Sony employee, Alex Nawabi deservse a raise, and possibly a position in whatever product development team(s) they have, since he took the initiative in a way that reminds me of how part of Sony's new product R&D in Japan likes to operate
What a nice Private Event between these two lads. Good job to Alex!
Instantly, I saw a comment of someone downplaying this as the usual PR, 1/2 of cases possibly fake, etc. Hah.
saw this a couple days ago and read the post the customer made and it honestly made me a little misty eyed
With respect, you're trying to hard to be cynical. All customerservice is a combination of people and procedure. Poor customer service happens when your people give no discretionary effort and only follow procedure tothe letter. Good customer service happens when your people supply their discretionary effort, and apply procedure intelligently. Excellence happens when your peopleareinvested enough in their job to go above and beyond, which is what happened here.
Be cynical all you like, you'll get very little in the way of goodwill and discretionary effort.
This a good will of a private individual, not a 'PlayStation Employee'. I seriously doubt he had to go that far to help the guy, but he did out of his own free will.
That says more about the individual than it does about the customer service company.
Love it.
Yes I agree with you Highlander, it's going above and beyond that prescribed procedure that gives rise to excellent customer service. If procedure was the only important thing, then everything should just be automated/computer driven (which is happening more and more it seems…)
I was being a little pessimistic yes, but what I wanted to emphasise was that, the employee 'had' to take the matter personally. Obviously, PlayStation wouldn't give a damn about the disabled individual (unless it somehow worked out as a marketing thing to boost their image/in this case I think it 'accidentally' did so).
The point is, the individual should take full credit for he did & the company should be criticised for not considering this in their 'procedures'.
I believe that they have already done this since you can remap the controller on the PS4. I don't think you can disable the light, but I think you can remap even the touchpad to a different function.
This story appears to have happened before the accessibility options for the PS4 were enhanced, I think Alex Nawabi even makes mention of that.
Here's the quote I was thinking of;
"Please keep in mind that the Research and Development team at PlayStation is filled with some absolutely astounding individuals who wake up every day and try to come up with a solution for everyone.
What I did only works for a single individual and it should not undermine their work in any way. I cannot stress this enough. Without them, we wouldn't even be close to what we are today. If you're not aware, they've recently added more accessibility settings that let you remap buttons to help with a large portion of needs. Their team members are the true MVPs."
Last edited by TheHighlander on 4/5/2016 11:44:28 AM
This may be off topic but your comment reminded me of a particular practise in Chinese medicine, where a doctor would not get paid if the patient remained sick. In other words, the doctor was paid to keep their patients healthy. (I think this is still practised in some asian countries like China, Vietnam, Japan etc.)
Now contrast this with the medical model we have in the west where it literally profits off of the ills of people. It's become just another business looking to sell it's chemical based products, and it doesn't really 'care' about the well-being of it's patients. (and perhaps only ever will if it could sell more product)
The system we live under rarely provides a healthy incentive to help another human being (unless it happens to line up with a financial incentive).
That's why we need more people like the one mentioned in the article. People who are willing go that extra mile to help a fellow being, ideally with no strings attached (or money).
Well that's great for him personally, but what about everyone else who may have the same or other type of special needs?
A better solution would be to tell the Sony OS development team to implement options to disable for example the touch pad for people like him, or other things like disable the friggin light for everyone who would like to do that…
That's a solution that would help everyone, and take minimum effort for Sony as well..