Case Study at a Glance
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The Customer’s Requirement
One customer came to us saying that he wanted a PS5 for a few days only. He wasn’t interested in paying for the console’s price that he would play with, just for a couple of weeks every year during his holidays. That’s a fairly common scenario among Kolkata gamers: They have a craving for console gaming, but they don’t have a reason to purchase a console outright because they don’t have time to use it at all.
The requirement was particular. He wanted the console to come equipped with some 1-2 specific games, as well as a second controller for a friend to play with him in split screen. He rented for a set of four days and with this time frame, each day is a day of significance. One day’s absence is one quarter of the booking.
What Went Wrong
The console was delivered on time and the hardware was as promised with no fault, no delay, no complaints. It was not a matter of the quality of the materials, but of something else. The games were not even completely downloaded and installed before leaving our premises, so the customer would have to download the game himself after the Console arrived. This took up a whole day of his four day rental on his domestic broadband connection, and the modern game installs are now usually tens of gigabytes.
Maths was easy and awkward from his point of view. He had bought a certain number of days and one of these had been all wasted in downloading. It was not the hardware that was the problem. It wasn’t the time of delivery that was to blame. The problem lies in the preparation. That is the lesson here, and it’s the lesson that our process change below is based on.
How We Responded
We didn’t have to make any decisions about it with our support team. After the customer had brought it up, we extended his rental for another 2 days for free. No altered invoice, no adjustment of the security deposit, no forms to be completed, no discussion of whether or not the complaint was warranted. He recovered the day he lost and as a gesture of good will, he got one extra day for free.
What We Changed
The change took place internally. We updated our pre-dispatch checklist for console rentals, from scratch. Before a PS5 leaves our facility now, our tech team checks with the customer what games he will be playing, downloads and installs them ahead of time, applies any pending updates to them and runs each of them to make sure they’re running smoothly. Now the customer gets a console that is truly ready at the time of unboxing; not just on time.
The Outcome / Customer Review
The customer proceeded to leave a public review of compensation as fair and handling more than decent. We would prefer not to have to pay anyone to begin with but a rental company is evaluated as much on its conduct when things go wrong, as on its conduct when things go right.
What This Experience Taught Us:
This case is a good one to keep in sight, for the reason that it’s not a story in which everything went right. It’s a story of a difference between when it is delivered and when it is ready – a difference that can be easily missed within the company, but is a whole experience from the short-term renter’s perspective. In the long run it was more important to correct the individual booking than to correct the checklist that allowed the gap to occur in the first place. That’s the change that safeguards and improves the experience of the subsequent customer in future, not merely this one.
