About nag screens
You want fries with that Ring Doorbell?
You went to a lot of trouble acquiring a customer.
When asked, the customer said, “No thanks” to the fries. Are you really going to keep asking for the next 20 days of the person who opted out, the person who wrote you asking to turn off the service, the person whose support email you answered five days later… do you really want to annoy that person? It probably doesn’t matter, right? It’s just one person, there are millions of potential customers. Just spend more money on marketing. It doesn’t work that way, though, because the already negative buzz about this product is going to be reinforced by answers to the question about that customer’s experience with the product.
Bottom line, I should have bought it on Amazon and been able to send it back. Why didn’t I? Because they didn’t have the Ring 2, a supposedly improved version. If this is improved, I’d hate to see the original. Like so many companies, Ring makes another error by simultaneously bragging about support and providing a slow and mostly incompetent version of that concept, both on Twitter and the phone. These companies are missing the point by hiring or training overly familiar glib Twitter posters that are the transparent fluff on the Internet. They probably think they’re doing a good job, and possibly with some hand-holding cases, they are. Starting a support conversation with “Hey, friend!” is an approach that would never be considered in real life at a service counter, yet, that’s exactly what T-Mobile “support” said when starting a conversation about a $100 difference of opinion.
Going back to the original topic of nag screens, don’t do this on paid products, even if the product is good. Don’t do this every day with a permanent orange stripe on the apps. Maybe a balloon, once in a while, but not all the time. Or how about that universal email with the unsubscribe link? Taking advantage of the captive audience of the required app is just not cool. In this particular case, the nag stripe simply reminds us every day that the decision to buy this product was flawed. Caveat emptor, not enough thought went into this purchase. Sadly, I’ll be reminded of it every time the doorbell rings!
