No. 147 What is supportive care?

Hello, this is ST.
This week is already Risshu (the start of autumn), so according to the calendar, it is autumn. Although the heat is still severe, autumn is just around the corner, which makes me feel sad and sentimental.
I have started using physical AI little by little since last week. My motto is: if you are going to talk about something or share your expertise, experience it yourself first! I would like to write about physical AI someday.

Now, this time, I would like to talk about support.
I use a Huawei smartwatch for my daily sleep and health checks, as well as for checking hiking routes.
I wear it 24 hours a day, even when I sleep, except when I take a bath.

Regarding that Huawei smartwatch, last month, when I tried to import a map and a GPX file I created myself the day before a hike, a problem occurred where I could not do so.
I tried to isolate the cause myself, and tried various things such as initializing the smartwatch, reinstalling the Huawei Health app on my iPhone, and recreating the GPX file, but the problem was not resolved.
Therefore, I finally decided to contact Huawei support.

Unlike some companies where it is difficult to find a support contact on the web, I found the contact information without any trouble and sent an email.
I sent the email in the evening, and I received a reply the next day.
After several exchanges, it turned out to be a problem on Huawei's server side, but in any case, it was resolved, and now I can display hiking map contour lines and load GPX files for hiking routes without any problems.

After finishing the series of exchanges with support and resolving the issue, it was considered closed.

And here is the point: one week after the exchange ended, I received another email from Huawei support.
The content was, "Are you able to use it without any particular problems since then?" Furthermore, they said, "Since we caused you inconvenience this time, we will send you a Huawei tote bag as a small gift."

Huawei has been strengthening its appeal to users by hiring Takuya Kimura for product commercials over the past year or so, but I never thought their support would be this excellent.

The reason is that recently, even with domestic companies, it is often difficult to find an email address or phone number for a support desk when you are in trouble. They are hidden deep in the website, or you are made to go around in circles through FAQs.
And when you finally make an inquiry, if it is by phone, it is only an automated voice guidance, or if you send an email, the response is just bureaucratic and contains only information that is already in the FAQ.

In such a situation, I felt a sense of stability in Huawei's support this time, with its speed and politeness, that I would not expect from a Chinese company.

I am a person who uses products and services quite hard and deeply, so I often interact with various support teams, and in the last year or two, the support I thought was excellent was Apple and Amazon. And this time, Huawei.
Conversely, the support I thought was terrible was Company M, a certain software company, and Company D, a cloud service company.

I understand that they want to avoid putting effort into support, do not want to spend money on it, and want to avoid complainers, but for users, support is a reliance when something happens while using a service or product.
Using services or products from companies with comprehensive support is one of the important points for me.

Have you ever had any experiences where you were troubled or helped by the support of a service or product?

I don't mind at all if companies use AI for support, but looking at Huawei's response this time, I truly felt that whether it is AI or human, it should be support that is close to the user.
Yes, of course, the fact that I am going to receive a Huawei tote bag is also a big factor (laughs).

See you next week! JUST ROCK IT!