Subscribe Signing up with Vodacom for an iPhone: it worked, but only just. Next to Apple’s amazing user experience design, Vodacom’s service design looks distinctly shabby. Sorting it out would benefit customers and shareholders.
A “dancing bear” is Alan Cooper’s term for a piece of technology that gets accepted because it does something valuable – not because it does something well. The miracle is that the bear dances. But if you needed a dancer, you wouldn’t hire a bear.
The Diamond RIO. It played music: Amazing! But it was a pain.
A classic example. The Diamond Rio: dancing bear. iPod: Prima ballerina.
Service design is another form of experience design. And it can have dancing bears too.
See the bear dance
So low are our expectations of South African mobile service providers, that we applaud when they manage the absolute basics of their business: connecting new customers to their service so they can make money out of them. A service provider that actually tried to provide a real customer experience? We can bearly imagine it.
The actual Vodacom experience (as braved by my wife, Debre):
Continue reading Vodacom service: Experience the dancing bear →
