The most infuriating customer and support experience of 2012, thus far, easily goes to Nuance Software. I spent half my day purchasing Dragon Naturally Speaking and unsuccessfully downloading the software while talking to two separate support teams (DigitalRiver and Nuance) both of which blamed each other. Below is the LinkedIn Mail I sent to the GM of the product.
Robert,
I ruptured a ligament in my hand recently and underwent surgery last Friday. Since I spend a great deal of time on my keyboard I decided to purchase Dragon Nat Speaking.
At first your customer experience was positive, I was greeted by a live chat on your website and received a phone call that aided me in placing my order. This was appreciated given that I can only type with one hand. However, the experience quickly went down hill from there. Upon purchasing I received an email with my order number and an URL to the DigitalRiver powered store. My initial attempt to download the 2.5 GB file was unsuccessful (yes, I’m wired and on broadband). I then attempted the download with a download manager, but failed and was informed I exceeded the number of allowable downloads in the process.
I contacted Nuance support, they directed me to DigitalRiver, I ended up in what I presume to be an outsourced call center in India. The scripted support agents in India were ineffective and quite frankly would be an embarrassment to my company. The DigtalRiver store experience is embarrassingly bad http://www.flickr.com/photos/roebot/7245132810/in/photostream (case in point). The overall customer support is too something I would be ashamed of.
In short, I have now spent several hours (on hold alone) of my day simply trying to download a file and working with both Nuance and DigitalRiver support. Nuance has washed their hands of any responsibility. DigitalRiver has informed me that I have already downloaded it as many times as they can allow (30) and washed their hands.
I would appreciate it if someone shared this information with me about my company were we to perform so inadequately, which is why I am informing you.
Not only should DigitalRiver be removed as the vendor for their eCommerce, Nuance should assign a Customer Experience Officer to holistically improve their entirely broken experience.
Can anyone recommend a good alternative to Dragon? Perhaps the Customer Experience is so atrocious because there aren’t any?
Aaron Fulkerson 