After a three-day service failure and inadequate public relations management that left millions of BlackBerry users hot and bothered last week, Research in Motion (RIM) has taken steps to appease its angry customers.
Sweating in the aftermath of what turned out to be its worst outage ever, BlackBerry maker RIM has taken public steps to “make it up” to its “loyal customers” by offering its 70 million-odd client base $100 (about R780) worth of premium applications for free.
Following this announcement yesterday, the embattled smartphone developer invited the media to take part in a teleconference with its MD for global sales and regional marketing, Patrick Spence.
In the unprecedented outage that started last Monday, at around 11am, millions of BlackBerry users were unable to browse the Web, use instant messaging or access Internet services (BIS), including e-mail. Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa were subject to the outage for three days, while Latin America and Canada experienced the outage for a day and a half, and the US for one day. While service levels returned to normal on Thursday, RIM failed to respond to customers and the media in the interim.
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said yesterday the company was “committed to providing the high standard of reliability” that its customers expect, and that it was taking immediate steps to prevent further service disruptions. The free apps, says RIM, are “an expression of appreciation for [its customers'] patience during the recent service disruptions”.
The free apps will become available on BlackBerry App World starting from 19 October and will be available until 31 December. The complete selection of premium apps available for free download, says RIM, will become available over a four-week period and include, among others, Sims 3, Bejeweled, Texas Hold'em Poker 2 and Nobex Radio Premium.
“RIM's enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free technical support. Current customers will be offered a complimentary one-month extension of their existing technical support contract, and customers who do not currently have a technical support contract will be offered a one-month trial of RIM's BlackBerry technical support services - enhanced support - free of charge. Additional details about the programme and information about how to register will be available at www.blackberry.com/enterpriseoffer.”
Rimming with confidence
The media teleconference at 1pm yesterday, said Spence, was RIM's way of “making sure we keep everyone in the loop as a result of the issues last week”.
While the slated company paid dearly for the outage and PR blunder as far as its reputation goes, the offering of free apps will not pose any material cost to RIM, says Spence.
As far as the support from its customers, investors and stakeholders goes, Spence says RIM remains confident that it has their continued support. “We are always monitoring how our business is going and are confident that we will continue as usual. That is why we are focused on showing people what we are doing and showing appreciation. This is always going to be a competitive environment, but based on the support we have, I think we are in a good position. We just have to continue to earn the support on a daily basis.”
Wide of the mark
However, comments on micro-blogging Web site Twitter and social networking site Facebook paint a slightly different picture, with no sign of BlackBerry users being swayed by RIM's attempt at regaining favour.
One member says: “Is this a Beginning of END of Blackberry Era? Can RIM get away with free apps, support offer?” (sic)
Others add dubiously: “offering free apps as an apology for outage last week, I don't think this is going to keep me from leaving.” (sic)
“Not so sure that free poker apps are the best way for RIM to apologize for the BlackBerry outage.” (sic)
A disappointed Facebook member says: “Mmm, fat lot of help that is especially when your apps downloads do not work and the best solution is to send your phone away for 2 weeks and you are without connectivity during that time...” (sic)
Spence said RIM has learnt a lesson from last week's fiasco, and the company will “leave no stone unturned” to find the root cause of the outage, as well as to ensure that history does not repeat itself.
Asked if the ignominy caused by the BlackBerry breakdown would accelerate change within RIM going forward, Spence said: “I can assure you we are working on software and the Playbook 2, and this focus will continue. The two main areas we need to concentrate on now, following the outage, are the cause of the failure in the first place, and our communication with the public and media.”
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