In Services Marketing literature and research, it’s widely understood that even the best service companies inevitably make service design and delivery mistakes. When these service failures happen, great service companies are able to recover and strengthen customer loyalty and satisfaction through the principles of Service Recovery.

Best-of-breed companies like Apple and Amazon teach us how to create lasting customer advocates when things go wrong.

But less is written about the worst-of-breed companies who teach us what not to do -- whose service experiences and dysfunctional processes are so demeaning that they can’t help but create lasting “brand terrorists” out of their own customers, by design.

My recent firsthand experience with Huawei offers insight into avoiding the delivery of a worst-of-breed service experience.

My Huawei saga

Six weeks ago, I decided to get an in-warranty Nexus 6P phone repaired.

When my Huawei Nexus 6P phone started malfunctioning and crashing constantly, I finally reached out to Huawei. They sent a shipping label — and along with it, also e-mailed me a second shipping label for another guy I’ve never met. (30 minutes work)

They also notified me that I would need to obtain a second phone, as it could take as long as a month. I didn't have one, so I had to research, buy, and ultimately configure a Nextbit Robin. (8 hours work to find and set up a cheap Android phone, and $130.)

When Huawei sent my “repaired” phone back after a week or two, they sent it to the wrong address. When I called them to correct their error, their support staff refused to contact UPS. Instead, they insisted that I contact UPS myself -- even though UPS only allows shippers to correct the address. So all UPS could do was to let me reject the misdirected shipment. (30 minutes)

A week or so later, Huawei shipped the phone back to me a second time. I opened the box, only to discover someone else’s dented, damaged phone, to replace the pristinely maintained product I had kept in a case and screen protector.

I sent an outraged, angry e-mail to Huawei, clearly stating I expected a new condition replacement phone sent immediately. They did not respond at all. (30 minutes)

When I finally called Huawei, they promised it would be corrected, and someone would follow up with me. Nobody ever did. (15 minutes)

When I called Huawei again several days later, they again promised someone would get back to me — and this time within 2 hours. Nobody ever did. (15 minutes)

When I called them yet again to ask what would be done to fix it, their support staff had no idea what I was talking about. They promised to follow up within 30 minutes. Need I mention that nobody ever did? (15 minutes).

A week later, I receive an incredulous e-mail from Huawei that they were returning the damaged phone they inexplicably sent me, unfixed. They refused to fix it because of the “physical damage/modification” and “expired warranty”… in an e-mail confusingly titled “A Repaired Unit has been Shipped Out”.

Although their support staff told me not to worry - that the e-mail was simply an automated message - UPS’s tracking system made it clear that the package was being shipped back to me. (30 minutes)

Luckily Huawei, yet again, shipped my phone to the wrong address. As a result, Huawei's support call — which took place 40 minutes after the promised time — involved my sitting in on a 20 minute conference call with a Mexican employee and UPS to fix the shipping address. During the call, he gave the wrong UPS tracking number, and had to backtrack. Needless to say, UPS doesn’t actually need the recipient on the phone, for a shipper to fix their mailing address. (45 minutes)

Incredibly, Huawei’s staff literally could not answer what phone is actually being shipped to me. Is it the same dented phone shipped back to me in error? Or is it in fact a corrected unit? Even Huawei doesn’t know.

I’ll find out tomorrow. So this may only be the first chapter of my Huawei support nightmare.

3 strategies to avoid Huawei’s worst-of-breed service

It’s impossible to distill everything Huawei did wrong into a small set of principles. But I'll try.

1. Be accountable for what you say

When Huawei promised to call the customer back the first time, they didn’t.

The second time, they didn’t. The third time, they didn’t.

The fourth time, they were 40 minutes late. And, incredibly, they don’t even know what they’ve sent back to me in the mail - despite their assurances for me not to worry.

Huawei established itself as an untrustworthy company from the start of my support nightmare. Whether their problem is a lack of organized CRM systems, or a culture of non-accountability to customers, is unclear. But the customer impact is toxic.

If an employee had such a poor track record, you’d fire him. When a company has such a poor track record, why would a customer retain their services going forward?

2. When it’s your company that screwed up, don’t gratuitously waste your customers’ time fixing it

This interaction solely occurred because Huawei sold me a phone that broke. My sole need for support was due to their own quality problems. From a customer vantage point, they are the entity that screwed up.

And yet, every step of the way involved Huawei punishing the customer for audaciously expecting the product they paid good money for, to actually get fixed. When Huawei started making mistakes left and right - shipping packages to the wrong addresses, or sending someone else’s damaged phone instead of my fixed phone - they didn’t internally escalate the matter and take accountability. Instead, they repeatedly applied social pressure on me as a customer, constantly imploring me to be patient, and to treat their service recovery as a well-intentioned and reasonable effort to fix my problem, when it was anything but.

Customers judge companies against the best-of-class service providers. Had I bought an iPhone, I would have literally handed Apple a defective phone, and walked out 15 minutes later with a working phone.

In contrast, Huawei’s expectation of customers tolerating a 6 week wait - including about 2 full days’ worth of aggravation dealing with their dysfunctional organization (not to mention paying the extra $130 to be stuck 6 weeks with a cheap Android phone) - is woefully unrealistic.

3. Proactively look for early service recovery opportunities

Huawei had every opportunity to make things right with the customer.

For example, when they sent a damaged phone to the wrong address, a top-tier customer service oriented company would have promptly apologized, and immediately shipped a newer model replacement phone, and salvaged the customer. A medium-tier service company would have at least assigned a personal contact responsible for ensuring that the remainder of the process for replacing the existing phone was friction-free.

In Huawei’s case, employees were clearly not empowered to take appropriate steps when things went wrong — other than feeble and empty copy-and-pasted apologies. Huawei could have used a tracking system for identifying and proactively correcting customer service failures. For example, customers who exceed a threshold of complaint tickets or time period could be automatically escalated.

In my case, at this point, Huawei poisoned their customer relationship so deeply, that it is essentially unsalvageable. The only thing that would get me to ever consider another Huawei product would literally be an in-depth apology phone call from a C-level executive and a brand new phone. Yeah, right.

How Huawei pays the consequences for service dysfunction

When phones are replaced every 2-3 years, companies like Huawei will inevitably pay the price for their customer mistreatment. For example, nearly every recent Amazon review of the once-stellar Nexus 6P is a scathing 1-star summary detailing Huawei’s terrible customer service.

On Reddit, warnings about Huawei’s terrible service also abound, with countless customers saying they’ll “never buy Huawei again”.

These are leading indicators of an impending brand equity issue, should Huawei wish to continue selling higher-priced products where durability and service is expected. At some point, Huawei’s bad service reputation will likely hinder their ability to sell products in the premium price range to a North American audience. As well it should.