Leaving Zwift because of poor customer service

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#1

The product is interesting enough. It helps me ride indoors and remove the “why am I riding inside and chasing cartoons?” barrier. Living in California, riding inside makes me wonder if I would use Zwift enough. But, it helps me to get a workout in at night.

Overall, Zwift is good enough to keep paying USD 14.99. But, it’s not worth it because of how the company is managed.

  1. Where is that Zwift Runpod? Being out of stock long is like running an Italian restaurant without wine or bread. No excuse in 2021 that to have a supply chain problem.
  2. Keep it simple. Just tell the users to use the ANT+ sensors. Why mess around suggesting BLE sensors? Even the latest iPad Pro has difficulties with 3 sensors sometimes (Wahoo cadence/rpm, Polar hrm).
  3. Own it. Some customers have PCs, Androids, iPads. Make your trial offer consistent. Don’t blame Google Play or Apple this or that.
  4. The customer support department is like the Star Trek Borgs. No sympathy, empathy, and powerless to keep the customer happy. Learn from Amazon. I spend over $20K per year because they take care of me. Customer-centric, customer first. Ever heard of pennywise, pound foolish? Empower the CS to make things right.

Don’t run Zwift like some techies who ride with no business skills. It’s now about ranks and group rides. Build it to last. Your novelty “lead” as a virtual training tool is now a commodity. Must innovate and keep your customers.

I think Zwift can still make it. Good luck.

#2
  1. There is still a global pandemic going on, seriously affecting supply chains.
  2. BLE works better for a lot of people than ANT+
  3. Android, Apple and PC are not much different.
  4. Only thing you have right.

It’s more than ranks and group rides.

Enjoy the other platforms. I personally found them to not quite meet up to zwift BUT I do want strong competition

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#3

Actually I think he got 3 right aswell … as I read it .

I equate it to … if you support something , supportt it , dont push it as some half working feature and then leave it to fester , wrap it in some roadmap to nowhere , or blame the issues on the other side , Integrations are a partnership between two parties of course there might be genuine issues on either side, It is always a bad sign when both sides try to offload the issue to each other and then you know its not a good partnership.

I get it , Zwift want to get customers , so pushing out support for wide set of platforms is great for that , but at some point they might want to start moving to a platform that retains them .This needs a different level of maturity , deciding on what it wants to and cant invest in and support . rathier than just spreading it all so thin and stretching support (and the product i.e feature release velocity and well documented issues with releases) . It is a sign of a company’s maturity when this happens and I think Zwift need to start looking more at this .

There are plenty examples of companies in very similar space , sports fitness , who are taking the same approach , because its a fast growing sector it is possible to have a business always relying on enough new customers to make up for those who have moved on . Its a choice Zwift have to make . and of course any customer too based on what works for them or not . Ultimately when the sector itself is mature those who have gone for the high churn model will wither . Does it matter , not really , we as customer choose the best option at the time. Whilst I agree with the subject sentiment when I get fruestrated as I know many do , I am more inclined to stick around to try and motivate a change to where I would like it to be going , but I guess that is because the next level product isnt here yet (or is it :rofl: )

No where is a better example of this than Steering . They fanfare a feature that had great promise but its still stuck with pretty basic handling and I cant see any vision for it beyond just adding more and more integrations, when even the current ones dont work fully or are missing integration features users are asking for , to attract more and more users to invest in something only to find it was fun for a while but then that wanes because they dont really develop it .

And his last paragraph is an understandable plea and whether it is the case or not is certainly a widely held perception IMO

1 Like
#4

Around Christmas time, it took me over three months to be able to purchase a new bike that would normally be in stock pretty much permanently. It isn’t really fair to criticise supply chain issue with everything that the last 12 months have piled onto everyone.

Well, the Runpod you are wanting to get hold of works on Bluetooth and not ANT+, so …

Choice is good. I generally use ANT+ because I have some devices that only use that protocol, but my dongle is not working at the moment. I can, however, still use Zwift while I wait for a new one to arrive because my trainer also does Bluetooth. If it didn’t, I would be stuck unable to use it at all at the moment.

I get what you are saying here but, to be honest I have PCs, an iPad and an Android phone and I have no expectation that the same software work work/behave/perform exactly the same way on all of them.

It is also unreasonable to expect Zwift to take ownership of the entire process on Apple/Android when they are dealing with the requirement to work through the App/Playstore structures, which will always be different from dealing directly with users on PC and different across the two app stores.

I haven’t had to deal with Zwift support much in my three and a half years on the platform and have never had any problems when dealing with them.

Mileage clearly varies greatly on that one though … as this forum shows.

#5

I could add another four items. I think it comes down to poor management… leaders without any real corporate experience. For example, I received a “Your trial is ending in 9 KM…” message. This was the first message I received noting my account was in the free trial mode because reoccurring payment failed… in the middle of my training block. Why could they simply note that on the home screen before I started my training session? Plus, I received no email calling the problem to my attention. Then, I sign into chat to resolve and spend 41 minutes without a response from customer service. Poor execution after poor execution. After close to 5 years of membership, dealing with poor customer service, dropped connections, and zero sympathy from CS, I’m moving to Rouvy.