TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan has a reputation for good customer service, and this user's recent experience confirms that.
It is not a fairytale that starts with “Once upon a time." Despite the negative comments from some foreigners on social media, there are Taiwanese companies that provide good service.
In this case, the scooter rental company, GoShare, came to the rescue. Any dedicated user of Taipei’s scooter rentals will attest to the ease of the service of most of the companies, but GoShare's 50cc-equivalent electric scooter is usually abundantly located and agile for a single rider running errands or just getting to places.
All of the scooter rental companies make the rental system simple with a mobile phone app. With a mobile phone in hand, open the app, find the scooter, sometimes a bit of a walk depending on peak use times, and click to reserve it. Then click go, helmet on, battery engine engaged, and just like that, the ride commences, all in just a few minutes.
The reverse procedure applies to the return process, and usually, within seconds, the user receives an email receipt. This is how it works at least 99% of the time.
Then, as with almost any system, comes the inevitable hiccup in the process. In this case, upon returning the GoShare scooter, an “error message” that the return could not be completed appeared, accompanied by a polite suggestion to try again soon.
Trying again soon is not something a rental rider wants to hear. The ride was finished.
The error messages kept coming and no manner of “trying again soon” resulted in concluding the hire. Pricing naturally relates to the amount of time the scooter was used and, in this case, an eight-minute ride was quickly ticking over to 15 minutes and looking to go far beyond.
Mild fear set in, and then a “Help” button was located. “Help” was duly pressed and whilst expectations were a bit low, given the online nature of the situation, and the user's limited Mandarin language ability, within minutes a bilingual message was shown.
The GoShare “help” operator wasted no time in ascertaining the issues. The location of the scooter was confirmed to be within the geographic zone, following a request for a photo of the scooter, its license plate, and street address.
A series of suggestions were then made. Shift the scooter a little. No good. Rock the scooter back and forth, although not sure what this suggestion hoped to achieve, but again, no good. As instructed, the scooter's electric motor mode was re-engaged, but still, nothing worked.
This exchange of suggestions and resulting failures was conducted very politely. Patient and prompt bilingual responses were provided.
After about 15 minutes, the helpline finally decided to shut the scooter down remotely. All in all, this meant an eight-minute ride had now gone past 45 minutes, and concern kicked in that any refund process would be tedious or even impossible.
However, all fears were pacified, as a number of options were immediately provided which confirmed the actual riding time of eight minutes and the time spent trying to solve the return issue prior to the remote shutdown.
The options included online coupons for the time spent resolving the issue or a refund via credit card. A selection was made, it was confirmed, and a very relieved consumer was able to continue with the evening.
This consumer was then left with the sense that GoShare understood and valued its clients. In the opinion of this user, GoShare provides a quality rental service, and it also clearly provides quality professional training for its online staff.
The normal reliability of the GoShare scooter, the ease of its use, and the quality of customer service at a time of difficulty have only increased this user’s brand loyalty.
Yes, good customer service does exist in Taiwan and kudos to GoShare.
