Adventures in Awesome Customer Service: FLOTE Your Tablet Edition

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When I reviewed the FLOTE m2 Tablet Stand I referred to it as “The Maserati of Tablet Stands”, and I meant it. The m2 is a work of functional art that I use on a daily basis. Now Dave  has shown that he not only makes great products but also understands how to give amazing customer service.

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Here’s our video review.

The FLOTE m2 is an amazing product. It comes in both a floor and a tablet model and, thanks to its innovative tablet gripping mechanism, works with pretty much any tablet. It is not as simple as it sounds since different tablets need to be held differently. For example, the iPad mini is long enough to be held securely when gripped at the top and bottom, but narrow enough that a side to side grip is not going to work.

FLOTE Hands Free Tablet Stands for iPad Kindle eReaders1

In a similar manner the first four generations of the iPad work best when the sides are gripped.

Elegant Thoughtful Precise

As it turned out, the iPad air is narrow enough that a side to side grip doesn’t give a secure enough grip. I noticed this immediately, but didn’t give it much thought. The company did however, and FLOTE Your Tablet emailed all customers and reviewers who currently have one of the tablet stands to let them know the grip might not be as secure as they expected. Then they went further.

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They developed replacement tips for the FLOTE Cradle grip that would add enough thickness and protection to make the holder compatible with the iPad air.

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Then they went further still; they let us each know that replacement tips would be shipped for free as soon as they were produced. They kept us updated on the progress of designing and producing the new tips and, sure enough, I received the tips and a well-produced instruction sheet telling me how to install them. I was impressed.

Now I understand the FLOTE is a pricey product —  the m2 floor model is $299.99 and the desktop model is $219.99 — and Dave had never promised the stand would be compatible with future tablets. And while it made sense for them to retool so that all future FLOTES sold would work with the iPad air, merely making them available for purchase by previous customers would have been reasonable. Making them available at cost would have been quite nice. Sending everyone who already had a FLOTE a set of the new grips for free was…. Well it went above and beyond.

I wanted to get a better understanding of why they opted to do this so I sent the following email:

Dave, Your product was awesome and complete as it was. It is great that you developed new tips. Many companies would use them with new purchases and make them available for purchase to people who previously bought the FLOTE. Why did you opt to eat the expense and ship them to all of the folks who previously bought the product?

Here was his answer:

After fulfillment of orders started shipping out, we received feedback from some customers that their iPad Air was slowly slipping out of the FLOTE’s Cradle, the part that grips and holds the tablet.

Although the Air came out after we released our latest designs, we felt an obligation to provide a solution that would address the issue as quickly as possible. From our perspective (and likely that of our customers) the slipping was totally unacceptable: You don’t purchase a premium tablet stand only to find that your new and expensive iPad slides out of it! So we went ahead and designed, manufactured and mailed the tips to our customers at no cost to them.

In the long run, we believe that the investment was well worth it, as our intention is for the FLOTE brand to represent the best tablet stands on the market, and to always, always exceed our customers’ expectations.

I’m impressed. Dave offers a great product, provides excellent customer service, and he is a mensch too!

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About the Author

Dan Cohen
Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him. Dan is married to Raina Goldberg who is also an avid user of Apple products. They live in New Jersey with their golden doodle Nava.