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Taking the bytes out of service
By Jon Hoornstra
The gripes of life come in two categories. The lesser of the two is Category Two, the gripes we half listen to. They are not to be worried about. They're barely more than life's background noise, muffled sounds created by our mumbling and grumbling as we bump and scrape against life's little problems. Nattering about winter's lingering grip, fussing over idiots the state has licensed to drive cars, waiting for yet another new drugstore clerk to learn how to make change--these are the stuff of Cat Two gripes.
Then there are Category One gripes. These we pay attention to because Cat One gripes involve our money or uncivil treatment, things that injure our egos and damage relationships. Cat One gripes automatically warrant upgraded terminology. We call them "customer complaints." They are based on true wrongs, like failure to back up a faulty product or suffering shabby treatment at the hands of a functionary who begins with "How may I help you?" but ends with "Sorry, there's nothing I can do."
I noticed an upward spike in Cat One gripes earlier this month when a friend, a bright software engineer, had trouble with some new software made by a well-known company we call Apple Computer. I was surprised, actually, given my very good experiences with Apple. I recalled how we and a gazillion other people bought a new Mac for Christmas in 1994. The holiday crunch on Apple's technical support staff was enormous. Even though many calls were about silly things, like where Apple put the on/off switch, our tech support guy couldn't have been nicer.
I readily admit that part of me secretly enjoyed hearing my engineer friend's tale of woe, her uphill struggle to get answers out of faceless first-names-only operatives who live at 800 numbers. She regaled the "they" as she related how they wanted to charge her big bucks to answer small questions, an experience well known to a lot of ordinary folk. Yes, hearing all this was almost as much fun as watching a bill collector hound another bill collector.
Poetic justice aside, I paid attention because I learn stuff from this woman. Not only can she write software, she also leaps tall buildings and holds her own in the esoteric subculture of horticulture. She knows pistils and stamens as well as bytes and frames.
The essential elements of her plight through the voicemail labyrinth, musical interludes and all, are these: Last Dec. 29, she paid $449 for a software package touted to provide everything needed to run a small network. It also had a warranty that covered everything for 90 days. Wouldn't you know, she needed help on the 92nd day, which ruthlessly fell on April 1.
She placed a call for help. Voice No. 1 said, "Sorry, you're out of warranty." Voice No. 1 didn't handle non-warranty calls, so Voice No. 1 transferred her to Voice No. 2, who informed her they would have to debit her credit card $150 if she wanted to talk to a technician. My friend declined and put off dealing with the problem until last week. But this time the fee to talk was just $35, a whopping 75 percent cut from the $150 first quoted.
She resisted even the $35 fee and chose instead to prowl the Internet for an answer. In time, she found the answers she needed on one of Apple's own websites. Now the fee had dropped to zero.
When I was a kid in Michigan, the world had just two parts. Half the world drove Fords and half drove Chevys. I'm not sure how, but we just ignored Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth. Like DNA, Ford and Chevy people never changed.
Those days are long gone and never existed for computers, even though that world is divided between PC people and Apple people. Customers, however, can and do change their DNA and service is a major player.
Silicon Valley needs to allocate itself some more memory to remember the value of making it easy for customers to use what they buy.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
