andy@bmcg.UUCP (10/06/83)
The flames from fluke!rzdz have prompted me to present another view of the
customer support situation. I am in no way connected with Micropro and
have not dealt with them. I was, however, previously with a company which
sells software and hardware for popular micros, both through dealers
and by mail order. The attempt to provide good customer support while
not going broke in the process was a subject of never-ending concern.
I will share some of my experience. I sound a little harsher below than
I actually feel, the better to make my point.
This business used to be civilized. People knew that buying a computer
required a certain degree of hand-holding. The computer buyers, whether
hobbyists, university researchers, business people, or whatever, had a
fair idea of how much handholding they needed, and were willing to pay for it.
Dealers got a big margin, because they put in a lot of engineering time
whenever they configured, or added to, a micro system.
Well, the world may never have been quite that perfect, but it sure went
downhill from there. Advertisements imply that you can simply buy "X",
plug it in, and it will do "Y". Sounds good, right? People believe
advertisements. But computers are still not that simple, and most buyers
do not have degrees in computer science or EE. So now we have a problem.
Typical scenario: Build a Wonderful Thing, which plugs (or loads) into
popular computer "Z", and it will do thing "Y" every time. Test it under
all conceivable conditions. Make sure that its software runs with all 72
known versions of Z's resident software. Document like mad and make sure
that even the janitor can understand the manual. Send out some NPR's and
place an ad in Byte, and sit back and relax. Relax? Wrong.
Fourteen calls a day are from people who want to know if it can be modified
to plug into Heathkit or maybe an AIM-65. A dozen people want to know if
it will run in conjunction with company Q's product, which is either a new
operating system or maybe a piggyback board which redefines every chip in
the system. A handful of people (this refers to software products) call to
say that they've lost their manual and registration card, could we send them
a new one. (Some more people want to buy the software on a trial basis,
they'll pay if they like it.) One person calls to say that he's building a
homebrew computer to slaughter pigs or something, and do we think that our
product would be useful to him?
A large group of people say that it just doesn't work. No, they don't want
to send it back, they want satisfaction now. It takes 15 minutes of probing
to determine that either (A) they can't get any of their other software
to run today, either, (B) well their computer's not really a "Z", but their
wirewrap board ought to emulate it perfectly, (C) sure they modified it, but
they only changed a few bytes, (D) there was a tire track across the shipping
envelope, might that have something to with the problem?
The after-Christmas calls from perplexed recipients were also in significant
numbers. One's sympathy is with these callers.
Many people just want to chat. They want a friendly conversation
(weather, etc., included) with an unharried employee (preferably engineer)
who has nothing better to do and would love to spend their time with him.
They like to start with an impressive, meaningless question which sounds
very technical to the customer service rep and convinces said rep to convince
a member of the technical staff to pick up the phone. Then it turns to
"say, when do you suppose the price of Apples will drop" or whatever.
Some people are a real problem. They sit at their keyboard with their
phone on their shoulder, typing commands, asking what to type next,
discussing the various commands and editorializing about how the program
was written and how the interface was designed. Although I would try
very hard to be polite, I have had occasion to say to someone who feels that
the product really should be able to do blah, that it would, soon, if
only he'd let me get back to work.
Now, consider all the calls outlined above, and take a cross product
with a full line of products. Imagine the staff required (and these are
not unskilled positions, either.) Image the impact to the
engineering staff. What is the solution?
An imperfect solution, but the only one known, is dealers. Because the
cost of the handholding service is not trivial, the dealer gets a
significant chunk of the profit for each item sold. While the dealer
may be no engineer, he should in general have a good working knowledge of
the product and of the questions that are asked about it. He ought to
be willing to do a certain amount of hand-holding. He can *see* what the
user is doing wrong, and *show* him how to do it right.
So what happens? The dealer takes his half of the profit, then sells
the product mail order, and the customer calls the factory. Or, the
dealer discounts the product, and then tells people that at this price,
of course he can't afford to support customers, and the customer calls
the factory.
With this viewpoint in mind, we'll now have a few quotes from fluke!rzdz:
If you are a wordstar owner and have a question, try calling Micropro.
After the telephone is answered, a rude person will tell you to call
your dealer. Period.
The dealer has been paid a lot of money to keep Micropro's people off the
phone. If they really are are rude, that's wrong, but I'm not surprised.
I'm sure that they didn't start that way.
They won't (underline that) even answer the most mundane question.
Software companies are not in the business of answering the most mundane
question. Only the most technical questions need be answered at the
factory.
Once I called them to find out if Spellstar would run with wordstar
V2.something. They (micropro) wouldn't even tell me that on the phone and
this was a potential sale.
Everyone thinks that he is a potential sale, and that that will make everyone
fawn over him. It is a much more effective use of time to be talking to a
dealer who will buy hundreds or thousands. In any case, selling to a
phone-oriented sort of customer is not an attractive idea to these people,
and probably will be a net loss.
An aside: People often call up companies suggesting that they are on the
verge of buying a thousand custom built computers from them, or whatever.
They generally think they are serious, too. The company knows better.
Some of them do, but not many.
Finally, I wrote a somewhat nasty letter to Seymour Weinstein (prez of the
company) and got a reply along with a name within who would be glad to
answer my questions.
I commend Mr. Weinstein. That was a good deal more considerate than he needed
to be. The president of my company was sometimes less polite.
This was fine for a few weeks, then that person got their job functions
modified and (of course) no one was available who would be willing to
answer questions.
"Not Mr. Whosit *again*! Does he live on the phone? Can't you tell him
that I've taken over the Antarctic branch or something, so I can get some
work done?" That was my reaction whenever I got to be someone's pet callee.
Sorry.
Micropro's stance is understandable and lamentable. They are trying
to build a network of intelligent dealers who know and understand
their product. They feel that the only way they will get this is
to force all user questions through their dealers so that the
dealers get the Q & A from all questions. In this way, they hope,
dealers will eventually learn the product.
Exactly. Sounds good to me.
My problem with this (and your problem too) is the translation
errors that inevitably creep in with a two step process such as this.
I know. It's a problem. But I don't call up Ann Landers every day just
in case the newspaper might have made a misprint. (Now I'm getting
sarcastic. Sorry.)
Typically, my dealer didn't know the answers either and had to
resort to calling Micropro.
Good. Not only does this allow him to answer the same question for
everyone else, but there is also a good chance that he is more experienced
at getting the right person, asking, getting the answer, and getting off
the phone than the average user is. This is based on my experience talking
with lots of users and lots of dealers, and reflects a general tendency
only.
In my case, the software was purchased from a mail order house
back east ...
Oops, you tipped your hand. There went my sympathy.
In a business situation, expedient answers are a must.
You can't have a job hung just because the *stupid* software
vendor insists on you going through their **asinine* system of
information retrieval.
Unfortunately, you can and do. And you may have a job hung even if the
*stupid* software vendor, or your dealer, goes to great lengths to help you.
A businessman buying a piece of software or hardware is attempting to
institute a new procedure. He is going to have to *thoroughly* test that
procedure before allowing his business to rely on it.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well, I sure feel a lot better now. I'm sure that some of you will
think that net.micro is an inappropriate forum for this sort of thing,
but if I can get some computer consumer out there to have a touch of
sympathy for the harried folks he's calling, maybe I can do a little
good in this world. See you 'round.
andy
{sdcsvax || ihnp4!sdcrdcf}!bmcg!andyseaburg@uiucdcs.UUCP (seaburg ) (10/11/83)
#R:bmcg:-56100:uiucdcs:10400081:000:75 uiucdcs!seaburg Oct 10 22:28:00 1983 Good points. Make sure your dealers will help you before you buy stuff.