Comments on: C is for Customer

By: Jon Daley

Jon Daley — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:47:56 +0000

It is pretty tough to get tech support of any big company to understand that yes, you already checked that the computer was plugged in, and can we skip these steps. Law of averages, so the companies won’t change.

By: Dwight Silverman

Dwight Silverman — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Ed,

One positive thing about pampering the influential … even though it’s not particularly egalitarian.

This is straight out of Marshall McLuhan, who suggested that those who wish to reach a large number of people concentrate for efficiency’s sake on getting the message to influencers, who in turn carry it to the influenced.

Thus, if you get folks like Jarvis cooing over how good Dell is, it’s more efficient than trying to hit everyone posting nasty things on thousands of message forums and individual blogs.

The Net both enhances and disrupts McLuhan’s theory. The former: Because of the signal-to-noise ratio online, people gravitate to higher-quality sites, creating influencers. The latter: Anyone can, in a moment’s notice, become an influencer, or take down another influencer, based on links and the resulting traffic.

On the other hand, that last sentence reinforces another McLuhan nugget: Everyone will be famous for 15 seconds.

Oy. My head hurts.

By: prometheus

prometheus — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

You’re always more than happy to slag off Firefox for its security problems, even if they are incredibly contrived.

Why haven’t you reported the fact that a real world proof of concept IE exploit is in the wild, you pathetic Microserf?

By: Ed Bott

Ed Bott — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Dwight, McLuhan’s message was valid in an age when mass media was the only way for ordinary people to get input. But you are absolutely right, trying to apply big-media lessons to a flattened information landscape doesn’t work.

And Prometheus, I have been testing several fixes for the current security exploit and plan to write about it this week.

Also, I believe I can only properly be called a Microserf if I have a blue badge (see Neal Stephenson for details).

By: Steve D

Steve D — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

I called Dell a couple of years ago about a busted power supply for a client.

The tech in India had to prove that it was the power supply, despite that I had already proven it and very thoroughly explained why. So to satisfy him and to get them to send someone out to replace the special Dell supply, I pretended to go thru each step with him. Remove the CPU. ok did it. Try to power up. ok no lights. Remove this. ok no lights. remove that. ok no lights. Once I pretended to go thru each needless step he was convinced and they sent someone to change the ps.

I was appalled that they would force a non-technical customer to do what they made me do (hence my client had to pay me in addition for a Dell on site warranty). And yes it really was the ps.