Subject: Re: Customer Service, suggestion
From: Nathan A. McQuillen (nm@steaky.dhs.org)
Date: Tue Nov 27 2001 - 16:56:01 MST
A suggestion to all:
Compare the level of customer service we get from Terrasoft (for a product
a lot of us haven't paid for) with the level of service anyone's ever
gotten from Apple (especially the utter failure by Apple to provide free
upgrades for their released-at-beta OS X).
Honestly, after more than a decade dealing with Apple, I'm so /used to/
having nobody home at the head office that I can certainly forgive
Terrasoft for only responding once or twice a week (usually via Dan B.) to
the rag-tag band of newbies and freeloaders ;) on this list. I have my own
complaints with terrasoft (not enough emphasis on pre-New World machines,
poor access to ppc-specific howtos, etc.) but they are my own complaints
and while they may inform my financial decisions, I applaud terrasoft for
hanging in there and doing great work for very little reward.
I do want to offer this humble suggestion to terrasoft: if you folks also
feel that the customer service situation isn't as good as it could be,
consider the following. Work with the great people in the YDL community to
develop an exchange program whereby some of the more knowledgeable folks
on this list and in the user base could contract to be somehow compensated
for acting as a semi-formal consulting committee for paying customers --
free CDs or briq loans or something, in exchange for spending about an
hour a day answering questions from the paying folks. they would be on a
protected list, receive a subset of internal communications (e.g., info
about press dates & delays, known issues with shipping discs, etc) and be
able to provide a level of relaxed but connected feedback to the company
that might prove immensely valuable.
By way of compensation, I envision a sort of points system, where when a
user submits a problem report (preferably via an online form), it goes out
to the committee, as many folks answer as see fit, system gives user a URL
which links to the replies, and the questions and replies then go into a
faq-o-matic system which is public and searchable. If the user is
satisfied with the response s/he clicks "resolved" -- and the system
credits whoever (and however many) provided the help with a point
which can then be traded for terrasoft gear. Of course, if there's a huge
response, the exchange value of the points would have to vary
accordingly; as the base of answered questions grows, it should reduce
the incidence of basic/newbie questions being posed to the committee.
Just an idea. I'd love some feedback on whether this has been tried and
whether folks feel that it might work -- I've been thinking about how to
provide decent tech support for commercially distributed open source
software since I started using Linux, and it strikes me that this might be
feasible, evolutionary and self-supporting, as well as a lot cheaper for
terrasoft (and other distros) than contracting out for tech support.
- n2
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Tue Nov 27 2001 - 17:09:14 MST