Grover Norquist is frying a couple of hamburger patties in his kitchen when some grease spatters and is ignited. He rushes to his phone to call for assistance.
Scenario One
Grover Norquist calls 911. He receives a recorded message:
If you require government assistance, please look in Grover Norquist's bathtub.
Scenario Two
Grover Norquist calls his private fire company. He is given the following list of instructions:
If you are calling about a cat in a tree, please press 1.
If you are calling about smelling gas, please press 2.
If you are calling about a medical emergency, please press 3.
If you are calling about a fire, please press 4. (Grover Norquist presses 4.)
If you are calling about a car fire, please press 1.
If you are calling about a brush fire, please press 2.
If you are calling about a chimney fire, please press 3.
If you are calling about a kitchen fire, please press 4. (Grover Norquist presses 4.)
He hears the following message:
All our agents are busy. Please stay online for our next available agent.
After a minute, Grover Norquist hears the following message:
All our agents are still busy. Please stay online for our next available agent. Your approximate wait time is five minutes. (This is repeated every minute.)
Finally after ten minutes, he hears in an Indian accent:
"Good evening, my name is Stephanie. It is my pleasure to assist you this evening. May I have your name and address?"
Grover Norquist gives his name and address.
"I am sorry, sir, but we have no record of a client named Rover Northlist."
Grover Norquist spells out his name.
"I apologize for getting your name wrong, sir. My computer is searching for your account."
After a minute, the agent says, "I'm sorry, sir, but we are having a typhoon and our connection to the Internet is slow."
After another minute, the agent says, "I'm sorry, sir, but our records indicate that you have not paid your last two premiums. We are not permitted to dispatch a crew when a client is in arrears."
Scenario Three
As in Scenario two, but Grover Norquist has paid all his premiums. After the agent finds his account, she says, "I'm sorry, sir, but our crew for your town is now at an apartment fire and it appears that they will be there all night. Would you like me to check with our backup crew? They are only twenty miles away."
Showing posts with label outsourcing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outsourcing. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Who is worth more, the CEO with rigid rules or the employee giving excellent service?
For background, see "What Customers Want, Companies That Bend the Rules", Elaine Pofeldt, Forbes, 2012-06-30
How often have you gone around and around with a "help" person following a script? How often have you gotten above and beyond help that solved your problem in minutes? I bet in both cases the CEOs got huge salaries that make us wish we had their pay for one year in a bank. I bet in the first case the person got a meager salary to keep "expenses" down. I bet in the second case the person was give some free rein in making sure the customer was satisfied.
A friend often wasn't getting my emails. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. I went to his house to see what his setting were. I could find nothing unusual.
I had taken my laptop and tried sending him email. His provider, CenturyLink, wouldn't let me. I tried the usual tricks of changing the settings in my mail program, Microsoft Outlook. Nothing worked.
I called my ISP, Hickory Tech (also CPInternet), and spoke with a knowledgeable person in Minnesota. He said that CenturyLink blocked access through other ISPs (or something like that). Almost every time I've called my ISP, I have received helpful service.
I called CenturyLink. The support person, probably half-way around the world, never understood the problem. She put me on hold several times to consult with "higher support". We just went around and around with me repeating the same thing over and over again. I finally told her that we were getting nowhere and I hung up.
Ironically, my friend is getting all my emails now. Did "higher support" diddle with something? We'll never know.
From something I read recently, CenturyLink's call center might be in the Phillipines, now competing on price with India. I'm rather certain that Hickory Tech's support is in Mankato, Minnesota. The latter are probably making more in a day than the former in a week or even a month.
Interestingly, if I want to use DSL, my only choice is CenturyLink. Back from the dialup days, I've been using a local ISP that was bought out by a Minnesota telecommunications company. I had a choice in selecting the ISP. I've heard that CenturyLink wants take that choice away.
The size of a company is not always a measure of customer service. Small companies might ignore customers and big companies might give excellent advice.
When my previous laptop went belly-up, three weeks after the AppleCare contract expired, I went to Best Buy to get a new one. The Geek Squad took out my old hard drive and sold me a USB case to put it in for use as an external hard drive.
Things went fine until I upgraded to a new OS level. Suddenly my computer wouldn't recognize the external hard drive, my wife's with an older OS would. I sent email to the manufacturer of the hard drive case and never received a reply. I went to Best Buy for another reason and asked about the hard drive. The Geek Squad employee, the same woman that did the diagnosis on my older computer, told me to check the preferences. I didn't find it in System Preferences, but I did find it in Finder Preferences – showing external drives in the sidebar was not checked.
Say what you will about Best Buy, but it made a smart move buying The Geek Squad and giving them some latitude in helping customers.
How often have you gone around and around with a "help" person following a script? How often have you gotten above and beyond help that solved your problem in minutes? I bet in both cases the CEOs got huge salaries that make us wish we had their pay for one year in a bank. I bet in the first case the person got a meager salary to keep "expenses" down. I bet in the second case the person was give some free rein in making sure the customer was satisfied.
A friend often wasn't getting my emails. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't. I went to his house to see what his setting were. I could find nothing unusual.
I had taken my laptop and tried sending him email. His provider, CenturyLink, wouldn't let me. I tried the usual tricks of changing the settings in my mail program, Microsoft Outlook. Nothing worked.
I called my ISP, Hickory Tech (also CPInternet), and spoke with a knowledgeable person in Minnesota. He said that CenturyLink blocked access through other ISPs (or something like that). Almost every time I've called my ISP, I have received helpful service.
I called CenturyLink. The support person, probably half-way around the world, never understood the problem. She put me on hold several times to consult with "higher support". We just went around and around with me repeating the same thing over and over again. I finally told her that we were getting nowhere and I hung up.
Ironically, my friend is getting all my emails now. Did "higher support" diddle with something? We'll never know.
From something I read recently, CenturyLink's call center might be in the Phillipines, now competing on price with India. I'm rather certain that Hickory Tech's support is in Mankato, Minnesota. The latter are probably making more in a day than the former in a week or even a month.
Interestingly, if I want to use DSL, my only choice is CenturyLink. Back from the dialup days, I've been using a local ISP that was bought out by a Minnesota telecommunications company. I had a choice in selecting the ISP. I've heard that CenturyLink wants take that choice away.
The size of a company is not always a measure of customer service. Small companies might ignore customers and big companies might give excellent advice.
When my previous laptop went belly-up, three weeks after the AppleCare contract expired, I went to Best Buy to get a new one. The Geek Squad took out my old hard drive and sold me a USB case to put it in for use as an external hard drive.
Things went fine until I upgraded to a new OS level. Suddenly my computer wouldn't recognize the external hard drive, my wife's with an older OS would. I sent email to the manufacturer of the hard drive case and never received a reply. I went to Best Buy for another reason and asked about the hard drive. The Geek Squad employee, the same woman that did the diagnosis on my older computer, told me to check the preferences. I didn't find it in System Preferences, but I did find it in Finder Preferences – showing external drives in the sidebar was not checked.
Say what you will about Best Buy, but it made a smart move buying The Geek Squad and giving them some latitude in helping customers.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
Hard-earned dollars or cushy union jobs, make up your mind
Many politicians, Democrat, Republican, and others, laud the hard-earned dollars of workers and executives without regard to what they actually do. Many Republicans and conservative commentators imply that all union workers are over-paid. Excuse me, if all workers have hard-earned dollars, how can any be overpaid?
The latest claim of inefficient union workers is "Unions promote lower performance" by Nathan Jamail published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2011-09-04. Among his claims is that unions are responsible for the outsourcing of jobs. He hasn't read the About window for Adobe Photoshop Elements. All the programmers have Indian names. I didn't know that Adobe had union programmers. If they don't have union programmers, then why are they outsourcing programming in such a large scale to India?
He didn't mention all the overpaid financial wizards who got six figure bonuses for helping defraud widows on refinancing their homes. Nor did he mention the "unproductive" union firefighter who rescued a widow from her burning home.
If you want a kinder view of unions, read Phil Nast's "Denying their [unions] benefit denies history". I am a bit biased on this, Phil is a friend.
The latest claim of inefficient union workers is "Unions promote lower performance" by Nathan Jamail published in the Duluth News Tribune, 2011-09-04. Among his claims is that unions are responsible for the outsourcing of jobs. He hasn't read the About window for Adobe Photoshop Elements. All the programmers have Indian names. I didn't know that Adobe had union programmers. If they don't have union programmers, then why are they outsourcing programming in such a large scale to India?
He didn't mention all the overpaid financial wizards who got six figure bonuses for helping defraud widows on refinancing their homes. Nor did he mention the "unproductive" union firefighter who rescued a widow from her burning home.
If you want a kinder view of unions, read Phil Nast's "Denying their [unions] benefit denies history". I am a bit biased on this, Phil is a friend.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Look who's outsourcing!
It is tax time and time to figure out all the labyrinthian details that Congress has charged the IRS with implementing. I must say that the IRS had done a lot of work to make our work easier - PDF savable files for forms, online calculators to determine if you need a particular form, and many other features that often make it easier than wading through all the paper instructions. Oh yes, no more trips to the library to get forms that weren't included in your personal mailing.
I used one of those calculators yesterday. It's fields were to small to enter in the number of digits that I should enter. I found a contact link and filled out a web mail about the problem.
Within a few hours, maybe less, I had a response from IRS Help Desk asking what operating system and browser I was using. I sent all the requested information back this afternoon and within an hour or so I had a response that my info would be forwarded to the appropriate department for review.
Hey, that is speedy government service. Wait a minute! The email address is not irs.gov but speedymail.com. Hm! Who's speedymail.com?
It is AFFINA, a "one-stop-shop solution for customer relationship management." The story doesn't stop there. In 2006 AFFINA joined Hinduja Global Solutions Limited http://www.hindujagsl.com Hm! One guess in what country that company is located.
Some may complain that the U.S. Government should not be exporting jobs. But I can't say that it is. I don't know where the work of AFFINA is conducted. Besides, the idea of where jobs for a government are done often gets down to we can export our stuff but you can't export yours to us.
When I worked in Europe, for an American company, I was called in for software assistance to the French Army, the Swedish Police (Rikspolisen), the Swedish Auto Registry (Bilregistret), and a few other government agencies. They all had bought American-made Univac computers.
And even more crazy, many European customers thought the American programmers knew more than the local programmers. On some things this was true and on others just the opposite.
Back to speedymail.com, the writing of the messages was straightforward. None of the elaborate "It is my pleasure to serve you today" or turns of phrase that almost shout "Non-native speaker".
I used one of those calculators yesterday. It's fields were to small to enter in the number of digits that I should enter. I found a contact link and filled out a web mail about the problem.
Within a few hours, maybe less, I had a response from IRS Help Desk
Hey, that is speedy government service. Wait a minute! The email address is not irs.gov but speedymail.com. Hm! Who's speedymail.com?
It is AFFINA, a "one-stop-shop solution for customer relationship management." The story doesn't stop there. In 2006 AFFINA joined Hinduja Global Solutions Limited http://www.hindujagsl.com Hm! One guess in what country that company is located.
Some may complain that the U.S. Government should not be exporting jobs. But I can't say that it is. I don't know where the work of AFFINA is conducted. Besides, the idea of where jobs for a government are done often gets down to we can export our stuff but you can't export yours to us.
When I worked in Europe, for an American company, I was called in for software assistance to the French Army, the Swedish Police (Rikspolisen), the Swedish Auto Registry (Bilregistret), and a few other government agencies. They all had bought American-made Univac computers.
And even more crazy, many European customers thought the American programmers knew more than the local programmers. On some things this was true and on others just the opposite.
Back to speedymail.com, the writing of the messages was straightforward. None of the elaborate "It is my pleasure to serve you today" or turns of phrase that almost shout "Non-native speaker".
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