Also, MPLS, IBM-Lenovo deal, more
Talking to customer service
I bet Mark Gibbs’ mailbox is chock full of replies to his BackSpin column, “Talking to customer service”. Allow me to add another to the pile.
My company tried using a navigable menu for customers calling into our help desk. We thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Unfortunately, we decided to actually ask our customers what they thought of it. Of course, they thought it sucked. So we rearranged the menus to make it easier. Our customers still thought it sucked. I won’t tell you how many iterations we went through trying to build a menu scheme that was concise, clear and satisfied our customers, but like a broken record, our customers always told us it sucked.
Eventually we went back to the old method of paying someone to answer the phone. It seems there is no substitute for a live body on the end of the line. (Especially, one that speaks the language clearly.) We now place a few of our tech support folks directly on the call desk. When a customer calls, they answer. There are occasions, when all lines are busy, that a caller is asked to leave a message. But there is no option menu. We discovered that callers would prefer to leave a message if they cannot talk to a live body. Then instead of wasting time on hold, they can go about their work while waiting for us to call back.
Our customers love it. And since 90% of the calls can be handled over the phone by our tech support personnel, it just makes good sense. In fact, most calls are probably completed in less time than it would have taken the caller to listen to and navigate a phone-based menu option system anyway. We are happier, our customers are happier, and since there are fewer complaints about tech support, management is happier as well. And the cost isn’t as high as you might think.
I am sure that SBC has done similar studies and received similar results concerning their customer service system. They choose not to change because they don’t care enough to pay someone to actually answer a phone. You can bet that SBC’s management has a list of direct numbers that bypasses their own tech support. But until the issue becomes hot enough that it affects their business, I don’t think they’ll change.
Howard Stewart
Portsmouth, Ohio
I enjoyed Mark Gibbs’ column on customer service. I’m a software developer at a bank in California and have been developing interactive voice response (IVR) systems for more than 15 years for various financial institutions, utilities and other companies. All of the developers here have sat with agents and asked them how best to program the voice menus. As a bank we are very concerned about customer service. I think what you will find is that companies that are very dependent on customer perceptions generally spend more on IVR systems and consequently have better IVR systems. We use CTI to pass data to all of our agents, but this technology does have its issues; it’s usually difficult to implement given the different PBX companies around. We also send calls to India to reduce costs. Offshoring is obviously controversial, but most successful companies operate by reducing costs. Computers also reduce costs and take jobs away, but we’ve adjusted to this reality.
Richard Yao
Monterey, Calif.
MPLS worth a look
Regarding Johna Till Johnson’s column, “Let’s talk about packets, purists and paradigms”: To the purist: Get over being a control freak and try MPLS. You will be amazed at how much of an improvement MPLS QoS can make on narrow-bandwidth connections.
My company runs a geographically diverse network of nursing homes and other services wherein each location typically gets 128K bit/sec port with a committed information rate of 64K bit/sec on a fractional T-1. These locations can have as many as 22 computers accessing applications via Citrix, which is a lot of computers for that small amount of bandwidth. We had chronic speed issues at these sites and had tried implementing QoS on the routers, but this did nothing to resolve the problem, since the telco network didn’t know the QoS policies. When we made the change to MPLS, one of our more vocal locations immediately did back flips. The location manager described the change as making the network run like “a top-fuel funny car.”
In my humble opinion, the only way to make QoS truly work is to have the telco working in conjunction with the routers to tag and deliver packets based on your QoS policies. Our network engineering group has repeatedly described it as the best thing they have ever done to help the company. Our only regret is not doing it sooner.
Tom Franciosi
Orlando, Fla.
Concerns about China
Regarding Linda Musthaler’s column, “Reconsidering the IBM-Lenovo deal”: I’m still very uncomfortable with the technological and economic implications of anything thing we do with the Chinese government. I think it’s great China is opening up to free enterprise, although somewhat still controlled by the central government. My concern is twofold. First, as Musthaler states in her column, the IBM technology is high end compared to most of the PCs on the market today. This technology would undoubtedly be used by the Chinese military, which has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons aimed at the U.S. Are we literally shooting ourselves in the foot? It’s bad enough a past president sold China the technology to guide these missiles to our doorstep, now we are selling then the technology to dominate many other markets as well as our economy.
Second, China has publicly announced that it wants to be the number one provider of PCs in the world. Combine that with China’s growing market share in the rest of our imports and what does that do economically to the U.S. and the rest of the world? I think we are being short sighted in the deals we are making, just to make a few more bucks on what could be a very slippery slope.
Dan Reising
Green Bay, Wis.
In her column, “Reconsidering the IBM-Lenovo deal,” Linda Musthaler makes some good points and passes on some interesting insights from the employees’ point of view. However, she doesn’t address oft-stated concerns about the increased potential for Chinese industrial espionage. I do worry.
Of more immediate interest to me, since the new Lenovo operation is in my backyard, is their quick demand for state and local government incentives (more than $14 million so far) to preclude their moving the operation (1,900 jobs) elsewhere. How fast they learned about legal extortion.
Steve Wood
Raleigh, N.C.
