Pattern Finder

Testing Dell's Support - Part 2

It's Tuesday, and no word from Dell yet as to when a technician will arrive to replace my motherboard.  Considering that the service contract says they will dispatch a technician the next business day (the board went south on Saturday), the technician should have arrived on Monday.  I can see why Dell Support is slipping in the Consumer Reports ratings....

Continued: Testing Dell's Support - Part 3

Testing Dell's Support - Part 1

Well, I got to test Dell's support over the weekend.  On Saturday afternoon, December 17th, my Dell Dimension 9100 (bought in July, nice and zippy, and extremely quiet) decided to get temperamental.  I was editing a Word document when all of a sudden a notice popped up, announcing that the system had lost contact with my printer.  At the same time, my mouse stopped working.  After a little testing here and there, I discovered that all of my USB ports had failed -- kind of a toughie when you have a USB-connected mouse and keyboard -- even though they were all giving off power.

So, I called Dell Support.  After about five minutes on hold and listening to pre-recorded suggestions such as, "Most computer problems can be solved by rebooting the machine.  Go to the Start menu, select Turn Off Computer...,"  Veronica came on the line -- with a heavy Indian accent.  She asked me what my support number was (even though I'd been forced to give that earlier to just access the line) and then we started through the list, asking me things such as, "Are you sure both your mouse and keyboard haven't failed?" [Nope, tried them on my laptop and the work], and "Why don't you reboot and try to go into Windows Safe Mode" [OK, but considering that the screen shows "Keyboard failure" after the POST test, I don't think the system is going to register that I'm hitting a function key.]

Eventually she decided that my motherboard had failed, and so Dell would send out a technician to replace it.  Having been a Customer Support Rep (or CSR as we say in the biz) for three years, it wasn't too bad an experience.  Some of her requests were nonsensical (such as asking me to go into Safe Mode when the keyboard wasn't being recognized), but at least she was thorough.  I have certainly kicked myself more than once for debugging a customer's problem for hours only to find out I didn't ask the most obvious question that could have resolved the problem in two minutes.  She was polite and her accent wasn't too thick, although I did have to ask her to repeat her questions about half the time.  [Now that would be an interesting study -- how much longer call times are when support is done offshore because the customer and CSR have to repeat themselves.]

So, we'll see how things go.  First, when the technician turns up -- Veronica was predicting a four-day wait -- and whether the motherboard swap actually fixes the problem.  I'll keep you posted.  (And in case you're wondering how I'm able to post to my blog with a non-working PC, I've pressed my laptop into service.)

Continued: Testing Dell's Support - Part 2

Nature Magazine: Wikipedia Isn't That Bad

Nature Magazine did a comparison between Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia and discovered that EB is only slightly more accurate than Wikipedia.  While Encyclopedia Britannica won the quality race, it did not win hands down: "... reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively."

Whether Wikipedia is close enough is a judgment that each person will have to make individually, but the quality is certainly not as bad as the old media folks would have you believe.  Another example of how (1) collaborative publishing and (2) increased publishing velocity is challenging the Old Guard in media.

Verizon: The 412 Area Code Is a Figment of Your Imagination

Kevin Barkes of KGB.com sent around an amusing Web site design story several weeks ago.

I was on the Verizon website the other day attempting to get information about some of their advanced services. To get to the FAQs, you're presented with a screen in which you select the state, then enter your area code and local exchange.

If you enter 412, you get a message that it's not a valid Pennsylvania area code, and you're stopped dead in your tracks.  There's no way to proceed. The information you need is inaccessible.

Despite the obvious problem -- Verizon has cut off access to one third of its Pennsylvania customers to web-based information about its services -- it's also embarrassingly bad web design. I had logged in to pay my bill online. The site already knew my phone number. For that matter, it had access to all my account information. Why force me to re-enter data that leads me to a defective function?

Of course, there are no links on any pages to report problems with the site. I eventually went through several screens, dutifully filled out a contact form on the most closely-related subject I could find (again, re-entering information the site should already know about me), and clicked the button to send them my message. I was presented with an error screen -- and was told to contact Verizon either by phone or snail mail.

Of course, it was 1 AM when I was doing this, and their Call Center was closed.

So I call first thing Monday morning, and after going through several menu choices and transfers, I get a recording that says all of their operators are busy and that I should call back or *go to their website for additional information*!

Nothing like a nice recursive plunge on a Monday morning.

In addition to paying my bill, I was on the website to sign up for Verizon's Iobi service. It went live last on my account last night -- sort of. It forwards voice mail messages to me on my PC, but none of the other functions work.

Unlike Verizon's main portal, Verizon Iobi has a prominently positioned toll-free number on its support page. So I called the Verizon Iobi phone number this morning, was promptly connected to someone who reviewed the problem, gave me a trouble ticket number, and said the situation should be resolved within 24 hours.

While I was on the phone, I asked for the number to report Website problems. I called that number, and related my experiences to a sympathetic customer support rep who, of course, has no real way of reporting my problem, since she admitted they have no mechanism to directly contact the people who are responsible for maintaining Verizon's Website.

She also said that they've been aware of the 412 area code problem for three weeks.

Three weeks?!

Another example of a large corporation that hasn't quite figured out that people really use its Web site -- and that it should maintain it with the same speed that it uses to send out bills to its customers.  (When was the last time you received a 3-week late bill from Verizon?  My point exactly.)

Hess Leaves comScore to Go to Tribune Interactive

Tribune Interactive announced today that it had hired Daniel Hess to be its Vice President of Strategic Marketing.  The article in Editor & Publisher noted that it's a trendy thing to do -- "The New York Times and Washington Post both made similar hires last week."

Dan had been at comScore Networks for quite a few years, which is where I know him from, and before that he was at IRI.  Given that readership is down at all major newspapers, they're all trying to figure out how to embrace this newfangled thing called the Internet without losing their shirts.

While pundits talk about how news on the Internet is "realtime" and "personalized" and "interactive" -- certainly much more so than it is in a paper newspaper -- I think they're missing one of the biggest causes of loss of readership.  I have the Sunday Boston Globe delivered to my house, and my paperboy still hasn't figured out where the front step is.  He's hit the driveway, the street, the yard -- it must be a rule that he can't put it in a place convenient for his customer.  At least with Boston.com, I don't have to go chasing all over creation to read the news.