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Unpaid Contributors Provide Corporate Tech Support
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times writes about Justin McMurry of Keller, TX, who spends up to 20 unpaid hours per week helping Verizon customers with high-speed fiber optic Internet, television and telephone service. McMurry is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies, and venture capitalists are betting will transform the field of customer service. Such enthusiasts are known as lead users, or super-users, and their role in contributing innovations to product development and improvement — often selflessly — has been closely researched in recent years. These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. 'You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that's where the magic happens,' says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon. The mentality of super-users in online customer-service communities is similar to that of devout gamers, according to Lyle Fong, co-founder of Lithium Technologies whose web site advertises that a vibrant community can easily save a company millions of dollars per year in deflected support calls' and whose current roster of 125 clients includes AT&T, BT, iRobot, Linksys, Best Buy, and Nintendo. Lithium's customer service sites for companies offer elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges and kudos counts. 'That alone is addictive,' says Fong. 'They are revered by their peers.' Meanwhile McMurry, who is 68 and a retired software engineer, continues supplying answers by the bushel, all at no pay. 'People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it.'"
1) Tap into old school hacker community mentality.
2) Rely on good people to do your large organizations work for free.
3) Degrade your own service.
4) Profit!
Of course peolpe helping each other and a solid community are great, but in the context of this happening in lieu of large for-profit organizations providing quality service? I think not.
Seeing how they point out how this can save them millions of dollars leaves me nonplussed.
Now whenever a family member or friend asks me to fix their internet, I can have them give this guy a call instead of making excuses for myself.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
News at 11
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Sounds like these guys are just being exploited by their own egos. Though surely they fill a niche and are appreciated by other users, what with the sorry state of "tech support" Verizon and other big corps maintain. I never call tech support anymore except as a dead-last resort, because if I can't figure it out there's hardly any chance some minimum wage boob with a script is going to help me.
Caveat Utilitor
Is this guys time worth nothing?
Yeah we've all been there as the angel tech support person. Problem is what when you get burned out of answering the same stupid question again and again, you'll quit doing it unless there's some incentive. I answered 20 or so tech questions on yahoo answers because I was bored, but that was short lived... I probably won't go back for another 6 months. Now, pay me something reasonable and I would go back every night.
"The NY Times writes about Justin McMurry of Keller, TX, who spends up to 20 unpaid hours per week helping Verizon customers"
No way should you ever do this. If it's worth doing then it's worth getting paid for doing it. And for each McMurry out there there is one less paid job at Verizon. Same with friends or neighbours. I'll fix their PC, but only if they pay me.
...says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon.
Is that his real name or his porn name?
No way should you ever do this. If it's worth doing then it's worth getting paid for doing it. And for each McMurry out there there is one less paid job at Verizon.
Exactly! I've heard there are even idiots who will write and support entire computer programs for free! No wonder we're in an economic crisis...
Donate free food here
Sounds like they could afford to put one or two of these guys on salary, then.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Exactly! I've heard there are even idiots who will write and support entire computer programs for free! No wonder we're in an economic crisis...
I'm calling bullshit on that one! That's just another one of those internet rumors...
This guy's the limit!
If a company wants to become serious about this, they could make unofficial certifications and hand out prizes to the top x posters for the month. Peer respect is great and all, but being well-liked on the internet doesn't get much.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I'm one of these types of people myself. If there is a software product that I'm personally very fond of and I feel that more folks might benefit from it than do, I'll actively attempt to support the product through this type of forum activity, giving advice, tutorial writing and generally ranting about it on my travels around the web.
I enjoy it. I dare say there's an element of liking the positive feedback too. I also feel that by supporting the userbase of my chosen product I might be helping retain a few users who might otherwise flee to a competing product that I personally don't like/use. This, it seems to me, contributes towards the product's manufacturer continuing to produce and update it which IS a positive benefit to me. I'm not being paid cash - I'm being paid in the slight boost to the likeliness of my chosen product continuing to exist and remain current.
It's worth noting though that providing tools to drive attention to your most vociferous, active and evangelic users can be a double edged sword. Since folks like myself aren't being paid, we have no incentive to be anything other than completely honest in answering support requests.
If your new version is borked; if your long anticipated new feature turns out to be vapor, if your own customer service folks are crap - in short, if those evangelic users get to a point where they feel betrayed by the manufacturer - it's going to be exactly those highly visible, spotlit users with audiences of their own that are going to tell it like it is.
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Sheesh... I can't imagine people's behavior online seriously being influenced by some silly "rating" system.
Oh, and by the way... copyright is evil, I support socialism, Microsoft sucks, just kidding I support libertarianism, and OMG ponies!
Come on, what's so bad in helping others if you have knowledge and, most important, time? That's how a society works, people help people. Sure, there will be some random asshole now and then who'll exploit others willingness to help, but that still doesn't mean that helping others is a bad thing.
You can't defy help only for questionable job security nor can you rely only on the money to build a society upon -- at the end of the day everyone might need some help.
One cannot compare paid support to enthusiasts directly -- the latter often provide better help and insights but may refuse to help you at all if you can't behave yourself or if you demand help in a rude way. Thumbs rule is the same as with Linux forums/mailing lists -- do at least basic search before you start asking and think before you write. Enthusiasts love to solve problems, but they hate repeating the same shit over and over.
As for creating a community -- the company has to be either very open or extremely popular.
P.S. I don't repair neighbours/friends Windows PC's too, not even if they offer me to pay for it -- it's the same boring routine over and over. I do offer Linux installation and support for no charge case they want to check it out.
Volunteer effort is great. I try to give as much as possible for Wikipedia - hey, it's a hobby. I also do other stuff to help and bring enjoyment for my peers.
But when people start making money on your free effort - indeed, rely you to do your free effort for the continued success of a company, then you're little better than slave (in that you can at least walk away). I mean, I could still see myself giving advice on a forum if I knew how to help, but this.. these guys are actually connected to the company, right?
And 20 hours per week? Even on poor, minimum wage salary (seven dollars an hour?) thats 140 dollars per week, 560 dollars a month. And if he can really give much better experience than the idiots at Verizon, we're talking at least manager level. What's that, double the wage? Triple?
This thing makes me pretty angry. And those people "helping" are real chumps.
Chronologically late.
So offering to pay people to help the community is akin to the government expecting us to help out for free? Ignoring the fact that the government is not, to the contrary of what the Republican party seems to want, a for profit enterprise, and that as a governing body for the community it is presumed that we all have some motivation to help out and make our nation better... I still don't see how offering to pay people for things they actually should be doing for free is anything like not paying people for things they shouldn't be doing for free.
But don't let reality get in the way of pointless and hypocritical diatribes against "communists", that would be un-American.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Open source is different because the result belongs to the people who do the work. If a company profits, for example by selling extended versions or professional support, then it usually also contributes to the community version, so the situation benefits both sides.
People should never support commercial activities without adequate reciprocation.
"Oh wait, that means we end up paying the US to hire us..."
That's called an internship. We only do that to college students.
Think global, act loco
These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. 'You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that's where the magic happens,' says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon.
This is one of those shining examples of a market inefficiency that should be fixed, but which companies like Verizon have a hard time getting smart about. If Justin McMurry is creating wealth for your company, the best long-term profit solution for you, Verizon, is to find a way to get him a piece of the action.
I know, I know, it seems like letting the inefficiency run while it tilts in your favor makes sense. But that is a short term thing. If you don't feed this budding source of wealth, it will not last very long. Somebody is going to pull a GEICO on you; tighten up the cashflow streams, and take guys like Justin away from you.
Don't let that happen. Find a way to help Justin monetize his support. Put up banner ads on the forum and give him the revenue, for example. To paraphrase an old aphorism about customer service, "If you don't take care of your wealth producers, somebody else will."
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I actually see both your point and the GP point. I'm with you as long as someone else isn't making money off my free labor. If they make more money because of my work, then it stands to reason that I ought to also. I'm happy helping people with free products because no one else is making money from my labor.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Ignoring the fact that the government is not, to the contrary of what the Republican party seems to want, a for profit enterprise, .
I don't want the government to be "for profit". I'd just be happy if government stuck to what the Constitution says the government should do, and spent as little tax dollars possible doing so.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
That's a rational reason for a productive use of time. This fool in the article is just working for a corporation for free. There is a difference.
He's working for other users for free, and enjoying it. Sure, it also benefits a corporation, but so what? I really don't see what's so foolish about it. What is wrong with doing something you like, purely for fun/gratification, and not fretting about whether it may benefit someone else as well (financially or otherwise)?
Donate free food here
So you create an environment of such bad customer service that you basically require the charity of others to operate, and you call that "magic"?
I know people are going to try to compare the volunteer efforts of these folks to open source, but it's not the same. With open source, you're actually creating something, not propping up and enabling the bad practices of a corporation. It's the difference between giving a man a fish and giving him a fishing pole: if there's no goal of fixing the underlying problem then the charity can be worse than not helping at all.
tech support script readers
I'm not American, but why not just put the scripts online? I mean, you can have problems without your net being totally unusable. The customers can read themselves, they don't need people in India to do so for them. Heck, Verizon might put the scripts online EVEN FOR PROBLEMS WHEN THEY CAN'T GET ONLINE. That would be great and really Kafka. I love it already.
Chronologically late.
Cisco consumed Linksys, continuing the grand tradition of the larger corporation swallowing the smaller, more nimble one in order to eliminate the threat the latter's better, smaller, faster, and cheaper [whatever hardware/software] and superior customer service posed.
Of course, I still mourn for DEC...
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"