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Unpaid Contributors Provide Corporate Tech Support

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-when-you're-done-there's-this-fence-to-paint dept.

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.'"

13 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. just great by tyler.willard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:just great by MrNaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The bigger issue I see is that big companies are all for P2P activity when users are supplying each other with products / services that compliment the company's revenue streams, but against P2P when they trade anything that reduces those revenue streams.

      I'd have no problem with this, if there was anything other than a "Thanks for saving us a million dollars. Here's a gold star." being offered to those users who offer said support. If companies are so adamant to protect their pound of flesh from P2P, how about we demand a little evenhandedness from them and demand they somehow remunerate these so-called super users.

      --
      I hate printers.
    2. Re:just great by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's a Linksys cable modem I know of that has a recent firmware, and by recent I mean last year or so. Linksys wont release the firmware as they expect only the cable companies to do so. The cable companies only release it to people who bought their cable modems from them directly. So there are thousands of people putting up with bugs because they bought their modem retail and have no legitimate access to the updated firmware.

      What if I pulled this firmware from a cable company owned modem and wrote these people a simple installer? Would the company sing my praises then?

      The real issue here is that people frequent web boards for support because the paid phone support they get is beyond worthless. Level 1 people just read scripts and level 2 or 3 people cant release firmwares because of moronic policies. No wonder people are helping themselves. These companies should be ashamed of providing service on such a low level, not happy that someone has taken up the slack for them.

  2. This is great! by XPeter · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  3. People who know their shit can help others by OzPeter · · Score: 5, Funny

    News at 11

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    I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    1. Re:People who know their shit can help others by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People who know their shit can help others

      Very true. Conversely, people who think they know their shit, but in fact don't, can be a major detriment. And we know that there are a whole lot of them around.

  4. why not get paid for this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:why not get paid for this? by getuid() · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because then quality of tech support will go back to where it was: low.

      There are several articles out there that cover the topic of how material/financial motivation actually diminishes the quality of work instead of increasing it when compared to an intrinsic motivation alone. I'm not going to cite them all. Look them up, if you want to, google's your friend.

      Given the above statement, I'm only going to give some food for further thought: the people doing tech-support "for free" right now are those who enjoy it. They are those who both like and understand what they are doing. Now, if you have a problem, chances are slim that somebody not paid for it will be intrinsically motivated to help you, but *if* that happens, then that person is just about the best one in the world you could have ended up with...

      Now, if you would be able to give money for tech support to that person, that would probably not do too much harm. But the problem is that you have no way of giving money 'only to intrinsically motivated persons' -- the moment you're paying somebody, they're not (purely) intrinsically motivated, period. Worse: you cannot even tell whether the next guy is going to help you for the money in the first place.

      While it would be a good thing to be able to reward the 'selfless' ones, the problem is that as soon as you start rewarding, you start poisoning a 'selfless' community with 'selfish' people, who are out for the money, and thus you basically end up where you are today: to tech support that sucks.

      Since I'm at it: why desperately try to pay back those people, who are obviously rather content with *not* being paid? Why fix it, if it's not broken? Is it because you're somehow feeling guilty that somebody is solving your problems, and you wish return the favor? Well, if you genuinely want to return the favor: help somebody yourself. They'll appreciate it, and eventually, they'll also help somebody else, in the end *maybe* reaching your original helper (the one you were trying to reward, remember? :)

      But even if your original helper won't feel the traces of your good deeds: I can assure you, if you're helping somebody without expecting to get a reward, it will enable you to be able to accept help from somebody without feeling the urgent need to reward the helper with anything beyond a "thank you" :-) You're going to be happy, the original helper was happy all along, and other people along the way got happy too.

      One. Big. Happy. Family. :-)

      Why desperately trying to bring money to the game?

  5. unpaid contributors provide corporate tech support by viralMeme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.

  6. Re:unpaid contributors provide corporate tech supp by Halo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  7. "Rating systems for contributors"? by ActusReus · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  8. Not for money by iJusten · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  9. Charity is magic? by greg_barton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    '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

    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.