That was a long post, but it deserves a place of honour among Ask Slashdot responses. In fact, I find it hard to believe that you've only known CSR's, and never spent any time as one yourself. You hit the nail on the head about many of the difficulties about working support.
I'd like to add one further bit of information: Management often actively discourage their more technically inclined CSR's from providing assistance with unsupported applications or platforms. At my place of work (an ISP) we support: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home and Pro, Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X. Note that there is no support for Vista yet (though that will be forthcoming), and certainly no support for *BSD or Linux. There is no assistance for routers either, we can just tell the customer which settings to use, and direct them to call the router manufacturer for any further assistance.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing either. It is an attempt to create a uniformity of service and support. Trying to train all the new recruits on the ins and outs of linux networking, or trying to learn the configuration process for the thousands of makes and models of routers in the marketplace is just not possible. While most routers are setup in largely the same way, we're often dealing with customers who need us to be able to tell them *exactly* what to look for. You need to be able to describe other icons around the one the customer is looking for, and be able to describe each in many different ways, using colours, shapes, and weird metaphors for some customers. You don't learn all this in a training room. Trial by fire, and lots and lots of practice.
Support representatives deserve their own day, just like secretaries.
DSL2 connection to the CO, fiber from there to the internet exchange. Right now my sync rate is 8 megabits down, 1 megabit up, though they're supposed to double them both sometime in August. Totally unfiltered ports; outgoing port 25 is supposed to be filtered, but I forgot the "relay = smtp.bellnet.ca" line in my main.cf and it still worked. Static IP, and truly unlimited bandwidth. No caps, no limits, nothing. $114CAD with a one year contract. Free installation. I'm a pretty happy customer.
Shaw is an asshat of a company. They filter and traffic shape their traffic. Their home phone service is too expensive, but you can't use any other VoIP providers if they are your ISP. They actively degrade the quality of VoIP calls going through their network, so users of Vonage are SOL on the Shaw network. This isn't uniform across the entire Shaw network, it just kinda happens in areas about two months after Shaw starts advertising their digital home phone service in an area. Go figure.
I write this as a bitter tech support representative for a rival VoIP company (not Vonage). No other network in Canada has the kind of endemic issues anyone on Shaw suffers from. Vonage has even filed a lawsuit over the issue. Our customers who ship their VoIP units to India get better service from their ISP's than those using Shaw. It's disgraceful.
Are you storing the numbers on the SIM card or the phone's memory? SIM card storage can't handle multiple numbers per person, but if you store the numbers on the phone itself than you can do exactly what you describe. Greater danger of losing the numbers should your phone die on you, since they wont be stored on the SIM, but if you sync your phone numbers to your computer than you're home free.
This whole net neuterality debate is centered around what the US congress wants to do right now, but how will this debate affect those living outside of the US? Since the US houses so many data centres, will US telco's be able to extort money from non-US consumers (either directly or indirectly) by restricting access to data stored on US soil even if the destination is, say, in Canada? It seems like any move to restrict traffic on the internet will never be limited to just one nation (except for China of course, which is a special case).
Imagine Google's reply to this: "You're going to make my traffic slower if I don't pay this fee? Well fuck you very much! In fact, I'm going to go to a new bandwidth provider who doesn't try to extort me.
Google isn't being extorted by their immediate provider, they're being extorted by networks that they don't have agreements with. Moving to a different upstream provider isn't going to change anything. A point you seem to have sort of figured out here: Suppose Google's homepage has to traverse 5 networks to go to my PC. How is Google's fee going to be split across these networks?
Back in England in the 19th century the price of sending a letter was calculated depending on how far it has to go. Somebody realised that the cost of calculating the tariff actually costed the mail company more than extra profit they were trying to make.... Ask yourselves this, how much is going to cost ISPs to administer this monstrosity?
Well, we have these nifty things called computers that are really quite good at doing mathamatical calculations. In fact, they're good enough that a single machine from this company called Narus http://www.narus.com/ can monitor traffic several gigabits a second, for use in billing processes exactly like this. These machines might also have some other uses, but I wouldn't know about that.
Umm...
"The new Journaled File System, on which the Linux port was based, was first shipped in OS/2 Warp Server for eBusiness in April, 1999, after several years of designing, coding, and testing. It also shipped with OS/2 Warp Client in October, 2000."
Linux has JFS2
Ah yes, but did the Download.ject virus send personal information to a website in Russia? While perhaps not threatening to your physical person, few would argue that Download.ject was an idle threat. Granted the website was taken down (or blocked) fairly quickly, this wont always be the case.
You're forgetting about the Greens, who have the best policies regarding copyright, privacy, and so forth IMHO. Ultimately, none of the three traditional parties have much to offer, which means its time for a good ole' protest vote. And for each vote the Greens get 7 more dollars over the next four years thanks to Chretien's new campaign finance laws.
50million/1billion is not 21 percent. perhaps 50million*16seasons/1billion, but this wont be a retroactive pay raise, so we're looking at 5 percent of the total worth of the simpsons. Now that sounds like a paltry sum to me...
If there is a possibility that someone you employ is using facilities you provide to perform illegal activities, you might feel obligated to relieve them of access to your facilities. i doubt you could perform your job with an abacus, so the next step would be to fire you.
You could try changing the whole atmosphere of your store so that it resembles nothing like your competitors. Make the whole store one large living room, with computers placed throughout so that customers can see them and try them out, but have them at actual desks with chairs and so forth.
Customers walk in, sit down at a couch, you come over and discuss what they want their computer for, what they'd like to upgrade, etc. Build people systems for exactly what they need, don't try and sell them everything you can. It's unlikely that a signle white mother of four working full time really needs that souped up graphics card. Then build it for them.
Find out what software the customer will be wanting. If they want games, they can deal with that, but if they want a computer for specific tasks, graphics perhaps, then help them figure out what the best tools for the job are.
Since you obviously can't beat them with absolute rock bottom prices, beat them with a completely different form of customer service. Seems to have worked in other retail markets. You could even focus on demographics your competition tends to overlook, perhaps you'll have a staff member who focus' on disabled people, and knows about special hardware and software for the blind etc.
You're employee's and yourself will be able to specialize with certain area's to a certain extent, something your comptetition likely doesn't have much of.
And this is of course, just an example. As long as you can provide something your competition doesn't, and it's something that a large enough customer base are willing to pay for, you'll be around for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
That was a long post, but it deserves a place of honour among Ask Slashdot responses. In fact, I find it hard to believe that you've only known CSR's, and never spent any time as one yourself. You hit the nail on the head about many of the difficulties about working support.
I'd like to add one further bit of information: Management often actively discourage their more technically inclined CSR's from providing assistance with unsupported applications or platforms. At my place of work (an ISP) we support: Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home and Pro, Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X. Note that there is no support for Vista yet (though that will be forthcoming), and certainly no support for *BSD or Linux. There is no assistance for routers either, we can just tell the customer which settings to use, and direct them to call the router manufacturer for any further assistance.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing either. It is an attempt to create a uniformity of service and support. Trying to train all the new recruits on the ins and outs of linux networking, or trying to learn the configuration process for the thousands of makes and models of routers in the marketplace is just not possible. While most routers are setup in largely the same way, we're often dealing with customers who need us to be able to tell them *exactly* what to look for. You need to be able to describe other icons around the one the customer is looking for, and be able to describe each in many different ways, using colours, shapes, and weird metaphors for some customers. You don't learn all this in a training room. Trial by fire, and lots and lots of practice.
Support representatives deserve their own day, just like secretaries.
DSL2 connection to the CO, fiber from there to the internet exchange. Right now my sync rate is 8 megabits down, 1 megabit up, though they're supposed to double them both sometime in August. Totally unfiltered ports; outgoing port 25 is supposed to be filtered, but I forgot the "relay = smtp.bellnet.ca" line in my main.cf and it still worked. Static IP, and truly unlimited bandwidth. No caps, no limits, nothing. $114CAD with a one year contract. Free installation. I'm a pretty happy customer.
Shaw is an asshat of a company. They filter and traffic shape their traffic. Their home phone service is too expensive, but you can't use any other VoIP providers if they are your ISP. They actively degrade the quality of VoIP calls going through their network, so users of Vonage are SOL on the Shaw network. This isn't uniform across the entire Shaw network, it just kinda happens in areas about two months after Shaw starts advertising their digital home phone service in an area. Go figure. I write this as a bitter tech support representative for a rival VoIP company (not Vonage). No other network in Canada has the kind of endemic issues anyone on Shaw suffers from. Vonage has even filed a lawsuit over the issue. Our customers who ship their VoIP units to India get better service from their ISP's than those using Shaw. It's disgraceful.
Are you storing the numbers on the SIM card or the phone's memory? SIM card storage can't handle multiple numbers per person, but if you store the numbers on the phone itself than you can do exactly what you describe. Greater danger of losing the numbers should your phone die on you, since they wont be stored on the SIM, but if you sync your phone numbers to your computer than you're home free.
This whole net neuterality debate is centered around what the US congress wants to do right now, but how will this debate affect those living outside of the US? Since the US houses so many data centres, will US telco's be able to extort money from non-US consumers (either directly or indirectly) by restricting access to data stored on US soil even if the destination is, say, in Canada? It seems like any move to restrict traffic on the internet will never be limited to just one nation (except for China of course, which is a special case).
Imagine Google's reply to this: "You're going to make my traffic slower if I don't pay this fee? Well fuck you very much! In fact, I'm going to go to a new bandwidth provider who doesn't try to extort me.
Google isn't being extorted by their immediate provider, they're being extorted by networks that they don't have agreements with. Moving to a different upstream provider isn't going to change anything. A point you seem to have sort of figured out here: Suppose Google's homepage has to traverse 5 networks to go to my PC. How is Google's fee going to be split across these networks?
Back in England in the 19th century the price of sending a letter was calculated depending on how far it has to go. Somebody realised that the cost of calculating the tariff actually costed the mail company more than extra profit they were trying to make. ... Ask yourselves this, how much is going to cost ISPs to administer this monstrosity?
Well, we have these nifty things called computers that are really quite good at doing mathamatical calculations. In fact, they're good enough that a single machine from this company called Narus http://www.narus.com/ can monitor traffic several gigabits a second, for use in billing processes exactly like this. These machines might also have some other uses, but I wouldn't know about that.
In Soviet Russia, the government... oh, wait... damn.
Umm... "The new Journaled File System, on which the Linux port was based, was first shipped in OS/2 Warp Server for eBusiness in April, 1999, after several years of designing, coding, and testing. It also shipped with OS/2 Warp Client in October, 2000." Linux has JFS2
Ah yes, but did the Download.ject virus send personal information to a website in Russia? While perhaps not threatening to your physical person, few would argue that Download.ject was an idle threat. Granted the website was taken down (or blocked) fairly quickly, this wont always be the case.
You're forgetting about the Greens, who have the best policies regarding copyright, privacy, and so forth IMHO. Ultimately, none of the three traditional parties have much to offer, which means its time for a good ole' protest vote. And for each vote the Greens get 7 more dollars over the next four years thanks to Chretien's new campaign finance laws.
50million/1billion is not 21 percent. perhaps 50million*16seasons/1billion, but this wont be a retroactive pay raise, so we're looking at 5 percent of the total worth of the simpsons. Now that sounds like a paltry sum to me...
SCO's based in Utah, the Mormon state. The Vatican can't do much to get those heretics into heaven.
If there is a possibility that someone you employ is using facilities you provide to perform illegal activities, you might feel obligated to relieve them of access to your facilities. i doubt you could perform your job with an abacus, so the next step would be to fire you.
You could try changing the whole atmosphere of your store so that it resembles nothing like your competitors. Make the whole store one large living room, with computers placed throughout so that customers can see them and try them out, but have them at actual desks with chairs and so forth. Customers walk in, sit down at a couch, you come over and discuss what they want their computer for, what they'd like to upgrade, etc. Build people systems for exactly what they need, don't try and sell them everything you can. It's unlikely that a signle white mother of four working full time really needs that souped up graphics card. Then build it for them. Find out what software the customer will be wanting. If they want games, they can deal with that, but if they want a computer for specific tasks, graphics perhaps, then help them figure out what the best tools for the job are. Since you obviously can't beat them with absolute rock bottom prices, beat them with a completely different form of customer service. Seems to have worked in other retail markets. You could even focus on demographics your competition tends to overlook, perhaps you'll have a staff member who focus' on disabled people, and knows about special hardware and software for the blind etc. You're employee's and yourself will be able to specialize with certain area's to a certain extent, something your comptetition likely doesn't have much of. And this is of course, just an example. As long as you can provide something your competition doesn't, and it's something that a large enough customer base are willing to pay for, you'll be around for a while.