Anything Worth Doing...

Jason Lackey

You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords. - The Operative, Serenity (2005)

Customer Care and in a wider sense interaction with the public is something that many give lip service to but few really get right. For example, even Nokia, a company rated Exceptional (93 points) by Vendorrate blows it from time to time. One of the things the Finnish Giant is trying to do is get ahead with Software and Services. Perhaps it is possible to teach the old dog some new tricks, perhaps not. Regardless, when you do something like put up a blog in support of a new service you are trying to push, it might be nice to update that blog from time to time. Of course there are some who would suggest that they might be better of finding some apps to put in the app store but that is a different story. All grumbling aside, they make great phones and we use Nokias like the E71 in our demos because they are not only popular, but they are also sturdy, reliable and have good battery life as well as decent MDM capabilities.

Of course it would be in bad form to single out any one company on this, as it is very common for the web-facing customer service parts of companies to fail. In many cases email aliases are not monitored, forms go off into the ether never to be read, feedback goes into spam filters and the like.

In contrast there is a recent trend of companies using Twitter, blogs, forums and other social web devices to proactively reach out to customers. Even companies such as Comcast, with a Comcastic Vendorrate score of just 63, are starting to work Twitter, Jaiku, FriendFeed and the like. Some of these initiatives, like Comcast's, are even driven bottom up, with employees proactively seeking out unhappy customers in order to deliver on the service front.

Now just imagine, you have tweeted about some problem with your phone, and then whoever is playing the role of Frank Eliason at your mobile network operator is not only able to twit back, but better yet, reach out and fix your phone over the air. Now, that would be something, huh?