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New Study Results: PCs rate lower than other CE products

News.com reported today that the the University of Michigan released their latest update to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which is “a uniform and independent measure of household consumption experience.” According to the News article on ACSI’s study…



“…customers still rate PCs lower than several other consumer product categories, including cars and appliances.


“Even though servicing a car or dishwasher can induce the same kinds of headaches as PC technical support does, car and appliance makers have done a better job of simplifying their products and reducing the amount of maintenance needed to keep their products going, while PC users continue to flood help lines when faced with complicated problems…


(In some cases, sure. But I’ve had more expensive problems and repairs with a family car recently. And unlike the situation with my car, I was able to self diagnose a recent firewall problem on one PC using on-line and application help in 20 minutes… a feature my car dealer doesn’t offer.)


The ACSI’s latest study results are available on the ACSI web site here.


Apple Computer was in the lead, followed by Dell,  HP brand, Gateway then HP-Compaq. Apple improved over their score last year, and it was reported that Dell’s score rose. The ACSI also rated Google, Yahoo and AOL:



“Google has a strong lead over all other search engines with a score of 81. That was actually down a little bit from last year, but no other search provider made a run at Google during 2006. Google is the most widely used search engine, followed by Yahoo and MSN, according to comScore Networks.”

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Managing podcasts: Marc Mercuri’s InfoCenter

Microsoft Watch has an article today on Marc Mercuri’s information-aggregator, Information Center, or InfoCenter.  As noted on Marc’s blog, if you haven’t heard of InfoCenter, then it’s worth checking out http://dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showID=189.


From Microsoft Watch:



“Carl Franklin, the CEO of Pwop Productions, who has had a chance to see the product, described InfoCenter as “an RSS aggregator/podcast-enclosure downloader on steroids.”

“Mercuri showed off a prototype of InfoCenter to a handful of individuals at Microsoft’s TechEd conference in June. In July, he unveiled InfoCenter to a broader group, via the “.Net Rocks” radio show. Mercuri is expecting to release for download the latest InfoCenter bits, complete with a newly redesigned interface, around August 9.”


Anything that makes it easier to track and manage podcasts is super, so August 9th can’t come soon enoug. As I was discussing with Richard Sprague yesterday, there’s just way too much to manage these days around mail, blogs, podcasts and websites.


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Back on the Customer Satisfaction blog

Back on the blog, after being AWOL the last week or so unexpectedly.

Last week I was out of the office and off the broadband loop due to a death in the family. Why is this important for the blog you ask? One of the reasons I do what I do was in part related to the relative who left this mortal coil, and the impact he had on me as a customer and consumer of our products.

It sounds silly, but it’s true.

My wife’s uncle was a warm-hearted and friendly person. He was open and thoughtful, and more than anything loved to keep in touch with his family. One of the ways he accomplished this was via email and the Web, and he was a consumer and user of our products. I was amazed that this man in his 70’s was so proficient on mail, and used it regularly. For me, he was also a great source of feedback when it came to our products, what people were using to share pictures and the trouble that many people of retirement age run into when using new technology products. From him, I took away valuable insight on the difficulty of navigating site logins, Windows error messages, network configurations and choosing the right peripheral for the job.

Oh yes, and I also found him a great voice of reality when it came to many of the things we take for granted, like sharing photos on the web. Something that should be a fairly straight-forward process of sharing family photos turned out to be one of those things that required the intervention of a younger person (his son) to set up and view the photos we posted to a popular, free sharing site, as well as on our MSN Spaces. I think that we were able to get him on to our photo site after two or three attempts and a couple of tutorials.

This wasn’t due to the fact that there was a configuration or systems problem: it was because the user experience wasn’t straight forward enough.

Everyday it seems that people forget that when you’re knee deep in high-tech, software and services, we live in Oz: the streets are gold in the Emerald city (that’s Seattle), that we all know how to use all of our various products, we remember all the sites to get more information and how to configure our systems remotely. Sometimes, people forget that there are so many customers living in Kansas (or a small town in Florida, as was our late uncle’s case for the winter months) who have a hard enough time figuring out how to manage their computer back-ups, network security and protect themselves from ever-present phishers and pirates.

What I have been impressed with is that at MS, we have many people who know what it’s like to be a customer and a partner – we’ve certainly hired enough of them in the last few years (I’ve been both in the corp world, for 17+ years prior to coming to MS five + years ago). Many new and old employees know and remember what it’s like to run into a software glitch, a poorly designed dialogue or get yet another confusing message, and they work hard to make sure we fix the problem when we run into it or many times fix the issue before it leaves Redmond.

I’ll spend more of my entries over the next few weeks highlighting some cases where we have been doing well, some of the areas where we’ve fixed issues, and some areas where we have room for improvement. If there are products or areas that you’d like to see highlighted, please let me know, either by email or comments: I monitor the feedback on my blog (and so much of it is spam, I don’t allow it to be posted without review).

For now, I need to go and talk to my 8-yr old over dinner about how he’s using the Office Live beta for his summer art project.

 

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Jump through hoops for your customer

I read a blog entry on the http://retailstore.blogspot.com/ this weekend titled “Customer Service, Dell, Yahoo, Flames and Blogs”. It details a customer’s difficult journey to get support from an on-line company


I certainly agree with five of the six lessons in the post, which I paraphrased…



1. Train customer service reps to diagnose problems.
2. Respond quickly to email.
3. Don’t make online customers call.
4. Executive blogs should include contact information as an escalation path.
5. Search other customer blogs for info on how to correct the problem.


I’ll add my own: Jump through hoops: Remember that the customer on the line is a future repeat customer and your best advertising. It takes a lot less to keep a good customer than acquire a new one.


A couple of personal examples, as I have experienced great on-line support from Dell and HP. When we needed a part for my wife’s Dell laptop at home, I was able to quickly file a customer claim on their website (on a Thursday). A couple of days later — on the following Monday — the replacement part arrived via Priority Mail. Just awesome. My last PC purchase and endorsement to my family when looking for a new laptop? Dell.


And with HP, when my scanner had developed some quirks near the end of the one-year warranty, they quickly escalated my chat session to a manager who called me on HP’s dime and then initiated a full replacement for my then under-warranty scanner. To a more expensive model, with a new 1 year warranty. And at no cost to me. The last two printers I purchased? No surprise, both HP models.


As for our own support, I would like to replay this event from over the holidays.


I was standing in line at SeaTac airport, getting the boarding passes from the United Airlines automated system. Of course, the passes would not print, and a gate agent came to my aid, getting me the passes I needed for the family quickly and then checking in my bags directly.


The gate agent then told me of a problem she was running into on her new PC that she had purchased over the holidays: eager to make our flight, I handed her a Quick Assistance card and told her to call the number on the card for help, as I wasn’t able to diagnose the problem on the spot.


So, a couple of days later, the gate agent emails me, saying that she had spoken with our customer service folks and that they had solved her PC problem… as well as some common household chores.


You see, she also noted that having recently developed a leak in her home’s roof, she wished that roof installers offered such levels of support when you asked. Turns out the customer service agent was listening.



“I greatly appreciated the consideration of the Microsoft computer assistance… which came in handy (with my) new computer and Office XP.


“I’ll see what they say about roof repair! : )”


I’m not sure that the Microsoft Customer Service Centre handles home maintenance, but you never know.


You see, it happend that the roof repair the gate agent had mentioned was a tricky thing for the roofing contractor to diagnose, and the Microsoft customer service agent following up with her was able to assist there, too. 


When the customer mentioned that they’d seen a dark spot on the ceiling of their room, the customer service agent asked if the spot on the ceiling was damp.


Yep, sure was.


Turns out the damp ceiling was a direct indication of where the contractors needed to focus their roof repair work, something they hadn’t been able to notice on their own.  That saved the home owner time and money fixing the roof.


I’ve received some of the best advice on home networking and installation from the team.  Next time I have to do some work on our kitchen, I think that I’ll call our customer service line.


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