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blatherskiteI'm a sucker for garage sales, and if there's any evidence of books begin sold, forget about it: I'm a lost soul. So yesterday I walked up to the new Apple Store that just opened in our neighborhood (insert purring noise here), and got myself a free t-shirt for standing in line for 15 minutes. On the way home, I got stopped by a garage sale. (Note the passive voice: I did not stop for the sale; it stopped me. It's sad, really.)
Came back with a bunch of stuff, including a Dilbert collection—something I resist even less successfully than other books that are looking for a home. The 19 March 1998 cartoon delighted the editor and technical writer in me, since it was about a typo in a user manual that changed the tech support phone number to the number for a phone sex service. (You can see the cartoon here, but if the link breaks, head over to Dilbert.com, navigate to the "Strips" part of the site, and use the search tool to find the cartoon for that date.)
If you know me, you already know where this is going. If not, consider yourself warned: inappropriate and probably offensive content lies ahead. Stop reading now if you have delicate sensibilities!
I immediately began to wonder whether this might actually be an economical alternative to conventional technical support. The last statistics I have for tech support costs is that they cost providers about US$25 per call, what with telephone and staff costs, and since that statistic is probably a decade old now, the current costs are undoubtedly higher. Whatever the actual costs, many software developers are moving to a "pay per incident" fee: you hand over your credit card, they charge you a stiff fee, then they promise to solve your problem Real Soon Now. For example, Microsoft charges Cdn$49 per incident for support with Office 2007, and that's a relative bargain. For VMWare's vSphere Essentials package, you're looking at US$299 per incident. Volume pricing is available, but the costs are still scary. I'm sure there are worse costs; I remember that back in the late 1980s, the people who produced Interleaf's TPS software charged so much for their support contract that I was able to persuade my boss to move our whole department from a single shared Sun workstation to four Macs—for less money.
All this falls under the heading of "why make your product work well in the first place if you can turn product defects into a profit center?"
My take on this is that if you're going to be screwed, you might as well enjoy the experience. A quick and unscientific Google search reveals that phone sex services run US$1 to US$3 per minute, and given that they're about as likely to solve your computer problems, you can get 20 minutes to several hours of "service" for the same price as a call to Microsoft or VMWare. Heck, at VMWare's US$299 per incident, you can probably call an escort service and have them make a house call, and if you're lucky, you'll get a plucky young computer science student working their way through university who can solve your problem for you. (No, I'm emphatically ***not*** going to research current pricing. )
Of course, if you need Microsoft Windows tech support, you'll probably get more satisfaction out of the Psychic Friends Network and their competitors. Another quick Google suggests that costs for telephone psychic services are similar to those for phone sex, and if you're using Windows, you'll probably get your computer problem solved about as quickly as if you call Microsoft. Couldn't hurt to try. Even if they don't solve your problem, it's probably worth it for the entertainment value.
Satisfaction with tech support calls is typically low, and nobody seems much interested in hiring editors for software documentation, so maybe Scott Adams is on the right track: If you're a technical writer facing the eternal problem of proving your value to your employer, you could perhaps hint that a simple typing error would largely eliminate your company's phone support costs, while greatly increasing customer satifaction. Not that I'm recommending this, mind you. Insert full legal disclaimer here.
Came back with a bunch of stuff, including a Dilbert collection—something I resist even less successfully than other books that are looking for a home. The 19 March 1998 cartoon delighted the editor and technical writer in me, since it was about a typo in a user manual that changed the tech support phone number to the number for a phone sex service. (You can see the cartoon here, but if the link breaks, head over to Dilbert.com, navigate to the "Strips" part of the site, and use the search tool to find the cartoon for that date.)
If you know me, you already know where this is going. If not, consider yourself warned: inappropriate and probably offensive content lies ahead. Stop reading now if you have delicate sensibilities!
I immediately began to wonder whether this might actually be an economical alternative to conventional technical support. The last statistics I have for tech support costs is that they cost providers about US$25 per call, what with telephone and staff costs, and since that statistic is probably a decade old now, the current costs are undoubtedly higher. Whatever the actual costs, many software developers are moving to a "pay per incident" fee: you hand over your credit card, they charge you a stiff fee, then they promise to solve your problem Real Soon Now. For example, Microsoft charges Cdn$49 per incident for support with Office 2007, and that's a relative bargain. For VMWare's vSphere Essentials package, you're looking at US$299 per incident. Volume pricing is available, but the costs are still scary. I'm sure there are worse costs; I remember that back in the late 1980s, the people who produced Interleaf's TPS software charged so much for their support contract that I was able to persuade my boss to move our whole department from a single shared Sun workstation to four Macs—for less money.
All this falls under the heading of "why make your product work well in the first place if you can turn product defects into a profit center?"
My take on this is that if you're going to be screwed, you might as well enjoy the experience. A quick and unscientific Google search reveals that phone sex services run US$1 to US$3 per minute, and given that they're about as likely to solve your computer problems, you can get 20 minutes to several hours of
Of course, if you need Microsoft Windows tech support, you'll probably get more satisfaction out of the Psychic Friends Network and their competitors. Another quick Google suggests that costs for telephone psychic services are similar to those for phone sex, and if you're using Windows, you'll probably get your computer problem solved about as quickly as if you call Microsoft. Couldn't hurt to try. Even if they don't solve your problem, it's probably worth it for the entertainment value.
Satisfaction with tech support calls is typically low, and nobody seems much interested in hiring editors for software documentation, so maybe Scott Adams is on the right track: If you're a technical writer facing the eternal problem of proving your value to your employer, you could perhaps hint that a simple typing error would largely eliminate your company's phone support costs, while greatly increasing customer satifaction. Not that I'm recommending this, mind you. Insert full legal disclaimer here.