Phone ranger
October 28, 2007 at 13:00 | In Grumpy Old Man | 1 CommentTags: morethan service phone
Ok, I’m impressed with More Than’s customer support line. They started pretty well with the option to receive a call back instead of staying on hold, plus the person I spoke to seemed very helpful (that’s if I get the call I’m expecting on Monday anyway) but it got even better.
Something I’ve thought for a long time is that customers should be given the option to indicate whether they are satisfied with a call to support lines after the call centre staff have ended the call. Without knowing how successful a call was, the only things left to measure are how many calls staff answer and how quickly they get the customer off the phone, which I don’t believe will ever result in good service. (Not to mention making it a pretty thankless job.) I’m sure poor customer service costs companies in more ways than one: not only in lost custom, but I suspect it must increase the call volumes, leading to more pressure, and poorer service in a vicious circle. Alternatively if I am satisfied after the first call, I won’t need to phone again.
The simplest approach would be to allow customers to stay on the line after the person they were talking to hangs, at which point they could automatically be put through to a more senior member of staff to resolve any problems straight away. More Than have gone for a short questionnaire about how satisfied you were with the service after finishing the call, although I’m not sure if everyone is given that option, or if they pick a random selection of callers. Either way, it seems like a much better way to measure how effective their customer support is being.
All in all, it has left a really excellent impression of the company and as a result, I’m much more likely to be renewing my insurance with them.
Highway robbery – update
October 24, 2007 at 13:19 | In Grumpy Old Man | 1 CommentTags: 80122, 81404, icstis, mobilephone, sms, vodafone
It has been just over a month since receiving a couple of unwanted reverse charge SMS texts, so here’s a quick highway robbery update:
- I have just received, and paid in, a refund sent as Postal Order from one of the SMS companies. My guess is that it was from 81404 as they did actually get in touch, unlike the other company. Nothing in the envelope other than the Postal Order though (I think it’s the first Postal Order I have ever received!) so it could have been an early Christmas present I guess! The person who phoned from 81404 explained that they were unable to simply refund the charge made to my Vodafone account directly so, in part thanks to Royal Mail delays, I have had to wait a month to get the refund. Still, I’m actually quite impressed to get it at all, so the October award for best effort goes to 81404.
- Vodafone did eventually reply in writing to my complaint, unfortunately it appears that they didn’t take the time to read my letter before replying. Instead they just restated exactly what they had told me on the phone. I have had a couple of attempts at encouraging them to take the matter seriously, but despite the promise of a free itemised bill for September (it might be nice to know exactly how badly you’re being ripped off) and forwarding my complaint on to a manager for a reply, I have not received anything more from them. Looks like I’ll be writing to their CEO Arun Sarin next.
- I have just been on the phone to Royal Mail about one of the other letters that I sent recorded delivery and they can find no trace of it on their system. So it looks like Icstis may have an excuse for not replying yet. An updated letter will be on its way to them shortly though.
- As I suspected, my MP was the first person to respond in writing, however I still await a full reply. Looks like he might have other things on his mind now but I look forward to hearing from him soon.
I completely forgot about the Watchdog option last month. The last time I wrote to them was about phones 4u… what is it about phone companies?!!
A post about excessive use of dramatic…
October 23, 2007 at 16:47 | In Grumpy Old Man | 4 CommentsTags: tv
…pauses!
It’s a common enough problem that I, fortunately, won’t need to admit to what I was watching! Dramatic
…
pauses are just getting out of hand. Every TV show that has some sort of vote involved, which seems like most of them these days, is riddled with big gaps. Some are so big that they have time to have a break for adverts! If things get any worse, the news will have to summarise the results of the days pauses, for everyone who couldn’t spare the 3 hours it took for the presenters to read the next line on the autocue! Unless of course news shows start doing the same thing: England
.
.
.
6, South Africa
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.
.
.
.
The global kitchen
October 18, 2007 at 14:45 | In Ones and Zeros | 7 CommentsTags: Blogs, dopplr, facebook, flickr, linkedin, tea, twitter
I recently compared virtual worlds to a global shed so I thought I’d try another house related analogy…
After a few discussions with Andy recently I’m toying with the idea that social software is like a global kitchen. A kitchen is a good place for a nice cup of tea and a sit down when friends or neighbours pop round, and it’s where a large proportion of the guests are likely to be found at a party (and coincidentally where all the alcohol is). Like the kitchen, Weblogs, Dopplr, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, and (insert your favourite here) all provide a sociable place you can connect to people through. Unlike the kitchen, the people can be from anywhere, and they can stop by at any time to leave a note on your fridge, even if you aren’t in.
I find it fascinating how people are connected; for example, Andy and I connected a contact he has made online with someone I know in person (and only recently discovered has a blog, through Facebook!) in one degree of blogroll. It seems to me that the people you meet in person and those you meet online are no different, and there’s quite an overlap anyway: people you meet in person move away, and you can meet people in person that began as virtual friendships (Dopplr perhaps makes that more likely). I often struggle to remember when, or how, I first met someone but the process seems to be similar whether in person or through social software. You can be introduced to a friend of a friend in person or on LinkedIn, and you can bump into someone randomly on the way to the fridge or stumble upon their weblog by chance.
One thing that I do find odd is that, despite their primary purpose, sites that record your network of contacts don’t seem to help making those contacts in the first place. At least in my experience, I have only ever added someone to my Facebook or LinkedIn network after meeting them elsewhere.
For slightly more coherent thoughts on the subject, with no mention of kitchens, here are the blog posts Andy pointed me at in the first place:
What the heck is a non-meta friend anyway?
Christine Rosen on Virtual Friendships And The New Narcissism
Eclifox on alphaWorks
October 12, 2007 at 10:47 | In Ones and Zeros | Leave a CommentTags: Eclipse, IBM, web
It’s great to see Gautham announce that Eclifox has made it on to alphaWorks. There are a lot of things I like about Eclipse and this looks like a really interesting extension, although I must admit I do get a bit concerned when you try to do ‘too much’ in a web browser.
Will definitely be downloading this bit of alphaWorks for a play soon.
Fax-tastic
October 11, 2007 at 22:30 | In Ones and Zeros | Leave a CommentTags: fax
No more real post at work since the Moo cards arrived but something else arrived in the post room recently… a fax machine! I was originally going to write something along the lines of how old fashioned a fax machine is and whether anyone still uses them! It turns out that I still use them! Just after it turned up, I was trying to send someone a scan of something but it seems that some mail/virus filter somewhere decided that it wasn’t going to let that happen. Hmmmm, fax machine to the rescue- print out scan of document, feed printout in to fax and send! Ugly but it worked. Well, it worked the second or third time- fax machines have never liked me!
Looking forward to when the teletype gets installed!
Pocket SLorpedo
October 8, 2007 at 23:11 | In VU | 1 CommentTags: reactivision, secondlife, slorpedo, tuio, xmlrpc
I’ve been meaning to have another play with SLorpedo since June and have finally had a couple of good chances to get in to Second Life more than 5 minutes at a time for a play. The result is pocket slorpedo:
This version is pocket size because it should be easier for anyone to have a go. Instead of relaying data about the subs via a server somewhere, I’m using a Java TUIO client to send info. directly into second life using XML-RPC. In world, you can scale the game to any size, so no need for an entire sim, although it’s a shame not to have mini versions of Chris’s excellent, but quite massive submarine models. (I’ve cheated and used simple icehouse style sub pieces for now, which my minimalist modeling skills suited nicely! Should be easy to replace them with something decent later though!)
Unlike before, the whole game is run from the real world, with the number ‘4′ used to fire the torpedoes and ‘0′ to start a new game. (All other odd pieces appear as blue subs, even pieces are yellow, under 30 are small subs and over 30 are big subs.) Inside second life, you can replay the last game in case anyone walks in front of a torpedo!
I had wanted to rez each sub as it was played but xml-rpc just seems too unreliable for that at the moment. Simple to switch though if things improve. I have a couple more quirks to iron out, like subs firing even if they’ve been hit! Ooops. Still, they all face the right way and shoot in the right direction. I borrowed a webcam for the night to double check things worked with the real reactivision (the TUIO simulator was great for getting started) and looks like I also need another go at ‘placing’ the pieces- I wanted the sub position to be fixed when the piece was first placed, ignoring any sneaky re-adjustments people might be tempted to make! Worked fine with the simulator but all the positions came out as 0,0 with the real images, so for now you can keep moving pieces around before firing. Darn!
The global shed
October 6, 2007 at 16:25 | In VU | 6 CommentsTags: modelling, patriciaannedaviau, secondlife
Second Life is full of surprises, sometimes when you least expect them. I’ve just been in the IBM 6 sandbox experimenting with a little display to show scores when PatriciaAnne Daviau stopped by to say hello. It turns out she’s been working on building a whole town far above the ground, and she took me up for a tour. Here’s part of the town- a very nice garage:
The twist is that I couldn’t even see it when I arrived- the whole town is tiny. Really tiny! Here it is with avatars to give a bit of an idea of scale:
Even that doesn’t really convey quite how small this is. From the normal view in Second Life the whole build looks more like a flat object with a picture on it. She should give out magnifying glasses to visitors! It has to be one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in Second Life.
So, to explain the title, this is what I really like about Second Life. It’s like bashing bits of wood together in a shed to build some hair-brained project when someone from halfway round the globe stops by for a chat, and to show you what they’re up to in a shed thousands of miles away. That’s some shed. And there aren’t any spiders… unless you build some!
Update: there’s now a tiny JCB to help out with the building!
Update: just found a great video of some more of the insanely small builds via the eightbar blog; still my favourite thing in Second Life. (8 Jan 2009)
Perranporth, Cornwall
October 6, 2007 at 11:09 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a CommentTags: Maps, Photos
Only six days in to October and I’ve remembered to update my monthly wallpaper- sometimes takes most of the month before I realise it’s time for a change! This month’s Ordnance Survey wallpaper is Perranporth, Cornwall.
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