customer service

SxSWi Report – Social Media: Connecting with Customers

May 4, 2009

Note: This was listed in the catalog as “Social Media: If You Liked it, Then You Should Have Put a Digg on It…”, which I wouldn’t have bothered to attend, but when I walked by the room the title had changed to “Social Media: Connecting with Customers”, which was a lot more obviously interesting to [...]

Read the full article →

Italy’s Postal Embarrassment

October 31, 2007

Complaints are common about the Italian postal service, but I thought things were getting better. And maybe they are, measured strictly against la posta’s own previous service levels, which have always been dire. But consider these events: I needed to mail two packages from the US this summer, one to Ross in India, one to [...]

Read the full article →

Communicating with Your Customers

October 25, 2006

Someone anonymous claiming to be an Apple employee launched a blog (now vanished) to discuss his/her thoughts on Apple’s communications with its customers. This was big news in the blogosphere, because Apple is notoriously secretive and uncommunicative. The only Apple product I own is an iPod (I had a Mac SE 15 years ago, my [...]

Read the full article →

The Infamous Miniskirt Photo: Give the Customers What They Want!

September 16, 2001

First, the picture, which first appeared on the Adaptec website in April, 1998: Over the years some of my colleagues griped that having a picture like this on a corporate website was “unprofessional,” and I suppose it was. But (a) why does “corporate” have to mean “boring”? and (b) there’s a story behind it. It [...]

Read the full article →

Fanmail (I’m Blushing)

August 16, 2001

8 Nov 1997 – There are heaps of useful information on the Adaptec web site, though if you start out at the main home page it’s hard to find the CD-R/CD-RW stuff. If you want to look at it, try this URL: http://www.adaptec.com/support/cdrec [link no longer works] It gives you rundowns (not always complete or [...]

Read the full article →

EMail Encounters: Anecdotes of a Professional Life Online

August 16, 2001

I’ve spent probably half of my working life answering email. And therein lie a number of tales… Some people were convinced I had to be mailbot, because I answered so quickly. As I told them: “If we had a mailbot this good, we’d be selling that instead of CD-R!” The Unexpected Response It seems that [...]

Read the full article →

Discussion List: Early Experiences in Online Customer Communications

August 16, 2001

“People want to discuss your product or service online. If you don’t give them a way to do it, someone else will.” User to User Support by Derek M. Powazek – on WebTechniques The Adaptec discussion list was created in about 1996 as a way for users of Adaptec CD-R software to help each other. [...]

Read the full article →

Out on the Usenet: Supporting a Company in an Online Public Forum

July 30, 2001

My presence in online public discussion groups dates back to the CompuServe forums I frequented starting around 1993, where I helped customers with Incat’s CD-R software, and CD-R technology in general. I was eventually invited to start a section specifically for Incat software. Then a friendly user wrote me: “Hey, you should be out on [...]

Read the full article →

Subscriber Comments About the Adaptec Discussion List

July 17, 2001

In response to complaints of censorship on the discussion list, Stan (a long time Adaptec/Roxio List recipient) wrote: Adaptec/Roxio has always ‘paid the freight’ for their own, honestly identified “moderated” <news group> & openly controlled forum. “Their” newsgroup exists as a wise, long term business decision to: 1) Cultivate real world user feed back – [...]

Read the full article →