by | | Cloud & Online Services, Customer Service, Online Storage, Opinion & Ideas, Services
I think I am getting obsessed with testing online storage platforms, maybe its because I just don’t conceive that there is not one single player that is willing to provide all the things I am looking for. Some weeks ago I wrote a post about 18 features the ideal online storage service should have and Dropbox is far, far away from filling the check boxes I mention there.
Since a lot of years ago I know that one of the best ways to improve IT stuff is to listen to what the customers have to say, but this doesn’t seem to apply to Dropbox, or they might have a different agenda for their service…like being sold to a bigger player?
The blue box online storage service has an excellent way to gather information about what the users are suggesting and desiring for their products, its called Votebox. The way it works is very simple, people write ideas about what they want and other just vote them if they support them too (I think the guys at Uservoice copied this model and created a profitable business around it, but that’s another story). So Dropbox has a great platform to gather feedback, so whats the problem? (more…)
by | | Customer Service, Mobile & Tablets, Services, Strategy
The biggest mobile provider in Switzerland, Swisscom announced today that the company lifted the SIM lock on all their devices since 1st of July 2013. This means that on this date, every customer from the company (with a subscription plan) will be able to unlock their phones bought through them. This will allow everybody to use any SIM card from any provider and use the phone with it.
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by | | Customer Service, Mobile & Tablets, Opinion & Ideas, Services
I moved to Switzerland with my wife around a year ago. Some months later, I hired a Sunrise plan with an iPhone 4S together with a USD 45 subscription for my wife. Later on, I got another one for me. I also encouraged friends and family here to get a plan too, so we could all talk for free (on the same network). As result, my sister in law and my brother in law also got a mobile plan with Sunrise.
A month ago, I started working in a project for a company in Kaiseraugst, Switzerland near the border with Germany. Yesterday I received the bill from the past month and Sunrise decided to charge me roaming costs, even without leaving the country.
The problem is that Sunrise has a very bad coverage on different parts of Switzerland, one of those is Kaiseraugst, and my iPhone 4S if set to automatic network usage is changing all the time to a network in Germany because the signal strength in this Swiss city is not good. So this month only I received 50 (yes, 50, I counted them) messages by Sunrise saying me that my phone was in “Roaming mode”. I also tried setting the iPhone 4S to use only the Sunrise network but I also receive several messages saying “Your Selected Cellular network is not longer available. You can choose a different network in Settings”. You can imagine how annoying these messages can be.
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by | | Customer Service, Services
Some companies are having a very difficult time to offer a serious level of customer support, not only externally but also internally. Some of them are small companies with few resources and others are very big but with wrongly managed or focused.
I´ve been working on IT user and customer support for more than 15 years and I´ve seen and experience a lot of things that are just wrong, here I compiled a list of some of them. Feel free to add your own experiences on the comments below:
1) Answer the phone: If your company offers a phone, make sure somebody is available on the other side when a person calls. If your infrastructure is tiny, you can offer the caller to leave a message and make sure you return his call.
2) Don’t hide form your customers: One of the worst things you can do is avoid your customers and don’t allow them to find your contact information easily. It’s understandable that some companies offer a FAQ through procedure before being able to place an email for support, but make it very simple, don’t hide. You have a customer needing your help on the other side! (more…)
by | | Cloud & Online Services, Customer Service, Opinion & Ideas, Strategy
Google has a reseller agreement where they allow you to sell their Google Apps Business product. The main product of this package is that you can have your own email account with 25 GB of online space, own domain, online sync with all your devices and constant backup so you don´t loose anything. Together with it a huge amount of tools and parameters to personalize your mail experience for each user at your company no matter what size they are. Other services come with each account too, you can check the overall product on this link. I use this service for myself and has been improving a lot from month to month, and clearly is a great alternative to having your own mail servers at your office…
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by | | Customer Service, Guides & Help, Opinion & Ideas
Everywhere you search on Google says website localization is a good thing, well, it is, if done right. Otherwise it could result into a terrible mistake, and here is why.
About 4 months ago I moved to Switzerland, as you might know the three official languages are German (63.7%), French (20.4%) and Italian (6.5%). Actually there is a fourth official language which is Romansh but only 0.5% of the population speaks it. Entering a website from within Switzerland will “turn on” localization services for a lot of sites, offering content in only the official languages, and this is a mistake.
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