On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, The Little Prince wrote: > > To be brutally honest, users who generate lots of helpdesk calls are > > better off being handed off to a competitor, unless the helpdesk is on a > > 1-900.
For clarification, I've had customers who called every time they had a problem when 99% of the time it turned out their modem lead was unplugged or someone had scrambled settings "and nobody has touched the computer, so it must be your fault, you're the ISP". > what always got me when i worked at an ISP, and which pops into my mind > when i heard the "no new mail" idea to this, is the lack of disclosure > with customers. not telling them what's going on. obscurity. that always > rubbed me the wrong way. Me too, hence the comment about popping a message stating that the account is checking mail excessively often. > It would seem to me if you were brutally honest > with people, and they dont understand why you're doing what you're doing, > or at least respect it, then do you really want them as your customer? Personally, I don't. If 5% of users eat 95% of your resources (online and helpline). I'm better off moving those to the opposition and having them as cost sinks there than on my system. > I'm sure the management people want to make themselves and the business > look omnipotent in respects to competition..but i vote for realism. I found my customers preferred being told the truth when things were broken. The hardest part is getting staff to tell them that. Of course, the users who are popping every minute (or 12-20 times/minute for those ones running multiple pop accounts) never actually notice that things are disabled and don't call up unless pop3 fails entirely for a while. AB
