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> It's like complaining to your PC manufacturer that a program you downloaded doesn't work. This happens far, far more often than you would think. That line fr

> It's like complaining to your PC manufacturer that a program you downloaded doesn't work. This happens far, far more often than you would think. That line from Men in Black -- "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky animals." -- rings more true every time I work with a client who handles front-line tech support. I do have to wonder how much of a difference it would make right now, though. Hue is presumably still in the early adopter stage (especially if we're talking about people who are adding non-Hue Zigbee devices to the setup), where you'd hope this kind of confusion would be less common. Edit: this is one of the primary reasons Apple exercises so much control over third party integration on iOS. They get the blame for everything.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
My SO worked way too long answering customer phone calls; I had a healthy fit of horror stories every week. But what I learned from them is that it's all selection bias - savvy, smart customers generally don't call. They solve things themselves, they find solutions themselves, they trust the established procedures (e.g. of returning the merchandise), but above all, they don't call with stupid requests or to bitch about how bad the company is. They only call if you fucked up big. What remains is a mix of "dumb, panicky animals" and people for whom calling is the best option (they may be in a hurry; or for many older people, phone call is the method they're used to and one they trust). It's something you have to deal with, it's for them that you have support in the first place. But for a company like Philips, I can't imagine those support calls make any difference brand-wise. Most companies I know could drop their private-customer help lines altogether, having them respond with busy tone all the time, and nobody would likely notice.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

My SO worked way too long answering customer phone calls; I had a healthy fit of horror stories every week. But what I learned from them is that it's all selection bias - savvy, smart customers generally don't call. They solve things themselves, they find solutions themselves, they trust the established procedures (e.g. of returning the merchandise), but above all, they don't call with stupid requests or to bitch about how bad the company is. They only call if you fucked up big. What remains is a mix of "dumb, panicky animals" and people for whom calling is the best option (they may be in a hurry; or for many older people, phone call is the method they're used to and one they trust). It's something you have to deal with, it's for them that you have support in the first place. But for a company like Philips, I can't imagine those support calls make any difference brand-wise. Most companies I know could drop their private-customer help lines altogether, having them respond with busy tone all the time, and nobody would likely notice.