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Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. If Microsoft can't do it, if Apple,

Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. If Microsoft can't do it, if Apple, Google, Facebook, X , OpenAI can't do it, then maybe we shouldn't allow companies to operate at scales which inevitably lead to widespread consumer harm. They should be required to provide human customer service, with some sort of legal liability to ensure their products perform as advertised, without an end-user having to spend tens or hundreds of hours chasing down a solution, spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer, and all the rest of the hassle. This is a legislation and regulation issue - the data barons are exploiting the effective absence of any accountability for harms they casually inflict on the public, ranging from gotcha situations like the OP to viral self harm trends among kids to mass surveillance and commercial invasion of privacy. Pirate everything, support open source, pay content creators directly. If they want to have billions of users, they damn well better be able to handle each and every one of those users in a commercially responsible fashion, or they have no business operating at that scale. We should be done with the "oops, we're too big and we make too much money to care that we just casually wrecked your life, oh well!" If the solution is to force users to have to buy a new PC, or a new phone, or create a new account, or anything in that vein, it's almost intentional, and casually malicious. It's not like these companies don't know what they're doing, they can simply afford not to care. Until there's regulation and accountability that's more expensive than ignoring the consumer casualties, things will continue to get worse.

lagniappe 1y ago
>Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. The reality of the situation is: If it were enough of a problem that the bad outweighed the good, people wouldn't use it, but yet they still do, so it's not enough of a problem.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > The reality of the situation is: If it were enough of a problem that the bad outweighed the good, people wouldn't use it, but yet they still do, so it's not enough of a problem. The key words are monopoly and lock-in. Those things can really scramble the bad vs good equation.
  - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
    Does Microsoft actually have a monopoly on anything these days? Maybe gaming? I saw its like 95% windows on Steam.
    - palmotea 1y ago
      > Does Microsoft actually have a monopoly on anything these days? Maybe gaming? I saw its like 95% windows on Steam. Monopoly doesn't always mean 100% of the market. They're still the leader by far in desktop operating systems, and pretty much everyone who has a computer as work has an Office license allocated to them.
      - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
        No but a monopoly also doesn't mean a majority market share, or being so much better than the competition that everyone chooses you.
    - jwagenet 1y ago
      > Maybe gaming Only if you limit scope desktop gaming, sure. 75% of gaming market share is on mobile and consoles.
      - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
        Oh true.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ux266478 1y ago
  > If it were enough of a problem that the bad outweighed the good, people wouldn't use it, but yet they still do, so it's not enough of a problem. The problem is that while this is true, in practice it's more like the mandate of heaven than laissez-faire economics. When political power structures are involved, and thus the status quo itself is reliant on the omnipresence of certain economic forces, there can never be a drawdown under normal market forces. There is an intentional, exerted force which unbalances the equation in favor of the monoliths. "Enough of a problem" ends up becoming violent social upheaval. In effect, you advocate for normalizing the driver to aim our societal bus off the cliff because "somebody hasn't grabbed the steering wheel yet, so it's clearly an acceptable course." Discounting the fact that the co-driver is pointing a machine gun at the back of the bus. Adam Smith would be absolutely apalled that we let things get this bad. This isn't what he wrote about at all. The free market is about economic coordination, not letting massive entities do whatever they damn well please at the expense of a society's quality. This is neo-mercantilism, the exact kind of thing he was vehemently disgusted with.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    I don't recall the Soviets building higher quality products.
    - domador 1y ago
      That is an extreme, also undesirable alternative. How about just having a reasonable level of market regulation, especially monopoly regulation?
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        The US economy is already heavily regulated.
        alsetmusic 1y ago
        Laughable because it’s nowhere near enough.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  No, that's not the reality of the situation. You are theorizing a perfect market with no costs of entry or exit. Customer demand for critical systems is inelastic to start with due to technical burden (ie most people are not good enough with computers to casually switch OS), and large vendors work hard to maximize that inelasticity.
  - qcnguy 1y ago
    By "not good enough" you mean "not motivated enough" which boils down to what the OP said. It's not a big problem in reality for most people.
    - anigbrowl 1y ago
      No I don't. If meant that I would have written it. Most people are not competent to change out an operating system and find the idea of developing that competency unattractive and expensive. Many people not only do not understand how computers work, they don't want to. If they do switch to something different, it's usually via a purchase rather than DIY.
      - qcnguy 1y ago
        > they find the idea of developing that competency unattractive You are repeating exactly what I'm saying you're saying. They could develop that competency. They don't want to because the juice isn't worth the squeeze. They are not motivated enough because it's not important enough to them.
philipallstar 1y ago
I guess they don't want Windows to cost $10000 per licence.
- serialNumber 1y ago
  When you buy a Windows license, you expect at least a basic level of support from them in case something goes wrong. It is built into the cost.
- dns_snek 1y ago
  I mean it's one phone call Michael, what could it cost, $9900?
- integralid 1y ago
  Now come on. A basic level of support would not cost Microsoft $9900 - that's absurd to suggest. It may reduce their profit margins a bit, or they may have to increase the price, but it's not like Microsoft has earning problems.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
Apple has customer service you can call and speak to a person.
- Zenst 1y ago
  They also high-street stores as well for that human experience.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  It was a long time ago but more than once I had troubles with a Windows license and it was known that if you talked to somebody at Microsoft on the phone long enough they'd take pity on you and give you a new license key. They're not really afraid that individuals are going to rip off Windows, they are afraid that system builders are going to rip off 20 copies of Windows for machines that they build. In fact, given that they are so into Azure and GAME PASS and all sorts of thing you've never heard of, Windows might just be a loss leader.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  Every time I call Apple customer service, they tell me to box up my device and send it in to be replaced. The human element is nice but it's hardly a panacea - you need trained customer support.
  - DiggyJohnson 1y ago
    That is a bit inconvenient but replacing a faulty device is an example of excellent customer service
    - goopypoop 1y ago
      that's minimal, not excellent
      - epistasis 1y ago
        In a land of below-minimal customer support, minimal customer support becomes excellent.
goodluckchuck 1y ago
This is why we have courts and judges, to hear complaints and issue remedies when the defendants are unwilling to do so. A better solution would be to reign in arbitration agreements, which are horribly inefficient. Arbitration purports to be lest costly, but it encourages unnecessary litigation by preventing the operation of res judicata, it increases the costs of litigation by preventing class actions, etc. It increases injuries by keeping wrongdoers conduct confidential.
pdonis 1y ago
> Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. The best way to do that would be for all the governments and large corporations that buy Windows machines for their employees to switch to Linux. That would probably end up cheaper in the long run. But nobody wants to sign up to be the one driving the switch. Unless and until that happens, the unfortunate fact for individual Windows users is that you're rounding error in MS's numbers anyway. You're not the one they're making all the money from. The large government and corporate accounts are. And as long as people have to use Windows at work, they're going to use Windows at home because it's familiar to them. (Except for outliers like me who run Linux at home even though we have to use Windows at work. But those outliers are rounding error to the rounding error.)
- monooso 1y ago
  > That would probably end up cheaper in the long run. But nobody wants to sign up to be the one driving the switch. If memory serves, the French government (and various French municipalities) have been actively moving to Linux since the early 2000s. The French police even have their own Linux distribution, GendBuntu [1]. And yes, the reported cost savings are around 40% [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu [2]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/french-police-move-from-window...
  - CrimsonCape 1y ago
    They should have gone with GendArch as it kinda makes more sense than GendBuntu.
  - jimbob45 1y ago
    That just ends with everyone back in the same boat. Serious enterprises will still need OS support and no one is anywhere near prepared to challenge Microsoft for OS support contracts whether they be Linux, Windows, or otherwise.
    - 1y ago
b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
How can the government regulate companies into providing good customer service when they can't even provide good customer service to their citizens?
- bunderbunder 1y ago
  They don't. What you do is have a real capitalist system with decent antitrust protections and real market competition instead a crony capitalist system where oligopolies can easily push regulators and legislators around. And then, once you have enabled consumers to vote with their money, they will.
  - lyu07282 1y ago
    Perhaps some day we could try something other than fixing the problems of capitalism with more capitalism?
    - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
      We tried that last century.
      - lyu07282 1y ago
        Real capitalism just hasn't been tried yet /s
    - bunderbunder 1y ago
      You've got the sheep and the wolf in sheep's clothing mixed up. This kind of oligopolism, rent-seeking behavior, and general corruption are some of the problems capitalism was invented to fix. And the further societies stray away from actively defending a strong market economy, the more those problems start to come back.
- jeltz 1y ago
  For the most part customer service is excellent from Swedish government agencies. There are exceptions with either poorly run or intentionally refunded agencies where it is not the case but usually the quality of customer service is excellent.
WalterBright 1y ago
The issue is cost. You're going to have to pay considerably more for a computer to have a human ready to help you with it.
- jacobgkau 1y ago
  Have computer prices gotten considerably cheaper since the days when companies had human support employees? Some components have gotten considerably more expensive, so it seems like they haven't, at least on average.
  - 4fterd4rk 1y ago
    The humans have gotten more expensive.
    - queenkjuul 1y ago
      You have data showing wage increases for it support staff?
  - vondur 1y ago
    Relatively speaking yes. My Macintosh Quadra 605 was around $1000 in 1994 and was a low end model at the time. Today that $1000 would be around $2100 or so. I can get an entry level MacMini for $499.
    - Joshkop 1y ago
      I don't think you can just compare one of the first personal computers with today's hardware. Price for innovation and corresponding hardware is just way higher then for established tech items Its like comparing apples vision pro to whatever cheap VR stuff we may get in the future which everyone uses then
      - hedora 1y ago
        Yeah; a better comparison would be with a current generation AI workstation. I’ll randomly go with Razer, since they look pretty and are shipping 5090’s with high-end AMD processors. $3-5K.
sharts 1y ago
If customers just start bugging Microsoft devs directly as though they are customer support (which…technically they should be since they built the product) then maybe productivity would grind to a halt. When all the MBAs running the show start seeing all their JIRA dashboards full bad news then perhaps they’ll think twice? Heck if the McDonald’s CEO and family were required by law to eat their own McDonald’s product for 80%+ of daily caloric/macro intake, then we would probably see things change quickly. Companies that can’t run at a particular scale should definitely not be enabled to do so. But sadly, we seem to not hold them accountable, directly.
- IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
  >>>Heck if the McDonald’s CEO and family were required by law to eat their own McDonald’s product for 80%+ of daily caloric/macro intake, then we would probably see things change quickly. Hamurabbi's code: An architect, or equivalent next of kin, was put to death , if the building he had built killed the owner, or a kin of the owner.
- TheWookieDavid 1y ago
  Building a product doesn't magically change your role. Devs are not customer support. What you're saying is basically that the ability to do a task means you technically should do that task. I can definitely mop, but that doesn't make me a janitor, not even technically.
  - alsetmusic 1y ago
    Worse, a software dev may have no experience with IT-style troubleshooting. I've seen this first-hand. And there's no telling what assumptions they might make about how much users do or do not know when offering advice.
Theodores 1y ago
With many products, every contact a customer makes with customer service is an opportunity to profit. However, it requires quite a mindset to appreciate this. You can rig your product reviews by providing above and beyond customer service, for example, warranty claims dealt with in a day with a replacement in the post arriving as if by magic to surprise the customer. Hit them up for a review and they will write a review with meaning, explaining how you fixed their problem, exceeding all expectations. Unless you have done this then you would never know. Although most companies do collect reviews, they don't know the way to do it is to get reviews from the customers that complained rather than the ones that didn't. It is very counterintuitive. You can always upsell. If the customer has problems with the product then maybe they need a different product or a whole suite of stuff. With software you can always give trials too. Complaining about what comes with Windows? Maybe you need Office. Here you go, a three month trial to tide you over. Customer service should also be the eyes and ears of the company, to alert product and sales teams to any problems with new products so corrections can be made very quickly. It is also about having customers for life. It is more cost effective to retain the customers you have rather than churn them. All of this applies regardless of the company size. There are some caveats though. Nothing can be queued unduly, queues don't save time for anyone and you still have to get all of that queued work done. This means you need team members that work from both the front and the back of the queue, to have a clean queue by the end of day. If you get it right then customer service is not a cost, it is the exact opposite, at the heart of marketing due to word of mouth goodness that can't be bought so easily. If you can get the upsells to work too, then a customer service department can pay its own way, to profit even. You also have to recruit people that will go above and beyond. Lots of people have hectic lives with kids and other obligations that make their lives unpredictable. They will need days off, special working hours and other niceties, however, give them a job that they can fit around their life and they will show gratitude with loyalty and hard work. There are cultural problems why this 'bring it on' approach is not so common. Usually customer service are down there with the pigeons in corporate pecking order. In reality, customer service needs to be at the heart of the company with more than lip service given to the 'customer first' idea. With companies giving customer service over to AI chatbots, there is plenty of opportunity for companies of all sizes, including Microsoft, to resist the AI temptation and get serious about customer service.
anigbrowl 1y ago
Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. 100% So many business models today are based on rolling over the customer, on the theory that anything with that much momentum is impressive to new buyers.
commandersaki 1y ago
They should be required to provide human customer service, with some sort of legal liability to ensure their products perform as advertised, without an end-user having to spend tens or hundreds of hours chasing down a solution, spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer, and all the rest of the hassle. Apple (which you mention earlier) do. I've used their live support at any time of the day to solve issues whether it be a software glitch or having trouble using something I just purchased. The only company that comes close to this level of streamlined, anytime support, is American Express.

lagniappe 1y ago

>Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. The reality of the situation is: If it were enough of a problem that the bad outweighed the good, people wouldn't use it, but yet they still do, so it's not enough of a problem.

palmotea 1y ago
> The reality of the situation is: If it were enough of a problem that the bad outweighed the good, people wouldn't use it, but yet they still do, so it's not enough of a problem. The key words are monopoly and lock-in. Those things can really scramble the bad vs good equation.
- b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
  Does Microsoft actually have a monopoly on anything these days? Maybe gaming? I saw its like 95% windows on Steam.
  - palmotea 1y ago
    > Does Microsoft actually have a monopoly on anything these days? Maybe gaming? I saw its like 95% windows on Steam. Monopoly doesn't always mean 100% of the market. They're still the leader by far in desktop operating systems, and pretty much everyone who has a computer as work has an Office license allocated to them.
    - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
      No but a monopoly also doesn't mean a majority market share, or being so much better than the competition that everyone chooses you.
  - jwagenet 1y ago
    > Maybe gaming Only if you limit scope desktop gaming, sure. 75% of gaming market share is on mobile and consoles.
    - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
      Oh true.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ux266478 1y ago
> If it were enough of a problem that the bad outweighed the good, people wouldn't use it, but yet they still do, so it's not enough of a problem. The problem is that while this is true, in practice it's more like the mandate of heaven than laissez-faire economics. When political power structures are involved, and thus the status quo itself is reliant on the omnipresence of certain economic forces, there can never be a drawdown under normal market forces. There is an intentional, exerted force which unbalances the equation in favor of the monoliths. "Enough of a problem" ends up becoming violent social upheaval. In effect, you advocate for normalizing the driver to aim our societal bus off the cliff because "somebody hasn't grabbed the steering wheel yet, so it's clearly an acceptable course." Discounting the fact that the co-driver is pointing a machine gun at the back of the bus. Adam Smith would be absolutely apalled that we let things get this bad. This isn't what he wrote about at all. The free market is about economic coordination, not letting massive entities do whatever they damn well please at the expense of a society's quality. This is neo-mercantilism, the exact kind of thing he was vehemently disgusted with.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  I don't recall the Soviets building higher quality products.
  - domador 1y ago
    That is an extreme, also undesirable alternative. How about just having a reasonable level of market regulation, especially monopoly regulation?
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      The US economy is already heavily regulated.
      - alsetmusic 1y ago
        Laughable because it’s nowhere near enough.
anigbrowl 1y ago
No, that's not the reality of the situation. You are theorizing a perfect market with no costs of entry or exit. Customer demand for critical systems is inelastic to start with due to technical burden (ie most people are not good enough with computers to casually switch OS), and large vendors work hard to maximize that inelasticity.
- qcnguy 1y ago
  By "not good enough" you mean "not motivated enough" which boils down to what the OP said. It's not a big problem in reality for most people.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    No I don't. If meant that I would have written it. Most people are not competent to change out an operating system and find the idea of developing that competency unattractive and expensive. Many people not only do not understand how computers work, they don't want to. If they do switch to something different, it's usually via a purchase rather than DIY.
    - qcnguy 1y ago
      > they find the idea of developing that competency unattractive You are repeating exactly what I'm saying you're saying. They could develop that competency. They don't want to because the juice isn't worth the squeeze. They are not motivated enough because it's not important enough to them.

philipallstar 1y ago

I guess they don't want Windows to cost $10000 per licence.

serialNumber 1y ago
When you buy a Windows license, you expect at least a basic level of support from them in case something goes wrong. It is built into the cost.
dns_snek 1y ago
I mean it's one phone call Michael, what could it cost, $9900?
integralid 1y ago
Now come on. A basic level of support would not cost Microsoft $9900 - that's absurd to suggest. It may reduce their profit margins a bit, or they may have to increase the price, but it's not like Microsoft has earning problems.

koakuma-chan 1y ago

Apple has customer service you can call and speak to a person.

Zenst 1y ago
They also high-street stores as well for that human experience.
PaulHoule 1y ago
It was a long time ago but more than once I had troubles with a Windows license and it was known that if you talked to somebody at Microsoft on the phone long enough they'd take pity on you and give you a new license key. They're not really afraid that individuals are going to rip off Windows, they are afraid that system builders are going to rip off 20 copies of Windows for machines that they build. In fact, given that they are so into Azure and GAME PASS and all sorts of thing you've never heard of, Windows might just be a loss leader.
bigyabai 1y ago
Every time I call Apple customer service, they tell me to box up my device and send it in to be replaced. The human element is nice but it's hardly a panacea - you need trained customer support.
- DiggyJohnson 1y ago
  That is a bit inconvenient but replacing a faulty device is an example of excellent customer service
  - goopypoop 1y ago
    that's minimal, not excellent
    - epistasis 1y ago
      In a land of below-minimal customer support, minimal customer support becomes excellent.

goodluckchuck 1y ago

This is why we have courts and judges, to hear complaints and issue remedies when the defendants are unwilling to do so. A better solution would be to reign in arbitration agreements, which are horribly inefficient. Arbitration purports to be lest costly, but it encourages unnecessary litigation by preventing the operation of res judicata, it increases the costs of litigation by preventing class actions, etc. It increases injuries by keeping wrongdoers conduct confidential.

pdonis 1y ago

> Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. The best way to do that would be for all the governments and large corporations that buy Windows machines for their employees to switch to Linux. That would probably end up cheaper in the long run. But nobody wants to sign up to be the one driving the switch. Unless and until that happens, the unfortunate fact for individual Windows users is that you're rounding error in MS's numbers anyway. You're not the one they're making all the money from. The large government and corporate accounts are. And as long as people have to use Windows at work, they're going to use Windows at home because it's familiar to them. (Except for outliers like me who run Linux at home even though we have to use Windows at work. But those outliers are rounding error to the rounding error.)

monooso 1y ago
> That would probably end up cheaper in the long run. But nobody wants to sign up to be the one driving the switch. If memory serves, the French government (and various French municipalities) have been actively moving to Linux since the early 2000s. The French police even have their own Linux distribution, GendBuntu [1]. And yes, the reported cost savings are around 40% [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu [2]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/french-police-move-from-window...
- CrimsonCape 1y ago
  They should have gone with GendArch as it kinda makes more sense than GendBuntu.
- jimbob45 1y ago
  That just ends with everyone back in the same boat. Serious enterprises will still need OS support and no one is anywhere near prepared to challenge Microsoft for OS support contracts whether they be Linux, Windows, or otherwise.
  - 1y ago

b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago

How can the government regulate companies into providing good customer service when they can't even provide good customer service to their citizens?

bunderbunder 1y ago
They don't. What you do is have a real capitalist system with decent antitrust protections and real market competition instead a crony capitalist system where oligopolies can easily push regulators and legislators around. And then, once you have enabled consumers to vote with their money, they will.
- lyu07282 1y ago
  Perhaps some day we could try something other than fixing the problems of capitalism with more capitalism?
  - b_e_n_t_o_n 1y ago
    We tried that last century.
    - lyu07282 1y ago
      Real capitalism just hasn't been tried yet /s
  - bunderbunder 1y ago
    You've got the sheep and the wolf in sheep's clothing mixed up. This kind of oligopolism, rent-seeking behavior, and general corruption are some of the problems capitalism was invented to fix. And the further societies stray away from actively defending a strong market economy, the more those problems start to come back.
jeltz 1y ago
For the most part customer service is excellent from Swedish government agencies. There are exceptions with either poorly run or intentionally refunded agencies where it is not the case but usually the quality of customer service is excellent.

WalterBright 1y ago

The issue is cost. You're going to have to pay considerably more for a computer to have a human ready to help you with it.

jacobgkau 1y ago
Have computer prices gotten considerably cheaper since the days when companies had human support employees? Some components have gotten considerably more expensive, so it seems like they haven't, at least on average.
- 4fterd4rk 1y ago
  The humans have gotten more expensive.
  - queenkjuul 1y ago
    You have data showing wage increases for it support staff?
- vondur 1y ago
  Relatively speaking yes. My Macintosh Quadra 605 was around $1000 in 1994 and was a low end model at the time. Today that $1000 would be around $2100 or so. I can get an entry level MacMini for $499.
  - Joshkop 1y ago
    I don't think you can just compare one of the first personal computers with today's hardware. Price for innovation and corresponding hardware is just way higher then for established tech items Its like comparing apples vision pro to whatever cheap VR stuff we may get in the future which everyone uses then
    - hedora 1y ago
      Yeah; a better comparison would be with a current generation AI workstation. I’ll randomly go with Razer, since they look pretty and are shipping 5090’s with high-end AMD processors. $3-5K.

sharts 1y ago

If customers just start bugging Microsoft devs directly as though they are customer support (which…technically they should be since they built the product) then maybe productivity would grind to a halt. When all the MBAs running the show start seeing all their JIRA dashboards full bad news then perhaps they’ll think twice? Heck if the McDonald’s CEO and family were required by law to eat their own McDonald’s product for 80%+ of daily caloric/macro intake, then we would probably see things change quickly. Companies that can’t run at a particular scale should definitely not be enabled to do so. But sadly, we seem to not hold them accountable, directly.

IG_Semmelweiss 1y ago
>>>Heck if the McDonald’s CEO and family were required by law to eat their own McDonald’s product for 80%+ of daily caloric/macro intake, then we would probably see things change quickly. Hamurabbi's code: An architect, or equivalent next of kin, was put to death , if the building he had built killed the owner, or a kin of the owner.
TheWookieDavid 1y ago
Building a product doesn't magically change your role. Devs are not customer support. What you're saying is basically that the ability to do a task means you technically should do that task. I can definitely mop, but that doesn't make me a janitor, not even technically.
- alsetmusic 1y ago
  Worse, a software dev may have no experience with IT-style troubleshooting. I've seen this first-hand. And there's no telling what assumptions they might make about how much users do or do not know when offering advice.

Theodores 1y ago

With many products, every contact a customer makes with customer service is an opportunity to profit. However, it requires quite a mindset to appreciate this. You can rig your product reviews by providing above and beyond customer service, for example, warranty claims dealt with in a day with a replacement in the post arriving as if by magic to surprise the customer. Hit them up for a review and they will write a review with meaning, explaining how you fixed their problem, exceeding all expectations. Unless you have done this then you would never know. Although most companies do collect reviews, they don't know the way to do it is to get reviews from the customers that complained rather than the ones that didn't. It is very counterintuitive. You can always upsell. If the customer has problems with the product then maybe they need a different product or a whole suite of stuff. With software you can always give trials too. Complaining about what comes with Windows? Maybe you need Office. Here you go, a three month trial to tide you over. Customer service should also be the eyes and ears of the company, to alert product and sales teams to any problems with new products so corrections can be made very quickly. It is also about having customers for life. It is more cost effective to retain the customers you have rather than churn them. All of this applies regardless of the company size. There are some caveats though. Nothing can be queued unduly, queues don't save time for anyone and you still have to get all of that queued work done. This means you need team members that work from both the front and the back of the queue, to have a clean queue by the end of day. If you get it right then customer service is not a cost, it is the exact opposite, at the heart of marketing due to word of mouth goodness that can't be bought so easily. If you can get the upsells to work too, then a customer service department can pay its own way, to profit even. You also have to recruit people that will go above and beyond. Lots of people have hectic lives with kids and other obligations that make their lives unpredictable. They will need days off, special working hours and other niceties, however, give them a job that they can fit around their life and they will show gratitude with loyalty and hard work. There are cultural problems why this 'bring it on' approach is not so common. Usually customer service are down there with the pigeons in corporate pecking order. In reality, customer service needs to be at the heart of the company with more than lip service given to the 'customer first' idea. With companies giving customer service over to AI chatbots, there is plenty of opportunity for companies of all sizes, including Microsoft, to resist the AI temptation and get serious about customer service.

anigbrowl 1y ago

Companies that cannot run their businesses responsibly at scale should not be allowed to run their business at that scale. 100% So many business models today are based on rolling over the customer, on the theory that anything with that much momentum is impressive to new buyers.

commandersaki 1y ago

They should be required to provide human customer service, with some sort of legal liability to ensure their products perform as advertised, without an end-user having to spend tens or hundreds of hours chasing down a solution, spending thousands of dollars on a lawyer, and all the rest of the hassle. Apple (which you mention earlier) do. I've used their live support at any time of the day to solve issues whether it be a software glitch or having trouble using something I just purchased. The only company that comes close to this level of streamlined, anytime support, is American Express.