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Customer Service? Ask a Volunteer
- DarkShikari 18y agoIt also helps that such "super-users" are people who are actually interested in helping, rather than potentially a tech support person who can't wait to get home and see his family after a crappy day at work. You're more likely to get good information and useful help from someone who is only helping you because they want to. I find this sort of phenomenon also applies to support for open source projects. Many companies I've worked with are very satisfied with the kind of support they got merely by dropping by on IRC--they could get information, assistance, explanations of code, and even patches in mere minutes or hours from people who actually want to help. In a sense, open source is the merger of the two concepts: the "developer" and the "volunteer" are often the same person, meaning that you're talking to someone who both wants to help and knows the application backwards and forwards.
- ShabbyDoo 18y agoMost companies hide vital support information in their CSR systems. What software rev is pushed out to my cable modem? What are the known faults with this modem on the Time Warner network? I'd like to be able to push the "update firmware" button myself rather than convincing someone at TW to do it for me. This volunteer army operates with one hand tied behind its back -- it tries to help people without most of the information required. Openness and information can help companies reduce support costs. However, I suspect that they don't want customers to actually know how the sausage is made as it's often not as pretty as advertised.