“Customer Service” has become an oxymoron.
I’ve created su.pport.us as a way for customers to help customers. Computers, gadgets & digital anything was suppose to make our lives easier. Well, that might be the case once the damn things work.
Problem is: they almost never do and the companies providing them saddle you with the burdon of getting them to. And how? By calling script-wielding, underpaid, frayed-nerved phone support or endless googling across blogs.
Well, that’s a recipe for the downfall of civilization… ok, not that bad, but should we be spending what little free time we have banging our heads against the wall? No!
So, here is su.pport.us.
There are three primary ways this can work for the betterment of your fellow man/woman.
1) If you’ve found a solution to something that was broken/disabled/screwed-up post how you fixed/hacked or brute forced it.
2) If someone needs help getting their gear/product/service to work pitch in & help figure it out.
3) If your company’s service sucks (which id does), chip in what you know and save us all the hassle of contacting them.
Tell people you know to come here and pitch in so we all don’t go insane calling 1-800-eat-sh*t.
But why, why the name? Wouldn't support.us have worked just as well? The del.icio.us fad was fun while it lasted, but can't we please go back to something less annoying to type and stupid looking?
Anyway, not to whine about a good idea. Here's a tip from my experience with seeing wikis that take off and ones that don't: get some dedicated people to prime the place with some content, so that it becomes useful to passively browse. An empty collaboration space gets ignored. To attract people it has to have enough existing value that small contributions can be meaningful.
Love it. This is a great idea Steve.
as an ex retailer... I can attest this is a great idea
congratulations
bobby
"Love it. This is a great idea Steve."
&
"this is a great idea"
Thanks, it will be if enough folks get on board. -Steve
Great idea, but,
If you're company's service sucks
that should be "your"
"you're" is the abreviation for "you are"
spelling nazi: lol I'm a bit of a spelling nazi myself. How embarrassing.
Wow.
This is a *horrible* idea. Really.
You're coming from the right place, I feel your pain... but you've just made an eternal enemy of every single customer support person ever. Including the good ones. Now they can all feel the pain of thousands of people calling up with new (bad) advice and guidance they got off yet another random internet site.
At the very least, you've got to control and verify this data for it to be any more useful than a random Google search.
"Including the good ones. Now they can all feel the pain of thousands of people calling up with new (bad) advice and guidance they got off yet another random internet site."
While I do feel for them I feel more for the masses.
"At the very least, you've got to control and verify this data for it to be any more useful than a random Google search."
Random searches on Google are more support than I've ever gotten from "customer support". Perhaps this is a chance to put all those random searches results that work in a spot where they can be poked & prodded, tried & verifed... (I doubt customer support staff can change or update support docs). In fact I'd like to see more companies release their customer support info so it can be made into easily accessible & remixable content.