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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Comcast: Managing Your Online Presence
November 1st, 2008 by Gregory Silvano Posted in Business, Technology | No Comments »This is a follow-up to my Comcast - How to Lose a Sale post.
It’s funny how a company who proved to be so bad at online sales could be so good at managing their online presence.
I posted my complaint at 9am and by 1pm Comcast had found my blog post and responded to it online. And within minutes of my reply to them via email, I was in contact with somebody at the Comcast home office. The problem was resolved in a matter of a day.
OK, well done Comcast, really. Every company should be as on-top of their online presence as you are. Just a few Google Alerts would allow any company to receive an email whenever somebody blogs about their company or brands. It’s easy, it’s free, and it just plain works.
Oh, and I did get the Extreme plan ($150/month) and it is indeed very fast.
Tags: broadband, comcast, extreme, online presence
Comcast: How to Lose a Sale
October 23rd, 2008 by Gregory Silvano Posted in Business, Technology | 3 Comments »Comcast announced its new high-speed internet offerings today, so I jumped on board and signed up for their Ultra package: 30Mbps download. Verizon Fios isn’t available on my street yet (one of only a few streets in the entire town?!), so Comcast is my only option.
So I go through the checkout process and at the end I am greeted by Da in a mandatory chat window. Here’s the unedited chat session, which lasted just 6 minutes.
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:14:31 EDT 2008)>Hello. Thank you for choosing Comcast. My name is Da and I will be processing your order. It will take me just a few minutes to pull up your order information in our system. I will let you know if I have any questions.
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:16:01 EDT 2008)>Can you please verify the last four digits of the social security number on your account?
Gregory_(Thu Oct 23 09:16:49 EDT 2008)>****
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:16:28 EDT 2008)>Thank you.
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:17:10 EDT 2008)>You current have the bundle for cable, internet and phone.
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:17:34 EDT 2008)>If you want to upgrade to ultra tier, it’s an additional $20 per month.
Gregory_(Thu Oct 23 09:19:02 EDT 2008)>that’s fine…what’s the total monthly bill?
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:20:47 EDT 2008)>I’m sorry but I am unable to upgrade the internet speed. The system is stating that the ultra speed upgrade is only available for customers with the $114.99, $129.99 or $159.99 bundle.
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:22:22 EDT 2008)>Is there anything else that I can assist you with today?
Gregory_(Thu Oct 23 09:23:02 EDT 2008)>odd
Gregory_(Thu Oct 23 09:23:18 EDT 2008)>nope, that’s all.
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:23:12 EDT 2008)>This could be a glitch with our system because the $99 bundle is grandfathered. Please contact our technical department at 1-800-266-2278 for further assistance.
Da(Thu Oct 23 09:23:15 EDT 2008)>I’m sorry that I could not be of more help to you today. Thank you for your time! Goodbye.
Sale…lost. Could you imagine being so close to a sale and letting it walk away? Isn’t that astounding? Where’s Da going? Is there another customer waiting who is even closer to buying? How about “Let me check with a manager because this should work…”? Could you imagine standing at the checkout counter at Walmart, only to hear “Sorry, the scanner’s not working right…have a nice day.”
Obviously I’m not going to call the Comcast technical support line in order to buy more products. Ironically, I was about to ask Da to upgrade to the Extreme plan at $145/month. And I would have upgraded my entire package too. But I didn’t feel like spending the next 45 minutes in a chat session trying to pursuade Comcast to let me spend more money on them.
Tags: broadband, comcast, extreme, sales
Cuil Search Engine
July 28th, 2008 by Gregory Silvano Posted in Technology | No Comments »Today I read about Cuil for the first time. It’s getting quite a bit of press, probably thanks to the prominent link on the Drudge Report today.
So I gave Cuil the same test I give every search engine - and it failed miserably.
- A search for Gregory Silvano didn’t pull up anything special. And if the first page doesn’t include my LinkedIn account, then sorry - it’s not a very good search engine.
- A search for Stature Software returned nothing worthwhile. We’re not a hugely important site on the web, and that’s exactly the point. Most sites aren’t hugely important on the web and that’s why I need the search engine. If you search for Stature Software on Yahoo, Google, or MSN you’ll get our web site at least.
- It was slow. Too slow.
I’m no Google lover by any stretch, but Google wins this fight.
Tags: cuil, google, msn, search engine, yahoo
Seymour Papert
July 12th, 2008 by Gregory Silvano Posted in Technology | No Comments »I just read an article in the Boston Globe about Seymour Papert and his struggles since an accident left him brain damaged.
I remember using Logo, which Seymour helped created, in 2nd grade. I still remember the drawings I created using Logo - every kid in the class loved Logo. We were fortunate enough to have some Apple IIe computers in the school, which in hindsight was a pretty remarkable achievement.
Anyway, good luck Seymour. And thanks.
Tags: Apple IIe, logo, Seymour Papert
ieSpell - Must Have for Bloggers
July 10th, 2008 by Gregory Silvano Posted in Technology | No Comments »I’ve been doing a lot of writing online lately, for blog posts, blog comments, and LinkedIn Answers.
If I have to write more than a few sentences, I typically write it in the web browser and then select the text, copy to the clipboard, open a new email, paste into the email, and see if any red squiggly lines show up for misspellings. The whole process just takes a few seconds but it’s a total hack, of course.
I was going to have one of our developers write a quick spell check application that sits in the system tray. I wanted something that I could double click and it would load up, automatically take the contents from the clipboard, and run a spell check on the text. It would be a more elegant solution, but still not perfect.
Then I stumbled upon ieSpell. Free, integrated right into Internet Explorer and can spell check any editable field in IE by just right-clicking in the field and choosing “Check Spelling”.
I highly recommend it. There are a lot of words not in the dictionary by default (in this post it flagged LinkedIn, Bloggers, and a few other words) but just click Add to Dictionary and it’ll be that much smarter the next time around.