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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.

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.

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. It was slow.  Too slow.

 

I’m no Google lover by any stretch, but Google wins this fight.

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.

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.