++blog ++products

content/u/blog/an-alternative-to-annoying-phone-hotlines/contents.lr

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-title: An alternative to annoying phone hotline systems
+title: An alternative to annoying phone hotlines
 ---
 pub_date: 2020-11-29
 ---
@@ -24,20 +24,22 @@ call "hotline". Or in other words: a voice based communication that
 allows to easily queue people.
 
 The motivation and how it works is rather clear: there are a finite
-number of employees, each of which can only talk to one person, so if
-the number of requests is more than number of employees, then you are
-stuck in the queue. However this post is not about the annoyance of
-waiting in a queue and enduring little quality down sampled classic
-music pieces.
+number of employees, each of which can only talk to one person at a
+time.  So if the number of requests is more than number of employees,
+then you are stuck in the queue. However this post is not about the
+annoyance of waiting in a queue and enduring little quality, down
+sampled classic music pieces.
 
 No, in this post I want to address a different fundamental problem:
 every time you call, you start a fresh conversation. You are likely to
-talk to a different person with a different background and from a
-customer perspective you usually don't have any trail of previous
-communication. Actually, the company you are calling might record (and
-correctly announce it before) the call. However as a customer you
-cannot. Often it is also impossible to correspond with the company by
-email, so all written communication has to be sent in letters. In 2020!
+talk to a different person with a different background and probably
+not much knowledge of your situation. From a customer perspective you
+usually don't have any trail of previous communication. Actually, the
+company you are calling might record (and correctly announce it
+before) the call. However as a customer, you cannot easily record as
+well. Often it is also impossible to correspond with the company by
+email, so all written communication has to be sent in letters. In
+2020!
 
 Looking at it this way clearly shows how much power imbalance the
 innovation of the phone hotline is causing. But it could easily be
@@ -50,9 +52,10 @@ You might or might not remember when companies used to be smaller and
 you would request a service with the counterpart in person. Both of
 you know each other and are fully aware of each other responsibilities
 ("I give you money, you give me a product or service") and also of the
-support process (A: "It did not work" - B: "I'll fix it (also because
-you are my neighbour and it's really not good for our relationship if
-I don't").
+support process (A: "It did not work" - B: "I'll fix it!).
+Often the service provider was not far away, might even have been my
+neighbour. And it's really not good for our relationship if my
+neighbour does do what he promised to do.
 
 As you can easily imagine this does not scale nor work easily in big
 companies where staff is rotated or fluctuating. The old value system
@@ -67,9 +70,9 @@ So we could say that they are two extremes: one very personal, high
 quality, expensive and the other - well, you get the picture. Is it
 possible to improve the current situation and how can we get the best
 of the two worlds? Before answering this question, let me give you a
-short background of where we are and how we work at ungleich, to show
+short background of where we, ungleich, are and how we work, to show
 you how these approaches can naturally merge.
-show how
+
 
 ## ungleich @ Digital Glarus
 
@@ -94,23 +97,26 @@ system". If you offer a service towards people in Digital Glarus, you
 need to take responsibility and be trustworthy. Otherwise the word
 will get out within a few days and social enforcement will result in
 no more work for you.
-
 While this might sound cruel, you could actually call this "social
-quality assurance".
+quality assurance". Actually a bit similar to what we see in social
+media, just lower scale.
 
 And how does this look like in reality? People here want and need to
-be convinced that you are trustworthy. You are having (pre Corona) in
-person meetings, one person will make a protocol and then later send
+be convinced that you are trustworthy. You are having in
+person meetings (before corona), one person will make a protocol and then later send
 it for verification back to the other party. If something is noted
 incorrectly, the protocol will be amended and again verified.
 
+This ensures that trust is built and also that both parties, the
+delivering company as well as the customer are playing on eye level.
 
 ## Combining old values and new communication
 
 Let's come back to the original problem: we shifted from high quality,
 individual services to mass produced in-transparent
 communication. Technically and organisational, it is not necessary to
-provide a worse product or service if it is mass produced.
+provide a worse product or service if it is mass produced. It just
+happens to be the case due to technical limitations in the beginning.
 
 So let's go back to the hotline problem: we advocate a simple change
 that costs little for companies to implement but restores trust and
@@ -129,9 +135,9 @@ sharing. However, **the key points of the conversation must be sent to
 the customer**. This way, as a customer I can easily react and correct
 statements that have been incorrectly recorded. With a trail.
 
-Furthermore in a later stage, I as a customer, also have a trail and
+Furthermore in a later stage, as a customer, I also have a trail and
 the ability to respond to the previous conversation by text, giving me
-the opportunity to add to the trail.
+the opportunity to add to the trail. And to built trust on the way.
 
 Obviously, our suggestion here is not rocket science. In fact, it is a
 very easy, natural and cost effective measure to be more transparent
@@ -142,4 +148,7 @@ expensive to implement such a system. To prevent that argument from
 being true, we have added a [Hosted Support
 System](/u/products/hosted-support-system/) to our product
 list. Nobody needs to get it from us, but anybody can. And thus there
-is no excuse, not to have it implemented.
+is no excuse, not to have it implemented. It is a very similar
+[approach to not have an excuse for not having
+IPv6](/u/products/ipv6-vpn/), but that is a story for
+another day...

content/u/products/hosted-support-system/contents.lr

@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ organise them easily. You can
 ## How to use it
 
 With our hosted support system you get a url like
-http://support.example.com. Your employees can login to the system and
+http://support.ungleich.ch. Your employees can login to the system and
 work on requests. Your customers / users can either correspond with
 you via email or login to the support system themselves to manage
 their tickets.

content/u/products/ipv6-vpn/contents.lr

@@ -61,6 +61,7 @@ on [IPv6VPN.ch](https://ipv6vpn.ch).
   IPv6 only websites to be reachable from the IPv4 world.
 * [IPv4 as a service](/u/products/ipv4-as-a-service/) - enable you to
   get your static IPv4 address anywhere
+* [The VIIRB](/u/products/viirb-ipv6-box/)
 
 
 ---