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title: An alternative to annoying phone hotlines
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---
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pub_date: 2020-11-29
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---
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author: Nico Schottelius
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---
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twitter_handle: NicoSchottelius
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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_discoverable: yes
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---
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abstract:
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Making technologies improve our life
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---
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body:
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## The phone hotline
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If you have a problem with your contract, if you want to have some
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information about your product or you just want to change some
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detail. By default, many companies nowadays offer something that we
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call "hotline". Or in other words: a voice based communication that
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allows to easily queue people.
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The motivation and how it works is rather clear: there are a finite
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number of employees, each of which can only talk to one person at a
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time. So if the number of requests is more than number of employees,
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then you are stuck in the queue. However this post is not about the
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annoyance of waiting in a queue and enduring little quality, down
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sampled classic music pieces.
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No, in this post I want to address a different fundamental problem:
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every time you call, you start a fresh conversation. You are likely to
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talk to a different person with a different background and probably
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not much knowledge of your situation. From a customer perspective you
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usually don't have any trail of previous communication. Actually, the
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company you are calling might record (and correctly announce it
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before) the call. However as a customer, you cannot easily record as
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well. Often it is also impossible to correspond with the company by
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email, so all written communication has to be sent in letters. In
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2020!
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Looking at it this way clearly shows how much power imbalance the
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innovation of the phone hotline is causing. But it could easily be
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different.
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## The classic way
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You might or might not remember when companies used to be smaller and
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you would request a service with the counterpart in person. Both of
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you know each other and are fully aware of each other responsibilities
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("I give you money, you give me a product or service") and also of the
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support process (A: "It did not work" - B: "I'll fix it!).
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Often the service provider was not far away, might even have been my
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neighbour. And it's really not good for our relationship if my
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neighbour does do what he promised to do.
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As you can easily imagine this does not scale nor work easily in big
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companies where staff is rotated or fluctuating. The old value system
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of being responsible on a personal basis cannot easily be
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transferred. This also means that the classic way is much more
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expensive in terms of time and resources, but the responsibilities are
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enforced by social relationships.
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## Mixing the two?
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So we could say that they are two extremes: one very personal, high
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quality, expensive and the other - well, you get the picture. Is it
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possible to improve the current situation and how can we get the best
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of the two worlds? Before answering this question, let me give you a
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short background of where we, ungleich, are and how we work, to show
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you how these approaches can naturally merge.
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## ungleich @ Digital Glarus
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ungleich is based in [Digital Glarus](/u/projects/digital-glarus/),
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a really old mountain valley in Switzerland. Majority of its buildings
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are very old (I'd guess most are built prior to 1900, many even much
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older), major businesses are industry, farming and also tourism. Many
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people here get up before 6 and start working latest by 8.
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We from ungleich on the other hand are working in IPv6 only
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networks connected by our own fiber or with long range wifi links. Our
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working hours are very flexible, can be morning, day, night, week,
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weekend - we are free to choose. Our topics are very technical by
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nature.
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These two approaches can contradict, but they can also work together
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very well. Like the two ways of communication.
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Interestingly our experience here is that they can easily be combined:
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many people living in Digital Glarus have what we call an "old value
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system". If you offer a service towards people in Digital Glarus, you
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need to take responsibility and be trustworthy. Otherwise the word
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will get out within a few days and social enforcement will result in
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no more work for you.
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While this might sound cruel, you could actually call this "social
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quality assurance". Actually a bit similar to what we see in social
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media, just lower scale.
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And how does this look like in reality? People here want and need to
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be convinced that you are trustworthy. You are having in
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person meetings (before corona), one person will make a protocol and then later send
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it for verification back to the other party. If something is noted
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incorrectly, the protocol will be amended and again verified.
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This ensures that trust is built and also that both parties, the
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delivering company as well as the customer are playing on eye level.
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## Combining old values and new communication
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Let's come back to the original problem: we shifted from high quality,
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individual services to mass produced in-transparent
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communication. Technically and organisational, it is not necessary to
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provide a worse product or service if it is mass produced. It just
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happens to be the case due to technical limitations in the beginning.
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So let's go back to the hotline problem: we advocate a simple change
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that costs little for companies to implement but restores trust and
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quality in communication:
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**Every support hotline should be, by default, accompanied by a text based
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ticketing system that sends users a protocol and let's them interact
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with you on a text basis.**
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So how does this work? The agent in the call center will make notes of
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the phone call - they are already done nowadays, but unavailable for
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you. Some of these notes might be internal ("The customer does not
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know the difference between the power button and the reset button -
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always advise to push the button on the right") and are not for
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sharing. However, **the key points of the conversation must be sent to
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the customer**. This way, as a customer I can easily react and correct
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statements that have been incorrectly recorded. With a trail.
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Furthermore in a later stage, as a customer, I also have a trail and
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the ability to respond to the previous conversation by text, giving me
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the opportunity to add to the trail. And to built trust on the way.
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Obviously, our suggestion here is not rocket science. In fact, it is a
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very easy, natural and cost effective measure to be more transparent
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and to built mutual trust.
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Some companies might try to argue that it is too complex or too
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expensive to implement such a system. To prevent that argument from
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being true, we have added a [Hosted Support
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System](/u/products/hosted-support-system/) to our product
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list. Nobody needs to get it from us, but anybody can. And thus there
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is no excuse, not to have it implemented. It is a very similar
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[approach to not have an excuse for not having
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IPv6](/u/products/ipv6-vpn/), but that is a story for
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another day...
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@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
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_discoverable: yes
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---
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_hidden: no
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---
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title: Hosted Support System
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---
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subtitle: Easy and transparent support
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---
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headline1: Easy to use
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---
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headline2: Great support
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---
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headline3: Reducing workload
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---
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header_background_color: #1393B4
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---
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header_text_color: text-light
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---
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nav_classes: navbar-dark
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---
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feature1_title: Good customer support
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---
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feature1_text: With our hosted support system you can manage support
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requests easily. Customer requests are not lost and can easily be
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assigned to an employee to work on.
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---
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feature2_title: Easy to use
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---
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feature2_text: Support needs to be transparent, efficient and of worth
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for your users. Our hosted support system works smoothly to make most
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of your time and provide best support to your users.
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---
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feature3_title: Managed Support System
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---
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feature3_text: With the hosted support system you can focus on your
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core business. Upgrading the system and maintaining it is taking care
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of by us.
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---
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content1_text:
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## A Support System
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Our hosted support system enables you to organise support requests and
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organise them easily. You can
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* Receive emails from your customers
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* Organise tickets in different groups
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* Reply to your customers directly
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* Have an auto responder ("Thanks for reaching out")
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## How to use it
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With our hosted support system you get a url like
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https://support.ungleich.ch. Your employees can login to the system and
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work on requests. Your customers / users can either correspond with
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you via email or login to the support system themselves to manage
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their tickets.
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## Fully Open Source and IPv6 enabled
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As with all our offers the support system is completely based on Open
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Source Software components. From the operating system to the software
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stack, nothing is closed. We are using
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* [Alpine Linux](https://alpinelinux.org/)
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* [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/)
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* [cdist](https://cdi.st)
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* [RT](https://bestpractical.com/request-tracker) from Best Practical
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as the technology stack.
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## Zero Carbon
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As always, the hosted support system is running in our Zero Carbon
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Data Center.
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## How to order
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As the support system can be setup for very different use cases, we
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recommend to contact us at **support -at- ungleich.ch** to discuss how
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you would like to have your system setup.
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@ -61,6 +61,7 @@ on [IPv6VPN.ch](https://ipv6vpn.ch).
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IPv6 only websites to be reachable from the IPv4 world.
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* [IPv4 as a service](/u/products/ipv4-as-a-service/) - enable you to
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get your static IPv4 address anywhere
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* [The VIIRB](/u/products/viirb-ipv6-box/) - get IPv6 hassle free
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---
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@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ image: /u/image/cards/digitalglarus.png
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---
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subtitle: Using digitalisation for the good
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---
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description1:
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content1_text:
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## Introduction
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@ -47,3 +47,5 @@ phone (+41 55 505 62 66).
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It is possible to visit us for a day or two, or like many have, to
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stay longer and even stay with us permanently.
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---
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content1_image: /u/image/diesbach_outside_small.jpg
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@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
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<meta charset="utf-8">
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
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<title>ungleich.ch - {% block title %}Welcome!{% endblock %}</title>
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<title>{% block title %}Welcome!{% endblock %} - ungleich.ch</title>
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<!-- Bootstrap + helpers2 -->
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<link rel="stylesheet"
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href="/u/static/bootstrap-4.4.1-dist/css/bootstrap.min.css">
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