Merge branch 'master' of git+ssh://code.ungleich.ch/ungleich-public/ungleich-staticcms

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

@@ -0,0 +1,154 @@
+title: An alternative to annoying phone hotlines
+---
+pub_date: 2020-11-29
+---
+author: Nico Schottelius
+---
+twitter_handle: NicoSchottelius
+---
+_hidden: no
+---
+_discoverable: yes
+---
+abstract:
+Making technologies improve our life
+---
+body:
+
+## The phone hotline
+
+If you have a problem with your contract, if you want to have some
+information about your product or you just want to change some
+detail. By default, many companies nowadays offer something that we
+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 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 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
+different.
+
+
+## The classic way
+
+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!).
+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
+of being responsible on a personal basis cannot easily be
+transferred. This also means that the classic way is much more
+expensive in terms of time and resources, but the responsibilities are
+enforced by social relationships.
+
+## Mixing the two?
+
+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, ungleich, are and how we work, to show
+you how these approaches can naturally merge.
+
+
+## ungleich @ Digital Glarus
+
+ungleich is based in [Digital Glarus](/u/projects/digital-glarus/),
+a really old mountain valley in Switzerland. Majority of its buildings
+are very old (I'd guess most are built prior to 1900, many even much
+older), major businesses are industry, farming and also tourism. Many
+people here get up before 6 and start working latest by 8.
+
+We from ungleich on the other hand are working in IPv6 only
+networks connected by our own fiber or with long range wifi links. Our
+working hours are very flexible, can be morning, day, night, week,
+weekend - we are free to choose. Our topics are very technical by
+nature.
+
+These two approaches can contradict, but they can also work together
+very well. Like the two ways of communication.
+
+Interestingly our experience here is that they can easily be combined:
+many people living in Digital Glarus have what we call an "old value
+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". 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 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. 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
+quality in communication:
+
+**Every support hotline should be, by default, accompanied by a text based
+ticketing system that sends users a protocol and let's them interact
+with you on a text basis.**
+
+So how does this work? The agent in the call center will make notes of
+the phone call - they are already done nowadays, but unavailable for
+you. Some of these notes might be internal ("The customer does not
+know the difference between the power button and the reset button -
+always advise to push the button on the right") and are not for
+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, 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. 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
+and to built mutual trust.
+
+Some companies might try to argue that it is too complex or too
+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. 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

@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+_discoverable: yes
+---
+_hidden: no
+---
+title: Hosted Support System
+---
+subtitle: Easy and transparent support
+---
+headline1: Easy to use
+---
+headline2: Great support
+---
+headline3: Reducing workload
+---
+header_background_color: #1393B4
+---
+header_text_color: text-light
+---
+nav_classes: navbar-dark
+---
+feature1_title: Good customer support
+---
+feature1_text: With our hosted support system you can manage support
+requests easily. Customer requests are not lost and can easily be
+assigned to an employee to work on.
+---
+feature2_title: Easy to use
+---
+feature2_text: Support needs to be transparent, efficient and of worth
+for your users. Our hosted support system works smoothly to make most
+of your time and provide best support to your users.
+---
+feature3_title: Managed Support System
+---
+feature3_text: With the hosted support system you can focus on your
+core business. Upgrading the system and maintaining it is taking care
+of by us.
+---
+content1_text:
+
+
+## A Support System
+
+Our hosted support system enables you to organise support requests and
+organise them easily. You can
+
+* Receive emails from your customers
+* Organise tickets in different groups
+* Reply to your customers directly
+* Have an auto responder ("Thanks for reaching out")
+
+## How to use it
+
+With our hosted support system you get a url like
+https://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.
+
+## Fully Open Source and IPv6 enabled
+
+As with all our offers the support system is completely based on Open
+Source Software components. From the operating system to the software
+stack, nothing is closed. We are using
+
+* [Alpine Linux](https://alpinelinux.org/)
+* [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/)
+* [cdist](https://cdi.st)
+* [RT](https://bestpractical.com/request-tracker) from Best Practical
+
+as the technology stack.
+
+## Zero Carbon
+
+As always, the hosted support system is running in our Zero Carbon
+Data Center.
+
+## How to order
+
+As the support system can be setup for very different use cases, we
+recommend to contact us at **support -at- ungleich.ch** to discuss how
+you would like to have your system setup.

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/) - get IPv6 hassle free
 
 
 ---

content/u/projects/digital-glarus/contents.lr

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ image: /u/image/cards/digitalglarus.png
 ---
 subtitle: Using digitalisation for the good
 ---
-description1:
+content1_text:
 
 ## Introduction
 
@@ -47,3 +47,5 @@ phone (+41 55 505 62 66).
 
 It is possible to visit us for a day or two, or like many have, to
 stay longer and even stay with us permanently.
+---
+content1_image: /u/image/diesbach_outside_small.jpg

templates/layout-2020.html

@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@
     <meta charset="utf-8">
     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
 
-    <title>ungleich.ch - {% block title %}Welcome!{% endblock %}</title>
+    <title>{% block title %}Welcome!{% endblock %} - ungleich.ch</title>
     <!-- Bootstrap + helpers2 -->
     <link rel="stylesheet"
           href="/u/static/bootstrap-4.4.1-dist/css/bootstrap.min.css">