Off Topic-Adventures in Product Support

It's a pretty big challenge providing support for hardware in the broadcast market--we need to supply top level people at the basic support level (no script monkeys) with high amounts of training. This is expensive and not conducive to the current employment environment where people expect to work somewhere for a few years before jumping ship.

And our support is free to the customer, which means that the customer often now assumes you can grapple all his IT issues, related to product performance or not.

Another field where all this is true is consumer devices like phones and tablets. Unlike computers, the expectation of the customer is free support for their device, and I'm certain that with the vast spectrum of technical capability of the average iPad user, this can be quite the handful. Wouldn't it be tempting to aim your mother-in-law toward the local genius bar instead of trying to figure out why Facetime isn't working for her down in Florida?

I suppose folks like Apple have thought hard about this, and I imagine the prices one pays for their products builds this cost in, as do the products built and sold by Comrex.

I got a little education on this last night. Now, I'm an Android fan and have big issues with the restrictive nature of the iProducts, but I certainly see their value in equipping non-techie wives and children with devices they have less chance of messing up. But my wife's iPhone 5 went rouge this week, suddenly downloading multiple gigabytes of nothing from the app store for no reason I could discern. Verizon had no clue and couldn't tell me the nature of the data, so I found the switch within the OS to turn off app store capabilities over cellular.

Well that's not a very elegant fix, so when we found ourselves in the local mall, I thought to stop by the Genius Bar to inquire what could cause such a thing. My grouchy engineering nature always re-appears when met by those bluetooth wearing, iPad toting, way-too-eager kids milling around the Apple store, but I hunkered down and entered. The "greeter" asked if he could help, and I inquired if I could speak to a Genius briefly.

"Do you have a reservation?" he asked, the ear-to-ear grin not flinching. Odd, I thought, but pressed on. "No, we were just walking by". His expression changed to one of concern.  "Walk that way and talk to Johnny. I'm sure he can help".

"How to I find Johnny?" I asked. "Easy!" exclaimed the greeter, his smile returning. "Johnny has the green iPad cover!". Apparently, the color of your iPad cover signifies your rank in the iStore. Kind of like a Star Trek uniform. At least it wasn't red.

So we ventured further into the store, and found Johnny located near the end of the Genius bar, studiously tapping on his green-covered iPad. I re-inquired about talking to someone about the rouge iPhone.

"Do you have a reservation?" he asked, displaying what I started to label an iGrin. "No". Johnny looked down at this iPad, which I could now see was running a calendar system with lots of colored blocks on lots of grids. He started scrolling. And scrolling. Johnny scrolled for about 10 straight seconds. This was not looking good.

"The next Genius I have available is at 8:30 PM". It was 6:30 PM. I made my grouchiest engineer face (I'm very good at that, I'm told). I turned to my wife and told her (with no effort at volume reduction) "That's ridiculous and annoying. Let's go."

On my way out, I heard Johnny doing his best to appease. "If you make it back, call for an appointment ahead and you'll have an easy time" he called.

Although I left pretty unhappy, on reflection I can sympathize with Johnny and the gang. Offering deep tech support in a mall has got to be a challenging effort. And no doubt the support load comes in fits and spurts during peak hours. And there's also no doubt that the typical iPhone customer enters with an expectation that the "Genius" will solve all their phone or data-related issues, whether it's Apple's fault or not.  And I guess making a reservation isn't the dumbest idea given these factors.

At Comrex, we've taken to bringing one of our support personnel to our NAB stand. This is mainly due to the expectation that some customer's have that we're there to discuss issues they're having with our products. It helps us meet those expectations, while still able to do all the other good NAB stuff, like selling, learning about customer's needs, and general hobnobbing.

My experience at Apple was definitely colored by my personal "ick factor" when presented with overly-helpful staff. Maybe I'll give the Genius bar another try (with a reservation).