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Is Customer Service a Dead Art?

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I’ve been working on a project for a client where I’m correcting someone else’s errors and omissions. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate the work, but I’m amazed at the poor service that the other company has given my client.

The other company (we’ll call them MasterPortal) has a software package that can be integrated into websites. So, essentially a web portal running on their software for the back end. To create the web portal, MasterPortal slapped some aspx code together, crudely mashed it up with my clients current site and said their part was done. My client in turn asked me to make it look good and make it functional. By “functional”, I mean so it can be used the way I imagine MasterPortal said it could be.

Since, I’ve been working with it I found many problems including misspellings, code errors, css errors and generally sloppy design.

The point I’m trying to make here is; I just can’t imagine ever doing something like that. If I’m selling a product to someone I want it to look,feel, and act the way I promised. Sometimes I’m just amazed at how lazy people and companies can be. Plus, what further amazes me is how companies like MasterPortal stay in business.

Oh well, back to serving my client with the best service I can.

Keep Plugging Along

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Ah, the trials of being an entrepreneur. It’s not the easiest path, but there are many things that make it worthwhile. Sometimes you find encouragement in unexpected places. Like my horoscope for today:

“Sometimes the road you’re traveling on gets shrouded in fog. If that happens, don’t pull over and wait for the weather to clear. Time is not to be wasted — keep going, slowly but surely, on the same path. If you let little things stop you from where you want to go (or what you want to accomplish), your confidence will take a beating. Soon enough, you’ll see a clear sign that will put your fears to rest and your mind at ease. You were on the right path the whole time.”

Today, one of my clients gave a glowing recommendation to someone that found them online. After speaking with my client this person called me about doing some work for them and we’re meeting next week to discuss it. It’s always nice when your clients become your best salespeople!

Amazon Takes a Shot at Apple With it’s New Cloud Drive & Cloud Player

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Amazon is taking a shot at Apple’s dominance in the online music industry with it’s new Cloud Drive and Cloud Player.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about it.

“Managing a digital music collection can be a bit of a mess. It’s possible to buy music from your phone, but then it might get stuck there. It’s possible to buy music from your work computer, but then you have to remember to transfer it to your home computer…”
“…We’re solving those problems today with tow important new offerings: Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player. Cloud Drive is your personal disk drive in the cloud. Anything you put in Cloud Drive is robustly stored in Amazon’s datacenters. You can upload your music collection to Cloud Drive, as well as any other digital documents.”
“Cloud Player comes in two varieties: Web and Android. All you need is a computer with a web browser and you can listen to your music with Cloud Player for Web – no software to install – just a web browser. The Android version is an app that lets you do the same thin from your Android phone or tablet.”

Rumor has it that Apple has something similar in the works, but really I don’t see them giving away the free space on their servers like Amazon.

“To start we’re giving you 5 GB of free Cloud Drive storage. Plus, new purchases from the Amazon MP3 Store are stored for free and do not count against your storage quota.”

In the end you can see how Amazon will get you hooked on using the cloud and want more. You can store what ever you want on the cloud drive. It’s the old give away something for free and people will ask for more, and that’s where you charge.

It will be interesting to see how this fairs. Android based phones continue to grow in sales and with all the new Android based tablets coming out, this could be a very strong market in the future.