When I worked in the education sector as a technical writer I had, one year, a new manager. He was the manager of my manager initially but when my manager left, and wasn’t immediately replaced, he was the person I reported to. He was a physically large Anglo male who was younger than me and had a background in IT. I was part of the change management team, and part of my job was communication with users of the computer software that our unit produced. At one stage this manager asked me if I wanted to start asking users who had been phoned by the help desk for their opinion on their experience. I can’t remember exactly what I said to him when he asked me this question, but we never went ahead with the idea.
The other day I received an email from AbeBooks, the used-book outlet where you buy things that have gone out of print using a credit card, and which is owned by Amazon. The email asked me to complete a questionnaire about the experience I had had buying a book on their website. Of course I ignored it. Who would answer such a ridiculous question? The transaction was complete, the book had arrived, and I was busy reading it or contemplating reading it (books get put in piles around the place until I have time to sit down with them). The email was just an annoyance.
But communications from technology companies are almost always mere irritations. Designed to get you to interact with the provider in a way that suits them, and not you, these missives remain unread as a rule. Twitter emails telling me what people I follow have said online are a classic example of the genre but there are others, too. Facebook notifications telling me that someone I am connected to has had a birthday on the day the notification arrives are another example. Recently, LinkedIn has gotten in on the game by sending notifications to you that link to a “daily rundown” that presumably contains topical news; I wouldn’t know exactly, I have never checked to see what the page linked to contains.
Back in the old days when you signed up to an online service you would get a series of vapid emails on a daily or weekly basis sent to your inbox, and then after a barrage of complaints it became standard practice to enable users to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Of course, everyone immediately went ahead and unsubscribed from everything that they had unwittingly been signed up for. But technology companies keep up the feed of useless messages as long as they see a return in some form. Whether that is getting some lumpen prole to answer questions in a survey, or if it’s getting someone to leave a message on someone’s timeline wishing them happy birthday, the object is simply to get you to do something that the company wants you to do.
Meanwhile, I have been having real problems: with my internet connection. During one week recently I had to phone the company four times in order to get them to fix the service, which kept dropping out for no discernible reason. Then the help desk operator connected me to a supervisor who sounded like she would take shit from no-one. She took down my address details and organised for a technician to visit my apartment to check on the phone line. He duly arrived one afternoon and did some things inside the apartment where the socket is connected to the kitchen wall. Then I took him to the security office for the complex and got the key to the switch room in the basement carpark. He spent some more time in there and then came back upstairs and told me he would make a report. I expect to hear from the company in the near future but in the meantime, since starting all my phone calling, the connection has been fairly reliable. The squeaky wheel …
The other day I received an email from AbeBooks, the used-book outlet where you buy things that have gone out of print using a credit card, and which is owned by Amazon. The email asked me to complete a questionnaire about the experience I had had buying a book on their website. Of course I ignored it. Who would answer such a ridiculous question? The transaction was complete, the book had arrived, and I was busy reading it or contemplating reading it (books get put in piles around the place until I have time to sit down with them). The email was just an annoyance.
But communications from technology companies are almost always mere irritations. Designed to get you to interact with the provider in a way that suits them, and not you, these missives remain unread as a rule. Twitter emails telling me what people I follow have said online are a classic example of the genre but there are others, too. Facebook notifications telling me that someone I am connected to has had a birthday on the day the notification arrives are another example. Recently, LinkedIn has gotten in on the game by sending notifications to you that link to a “daily rundown” that presumably contains topical news; I wouldn’t know exactly, I have never checked to see what the page linked to contains.
Back in the old days when you signed up to an online service you would get a series of vapid emails on a daily or weekly basis sent to your inbox, and then after a barrage of complaints it became standard practice to enable users to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Of course, everyone immediately went ahead and unsubscribed from everything that they had unwittingly been signed up for. But technology companies keep up the feed of useless messages as long as they see a return in some form. Whether that is getting some lumpen prole to answer questions in a survey, or if it’s getting someone to leave a message on someone’s timeline wishing them happy birthday, the object is simply to get you to do something that the company wants you to do.
Meanwhile, I have been having real problems: with my internet connection. During one week recently I had to phone the company four times in order to get them to fix the service, which kept dropping out for no discernible reason. Then the help desk operator connected me to a supervisor who sounded like she would take shit from no-one. She took down my address details and organised for a technician to visit my apartment to check on the phone line. He duly arrived one afternoon and did some things inside the apartment where the socket is connected to the kitchen wall. Then I took him to the security office for the complex and got the key to the switch room in the basement carpark. He spent some more time in there and then came back upstairs and told me he would make a report. I expect to hear from the company in the near future but in the meantime, since starting all my phone calling, the connection has been fairly reliable. The squeaky wheel …
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