Customer support

I have just spent a few very frustrating days trying to get hold of customer support for an internet based company. There is no address or phone number that I can find on their web site - just the email address for their help desk.
Well, I have posted a series of questions relating to a payment and a supposed upgrade of my service, but I have not had any reply in the last three days.

How does any company expect to retain its customers if those customers cannot get any help for the products they have purchased? The most visible aspect of any company is its customer support department.

When a support team can make things worse

I have just had a bad experience with a support team. My query has taken over a week to resolve, and even then it was I who found the answer. Each time I sent in a question, it was answered by a different person. None of them answered the question I had asked. Instead they said it was a programming question and I should learn programming, or that the answer was in the FAQ that they kindly attached to their reply. (Needless to say, I had already read the FAQ and found that it was factually incorrect). They 'helpfully' offered suggestions covering questions on a completely different topic, or simply said that their support did not cover my question.

If as a computer programmer with decades of experience in user support I struggle with their help desk (no I am not going to shame the company), then I shudder to think what less experienced users are feeling. Is it any wonder that companies suffer high rates of "churn" when they put inexperienced staff on the support centre.

Business managers will come to realise that they need to have technically competent staff.

I just hope it is a long time before I have to call them again, and the staff have had a modicum of training in that time.

linux group support

Well, I finally have my digital camera working with my Linux laptop. A suggestion from one of the members in my local Linux User Group pointed me to a program called gphoto2, and on trying to install it I found that the library it uses was quite out of date and was not able to support the camera. Upgrading libgphoto2 to a more recent version and now I find that not only does gphoto2 work, but so does digiKam. I was able to copy all the pictures in little more than 1 minute.