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From: dan@prairie.UUCP (Daniel M. Frank)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: terminfo, termcap, etc
Message-ID: <134@prairie.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-May-86 10:16:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: prairie.134
Posted: Mon May 26 10:16:26 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 27-May-86 07:30:29 EDT
References: <1119@whuxl.UUCP> <3080@pesnta.UUCP> <1124@whuxl.UUCP> <218@desint.UUCP>
Reply-To: dan@prairie.UUCP (Daniel M. Frank)
Distribution: net
Organization: Prairie Computing, Madison, Wisconsin
Lines: 28

In article <218@desint.UUCP> geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) writes:
>Not to sound like an IBM fan (I'm not), but the reason IBM is #1 is because
>they let the user yell and scream, and they talk reasonably back.  It's called
>"smoothing ruffled feathers".  It may be satisfying to yell back, but that's
>just going to make the customer go away.  IBM didn't get to be #1 in
>sales by losing customers.

   Just an observation by someone who has tried to get some fairly simple
technical information out of IBM support:  everyone I talk to at IBM is
unfailingly polite, and abysmally ignorant.  People at IBM kept asking me 
whether Xenix was a hardware product.  One fellow I know tried for a
couple days to get some information; he was shuffled from one 800
number to another.  He was trying to get a PC question answered. Someone
gave him a mainframe support number.  When he tried to explain to them
that he didn't own a mainframe, they gave him an 800 number for someone
who could sell him one!

   In short, the ideal would be to talk to someone polite and knowledge-
able.  My next choice, though, is someone abrasive and knowledgeable.
Most folks, in my experience, aren't irate when they START trying to
get support.  They are irate after talking to a bunch of ignorami,
polite or not, for a few hours.


-- 
	Dan Frank
	    ... uwvax!geowhiz!netzer!prairie!dan
	    -or- dan@caseus.wisc.edu