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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Archives for November 14, 2010

Other Matters: A Tech Support Story

A couple of days ago, I called a company for technical support. A well-spoken young woman answered. She did not put me on hold, dump me into voice-mail hell, pass me along to a robot or connect me with someone in Bangladesh. In about three minutes, she analyzed the problem and provided a solution. At the end, she did not try to sign me up for an extended warranty, sell me more stuff or ask me to complete a survey. I know—you’ve called tech support. You find this hard to believe. It’s true.
To protect the company’s switchboard from being clogged with calls from troubled consumers hungry for the sound of a human voice, I will not identify it. If I blew the whistle on their enlightened customer relations practices, the Association Of Businesses Promoting Telephonic Delay, Obfuscation and Frustration might take them to court in an unfair competition case.
All right, it wasn’t a billion-dollar international company manufacturing complex digital equipment. It was a small outfit that makes relatively simple devices. When its customers have problems, it gives them human beings who take an interest, find solutions quickly and don’t send callers through procedural hoops or voice-mail loops. The billion-dollar guys could learn something from these folks.
call center.jpg

©2006 Ozzie Fonseca
www.callcentercomics.com

Other Places: Stomp Off

I should have long since added Chris Albertson’s Stomp Off blog to the Personal Jazz Sites roll under Other Places at the Chris Albertson.jpg of the middle column. It is hereby added. For your first Albertson fix, I recommend that you take in his latest entry. It has to do with a jam session he recorded in Copenhagen in 1953 that included Art Farmer, Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Jimmy Cleveland and others who were touring with Lionel Hampton’s band, as well as several Danish musicians.
Albertson (pictured) incorporates two fairly lengthy audio samples of the jam festivities, which coincided with a populous party. Perhaps you will be able to identify the soloists. I can only guess. Chris’s accompanying essay explains the circumstances, among them a celebration of the Hamptons’ wedding anniversary and his friendship with the storied jazz patron Baron Timme Rosenkranz. To reach Stomp Off, go here.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, … [MORE]

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