Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

blog.tomayac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 178 posts

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#121

Post by taeric »

toyg wrote: post #115
taeric wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? It is as likely that the company focused on manufacturing for so long that they decided to keep their focus there.

Electrolux has existed for almost 100 years, and on its way it acquired a lot of other companies. The chances that none of those companies ever developed any sort of in-house assistance, over that time, are close to zero.

That is precisely a path that would lead to you not having a coherent support network, though? My assertion is that they did mergers to consolidate manufacturing. Any support orgs that they acquired along the way were not the aim of the acquisition. Quite the contrary, they complicated things in ways that are not as easy to work with as getting new manufacturing expertise.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#122

Post by skwee357 »

There is something I can't seem to understand in the relationship between technology and non-tech people / companies.

As a tech-savvy person and someone who relocated recently, I rely a lot on tech solutions for daily problems. When I was choosing my medical insurance company, I concentrated on one that has a good app and English interface. When I need a barber, I search Google Maps and look for barbers who have a website where I can book an appointment. Same for doctors, workshops, or leisure activities. And most of the websites are crap. It's some obscure reservation system, or a generic website with poor design built on Wix or something.

And from one side, I feel like there is an untapped potential here. Any good developer who can build and design a website, can just offer this to their barber or dentist. But on the other hand, I also understand that I'm not the only one who came up with this idea, so there must be a different reason why non-tech people / companies seem to neglect their digital presence. Could it be because they still think that digital presence is not important (and only tech-savvy people like me search for a barber on Google Maps)? Or maybe it's because most small businesses can't / don't want to pay a few thousands for a website and a Google Maps presence (but rather pay $39/mo for Wix), meaning that despite the fact that we are basically surrounded by tech 24/7, the general population still expects tech to be free, or nearly free.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#123

Post by dwedge »

mooreds wrote: post #74
nativeit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% Customer support representatives, with very few exceptions, are just going to tell you whatever they think will get you off the phone. In I.T., this is generally accomplished by blaming whatever adjacent equipment/services they can plausibly pin the issue on.

Huge competitive opportunity here. All you have to do is hire customer support who is empowered, knowledgeable and actually cares. Source: support is a competitive differentiator for $CURJOB.

I've been at two different companies who also had support as a competitive differentiator. Both of them were bought, both had support stripped and outsourced and both are more profitable than they were.

Sadly, as much as we want to believe it, support does not seem to make enough market difference to justify the outlay.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#124

Post by dwedge »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #73
toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

I don't get why people care about about whether a TV is "Smart". I have a "Smart" TV and never use the features, and it doesn't bother me. I have a PiHole in case it tries to do anything funny, and that's good enough for me.

5G is in large part designed to fix this. Eventually these devices will only ask for wifi as a formality.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#125

Post by chrisweekly »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #73
toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

I don't get why people care about about whether a TV is "Smart". I have a "Smart" TV and never use the features, and it doesn't bother me. I have a PiHole in case it tries to do anything funny, and that's good enough for me.

On powering up, my TV often switches to its default "smart features, prepackaged video streaming service integrations" mode from the HDMI input (the only source I ever want, given my AV receiver manages everything). If it weren't a "smart" tv, I doubt it would keep trying to switch from the configured settings. /anecdote

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#126

Post by dwedge »

toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

I bought a projector mostly to avoid the smart stuff. Large monitors are also an option to some extent.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#127

Post by danielodievich »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #73
toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

I don't get why people care about about whether a TV is "Smart". I have a "Smart" TV and never use the features, and it doesn't bother me. I have a PiHole in case it tries to do anything funny, and that's good enough for me.

My smart TV is not on wifi and physically unplugged from the internet except for when I deign to upgrade its firmware. Which I've done once since I bought it 5 years ago. I use 0 (zero) smart features and it is unable to report whatever it may have collected. This seems like a good way to handle them to me.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#128

Post by tristor »

mooreds wrote: post #74
nativeit wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% Customer support representatives, with very few exceptions, are just going to tell you whatever they think will get you off the phone. In I.T., this is generally accomplished by blaming whatever adjacent equipment/services they can plausibly pin the issue on.

Huge competitive opportunity here. All you have to do is hire customer support who is empowered, knowledgeable and actually cares. Source: support is a competitive differentiator for $CURJOB.

This absolutely works, and was the key selling point for Rackspace when I worked there, "Fanatical Support". Unfortunately it got purchased by private equity and subsequently ruined, eliminated almost all US staff, and offshored everything to India, and this included a rebrand to remove Fanatiguy from the logo and the "Fanatical Support" promise.

While you /can/ make a premium offering with competent support as a competitive advantage, the most short-term profit to be made is then to buy that company after it's established a brand reputation and burn that brand reputation as fuel to produce extra profit until it becomes worthless and anyone who held your stock previously is left holding the bag.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#129

Post by bitwize »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #73
toastal wrote: post #41

> Electrolux washing machine I had to buy one a couple of years ago. Snarkily I asked the floor salesman if I could get the washer “without all the smart features”. He said “let me check”, which had me puzzled. He came back to inform me that they still had last year’s model which was before the “smart” features were rolled out. He said they can sell it on the same warranty, & since it was older I would get a signific…

I don't get why people care about about whether a TV is "Smart". I have a "Smart" TV and never use the features, and it doesn't bother me. I have a PiHole in case it tries to do anything funny, and that's good enough for me.

If I have to take defensive maneuvers against an appliance, I don't want the makers of that appliance getting my money.

Sceptre dumb TVs from Walmart's web site. That's the cheat code. If they run out of those, I'll use a large computer monitor. Attach an outboard HTPC or Apple TV and you're set.

Re: For all that's holy, can you just leverage the web, please?

#130

Post by tristor »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #55
exabrial wrote: post #20

Why not just print a $.0001 sticker and stick it the machine listing all of the info needed to fix the machine... instead of building a $86million datacenter and burning through $100,000 of clean electricity every month that could have been used to power homes, but was instead used doing this?

As someone who has a side job doing repairs, I charge more when customers try to repair things themselves. There is a whole class of people who are smart enough to fix simple things, but not smart enough to recognize their limited ability. They will strip out all the screws on the machine and then claim warranty after replacing random electronic components on the control board. In reality the problem will be a dirty…

> As someone who has a side job doing repairs

And how did you build the skillset to do this as a side job if it wasn't by making the attempt yourself using available information and learning? Isn't your position just ladder-pulling that creates a population of less informed and less capable people?

Post reply on HN