The world today is filled with instantaneous communication. With a global internet, one can send a message by messenger, email, or some other method of communication and it can be received in a matter of seconds. The world is becoming more reliant on the internet. You can contact a person by phone through voice over internet protocol on the other side of the globe for nothing but the cost of the internet service. However, contact requires a person to take the lead. It of course, also requires your internet to be working. Two stories will show the need for an improvement in matters of communication.
On Wednesday, I agreed to be at a persons house who was having a new internet line installed. The technician was to arrive between 8 am and 10 am. Ten was later changed to noon. I waited until 1:00 pm, but no technician arrived. At the house, I noticed the phone was not working. As I was driving home, I came across a service truck of the provider at a gas station about two blocks from the house. I pulled in, and coming out the door was the technician. I inquired if he was the tech doing work for the address at which I waited. He said yes, and I noted I thought he was to be there before noon. He said he ran into a problem. He explained that the internet level to be provided requires two phone lines, and that the house has two dedicated lines, but that the connections had corroded. He explained that animals get in and chew at the lines and moisture then corrodes the lines. He said he had to find an additional pair out of 100 serving that area that would provide the service. Unfortunately he said, the telecom provider does not do regular maintenance work on lines, rather going to calls as outages occur. He noted that if there was standard maintenance, he would likely not have had to spend so much time finding a working pair of wire. He said it would likely take the rest of the afternoon to complete the line search. He said he could work on it in the house Thursday at 8:00 am, but I had a meeting to attend that morning at that time so I could not make that appointment.
While waiting for the tech to arrive calls had been placed to the provider, but no one could give an idea of what was happening. Customer service said to call tech support, and tech support said to call customer service. The technician did complete his work on the lines later that afternoon. One phone call could also have let us know that he was experiencing line issues and it would take longer than anticipated. I also suspect that the tech support and customer service handle the whole of the service provider, and they have little contact with local technicians. In other words, the chain of command is so long that messages are not communicated. Even if communicated, with so many levels it could be like the game "Operator."
Whether a telephone, or internet we all want our devices to operate. Last winter we noticed that only one speaker worked with our entertainment area, particularly the CD player. As fall has now arrived and days are shorter, we are in the house more and decided it was time to try to figure out the problem. It turned out that one of the audio outputs on our CD player (300 CD capacity), was bad. Long and short, we decided to make the move to high tech for our music. Hence last week we purchased a device on which to place the music, and a wireless blue-tooth speaker. To date we have ripped our CD's to a portable hard drive, and now need to figure out the best way to get them to I-tunes and then placed on the new device. However, we also know we can play Pandora radio on the speaker. The directions for setting up the speaker is not by word but by drawings. Last night, after the recommended time to charge, we wondered if it was charged. No green light came on as one would expect. The directions did not say, or have a diagram of how to determine if charged. It di did not even come with an adapter, so we used a I-Pad adapter. I went on line and there I found out that you push two buttons on the device and it will give you an idea of its charge level. Would it not have been easier to have just simply said that in the directions?
I can understand why they wish to use a diagram, it avoids the use of different languages, and in the case of the speaker, the way to find out charge level would require the use of language. The appropriate level of communication is important, and communication is more than a tweet or an email.
On Wednesday, I agreed to be at a persons house who was having a new internet line installed. The technician was to arrive between 8 am and 10 am. Ten was later changed to noon. I waited until 1:00 pm, but no technician arrived. At the house, I noticed the phone was not working. As I was driving home, I came across a service truck of the provider at a gas station about two blocks from the house. I pulled in, and coming out the door was the technician. I inquired if he was the tech doing work for the address at which I waited. He said yes, and I noted I thought he was to be there before noon. He said he ran into a problem. He explained that the internet level to be provided requires two phone lines, and that the house has two dedicated lines, but that the connections had corroded. He explained that animals get in and chew at the lines and moisture then corrodes the lines. He said he had to find an additional pair out of 100 serving that area that would provide the service. Unfortunately he said, the telecom provider does not do regular maintenance work on lines, rather going to calls as outages occur. He noted that if there was standard maintenance, he would likely not have had to spend so much time finding a working pair of wire. He said it would likely take the rest of the afternoon to complete the line search. He said he could work on it in the house Thursday at 8:00 am, but I had a meeting to attend that morning at that time so I could not make that appointment.
While waiting for the tech to arrive calls had been placed to the provider, but no one could give an idea of what was happening. Customer service said to call tech support, and tech support said to call customer service. The technician did complete his work on the lines later that afternoon. One phone call could also have let us know that he was experiencing line issues and it would take longer than anticipated. I also suspect that the tech support and customer service handle the whole of the service provider, and they have little contact with local technicians. In other words, the chain of command is so long that messages are not communicated. Even if communicated, with so many levels it could be like the game "Operator."
Whether a telephone, or internet we all want our devices to operate. Last winter we noticed that only one speaker worked with our entertainment area, particularly the CD player. As fall has now arrived and days are shorter, we are in the house more and decided it was time to try to figure out the problem. It turned out that one of the audio outputs on our CD player (300 CD capacity), was bad. Long and short, we decided to make the move to high tech for our music. Hence last week we purchased a device on which to place the music, and a wireless blue-tooth speaker. To date we have ripped our CD's to a portable hard drive, and now need to figure out the best way to get them to I-tunes and then placed on the new device. However, we also know we can play Pandora radio on the speaker. The directions for setting up the speaker is not by word but by drawings. Last night, after the recommended time to charge, we wondered if it was charged. No green light came on as one would expect. The directions did not say, or have a diagram of how to determine if charged. It di did not even come with an adapter, so we used a I-Pad adapter. I went on line and there I found out that you push two buttons on the device and it will give you an idea of its charge level. Would it not have been easier to have just simply said that in the directions?
I can understand why they wish to use a diagram, it avoids the use of different languages, and in the case of the speaker, the way to find out charge level would require the use of language. The appropriate level of communication is important, and communication is more than a tweet or an email.
No comments:
Post a Comment