I was riding an elevator in a public building, and on its wall I saw the amazing control panel shown here. It had a large number, presumably the floor we were on, and it had two arrays of numbers, one on a screen and one in a keypad. I’m still not sure what the idea … Read more
Eating at a restaurant can be a romantic occasion, but restaurants seem to feel that justifies keeping a low lighting. Which is fine for romance but annoying when you need to peruse the menu. However, this one restaurant in Milano solved the problem! They had low enough lighting, but on each table they had this … Read more
Here is a screenshot from my Lenovo ThinkPad computer. The computer was running a self-test using the incorporated Lenovo utility, and I tried to abort this test by exiting that utility. And then I got this dialog box: Read it carefully: If you continue, all the tasks … will be canceled. Are you sure? And … Read more
The photographic camera is one of the great inventions of the 19th century, and is quite a simple idea: take a light sensitive surface, put a lens in front of it, add the ability to control exposure time and aperture, and you’re all set. And for more than a century, that’s what cameras were all … Read more
Back from vacation, having flown a Boeing 737. This lacked the personalized screens seen in longer haul craft but it had a headset jack and a set of volume and channel controls for each passenger. The controls were set in the armrest, in easy reach of the passenger, like this: Cool, huh? Not cool. The … Read more
Back then we had the Palm Pilot. It had a gray lo-res screen and minimal capabilities. No wireless, no GPS, no games, just basic PDA funcfions. Compared to the android phone I use now it was like a stone ax. And yet, that old Palm had a key attribute that is long lost: simplicity of … Read more
I wrote before about the impact of a cheerful nature on the customer service experience. Well – here is another example. We were visiting the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin (recommended! A 200 year old Natural History museum, like the one at Dublin I wrote about once, but artfully modernized and with some really big … Read more
This morning my notebook’s battery died an ignominious death, and I had to hurriedly procure a new one. Not a good start for the day. I called the vendor’s customer support center, and plodded through the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menu, fully expecting a harrowing experience. Instead, I was routed to a service rep who … Read more
I’m sure this happened to you: you call the support number of your bank/phone company/whatever, go patiently through all the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) menus, get shunted to an “all agents are currently busy” music, waste long minutes listening, and finally get a human to talk to. You explain your request, and the agent politely … Read more
I was trying to reach the customer service of a company just now. There I was, listening to the endless music of an IVR system, punctuated by the usual happy reminders that I am oh-so-appreciated by them and they’ll get to me real soon (liars!), when something happened. The recording declared that they were very … Read more
