Business that requires direct customer service, that's where. If the post's heading attracted you, you should give this HN thread about Google Checkout woes a read. As many on the thread point out, there is a upper bound you hit when optimizing customer service against efficiency. After a stage, the more you serve, the less you can attend to them when they have problems. So, you automate and automate and hope all customers will be robots who follow a process without error. But, then, as always, reality intervenes. Clearly, Google isn't the only company you can beat in this area.
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"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people." -Orson Welles
Today, at a local outpost of a large chain bookstore, the sprogs and I endeavored to spend some gift cards. Since this is a chain which does not make book-locator terminals available to browsing customers, we were waiting at the customer service desk.
I can't believe I didn't think of this first:
Posted to an internal newsgroup:
Customer: Hi there, I sent you two sample units last week so you could investigate our problem. Can you give us an update on your progress?