Unpaid Contributors Provide Corporate Tech Support 221
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times writes about Justin McMurry of Keller, TX, who spends up to 20 unpaid hours per week helping Verizon customers with high-speed fiber optic Internet, television and telephone service. McMurry is part of an emerging corps of Web-savvy helpers that large corporations, start-up companies, and venture capitalists are betting will transform the field of customer service. Such enthusiasts are known as lead users, or super-users, and their role in contributing innovations to product development and improvement — often selflessly — has been closely researched in recent years. These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. 'You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that's where the magic happens,' says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon. The mentality of super-users in online customer-service communities is similar to that of devout gamers, according to Lyle Fong, co-founder of Lithium Technologies whose web site advertises that a vibrant community can easily save a company millions of dollars per year in deflected support calls' and whose current roster of 125 clients includes AT&T, BT, iRobot, Linksys, Best Buy, and Nintendo. Lithium's customer service sites for companies offer elaborate rating systems for contributors, with ranks, badges and kudos counts. 'That alone is addictive,' says Fong. 'They are revered by their peers.' Meanwhile McMurry, who is 68 and a retired software engineer, continues supplying answers by the bushel, all at no pay. 'People seem to like most of what I say online, and I like doing it.'"
just great (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Tap into old school hacker community mentality.
2) Rely on good people to do your large organizations work for free.
3) Degrade your own service.
4) Profit!
Of course peolpe helping each other and a solid community are great, but in the context of this happening in lieu of large for-profit organizations providing quality service? I think not.
Seeing how they point out how this can save them millions of dollars leaves me nonplussed.
Re:just great (Score:5, Insightful)
unpaid contributors provide corporate tech support (Score:5, Insightful)
No way should you ever do this. If it's worth doing then it's worth getting paid for doing it. And for each McMurry out there there is one less paid job at Verizon. Same with friends or neighbours. I'll fix their PC, but only if they pay me.
Re:People who know their shit can help others (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. Conversely, people who think they know their shit, but in fact don't, can be a major detriment. And we know that there are a whole lot of them around.
Re:unpaid contributors provide corporate tech supp (Score:5, Insightful)
No way should you ever do this. If it's worth doing then it's worth getting paid for doing it. And for each McMurry out there there is one less paid job at Verizon.
Exactly! I've heard there are even idiots who will write and support entire computer programs for free! No wonder we're in an economic crisis...
Cost Savings (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like they could afford to put one or two of these guys on salary, then.
Helping newbies for fun and !profit (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm one of these types of people myself. If there is a software product that I'm personally very fond of and I feel that more folks might benefit from it than do, I'll actively attempt to support the product through this type of forum activity, giving advice, tutorial writing and generally ranting about it on my travels around the web.
I enjoy it. I dare say there's an element of liking the positive feedback too. I also feel that by supporting the userbase of my chosen product I might be helping retain a few users who might otherwise flee to a competing product that I personally don't like/use. This, it seems to me, contributes towards the product's manufacturer continuing to produce and update it which IS a positive benefit to me. I'm not being paid cash - I'm being paid in the slight boost to the likeliness of my chosen product continuing to exist and remain current.
It's worth noting though that providing tools to drive attention to your most vociferous, active and evangelic users can be a double edged sword. Since folks like myself aren't being paid, we have no incentive to be anything other than completely honest in answering support requests.
If your new version is borked; if your long anticipated new feature turns out to be vapor, if your own customer service folks are crap - in short, if those evangelic users get to a point where they feel betrayed by the manufacturer - it's going to be exactly those highly visible, spotlit users with audiences of their own that are going to tell it like it is.
Re:just great (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger issue I see is that big companies are all for P2P activity when users are supplying each other with products / services that compliment the company's revenue streams, but against P2P when they trade anything that reduces those revenue streams.
I'd have no problem with this, if there was anything other than a "Thanks for saving us a million dollars. Here's a gold star." being offered to those users who offer said support. If companies are so adamant to protect their pound of flesh from P2P, how about we demand a little evenhandedness from them and demand they somehow remunerate these so-called super users.
Re:unpaid contributors provide corporate tech supp (Score:4, Insightful)
Come on, what's so bad in helping others if you have knowledge and, most important, time? That's how a society works, people help people. Sure, there will be some random asshole now and then who'll exploit others willingness to help, but that still doesn't mean that helping others is a bad thing.
You can't defy help only for questionable job security nor can you rely only on the money to build a society upon -- at the end of the day everyone might need some help.
One cannot compare paid support to enthusiasts directly -- the latter often provide better help and insights but may refuse to help you at all if you can't behave yourself or if you demand help in a rude way. Thumbs rule is the same as with Linux forums/mailing lists -- do at least basic search before you start asking and think before you write. Enthusiasts love to solve problems, but they hate repeating the same shit over and over.
As for creating a community -- the company has to be either very open or extremely popular.
P.S. I don't repair neighbours/friends Windows PC's too, not even if they offer me to pay for it -- it's the same boring routine over and over. I do offer Linux installation and support for no charge case they want to check it out.
Re:why not get paid for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because then quality of tech support will go back to where it was: low.
There are several articles out there that cover the topic of how material/financial motivation actually diminishes the quality of work instead of increasing it when compared to an intrinsic motivation alone. I'm not going to cite them all. Look them up, if you want to, google's your friend.
Given the above statement, I'm only going to give some food for further thought: the people doing tech-support "for free" right now are those who enjoy it. They are those who both like and understand what they are doing. Now, if you have a problem, chances are slim that somebody not paid for it will be intrinsically motivated to help you, but *if* that happens, then that person is just about the best one in the world you could have ended up with...
Now, if you would be able to give money for tech support to that person, that would probably not do too much harm. But the problem is that you have no way of giving money 'only to intrinsically motivated persons' -- the moment you're paying somebody, they're not (purely) intrinsically motivated, period. Worse: you cannot even tell whether the next guy is going to help you for the money in the first place.
While it would be a good thing to be able to reward the 'selfless' ones, the problem is that as soon as you start rewarding, you start poisoning a 'selfless' community with 'selfish' people, who are out for the money, and thus you basically end up where you are today: to tech support that sucks.
Since I'm at it: why desperately try to pay back those people, who are obviously rather content with *not* being paid? Why fix it, if it's not broken? Is it because you're somehow feeling guilty that somebody is solving your problems, and you wish return the favor? Well, if you genuinely want to return the favor: help somebody yourself. They'll appreciate it, and eventually, they'll also help somebody else, in the end *maybe* reaching your original helper (the one you were trying to reward, remember? :)
But even if your original helper won't feel the traces of your good deeds: I can assure you, if you're helping somebody without expecting to get a reward, it will enable you to be able to accept help from somebody without feeling the urgent need to reward the helper with anything beyond a "thank you" :-) You're going to be happy, the original helper was happy all along, and other people along the way got happy too.
One. Big. Happy. Family. :-)
Why desperately trying to bring money to the game?
Not for money (Score:5, Insightful)
But when people start making money on your free effort - indeed, rely you to do your free effort for the continued success of a company, then you're little better than slave (in that you can at least walk away). I mean, I could still see myself giving advice on a forum if I knew how to help, but this.. these guys are actually connected to the company, right?
And 20 hours per week? Even on poor, minimum wage salary (seven dollars an hour?) thats 140 dollars per week, 560 dollars a month. And if he can really give much better experience than the idiots at Verizon, we're talking at least manager level. What's that, double the wage? Triple?
This thing makes me pretty angry. And those people "helping" are real chumps.
Re:Americorps? (Score:2, Insightful)
So offering to pay people to help the community is akin to the government expecting us to help out for free? Ignoring the fact that the government is not, to the contrary of what the Republican party seems to want, a for profit enterprise, and that as a governing body for the community it is presumed that we all have some motivation to help out and make our nation better... I still don't see how offering to pay people for things they actually should be doing for free is anything like not paying people for things they shouldn't be doing for free.
But don't let reality get in the way of pointless and hypocritical diatribes against "communists", that would be un-American.
Re:unpaid contributors provide corporate tech supp (Score:2, Insightful)
Open source is different because the result belongs to the people who do the work. If a company profits, for example by selling extended versions or professional support, then it usually also contributes to the community version, so the situation benefits both sides.
People should never support commercial activities without adequate reciprocation.
Re:Exploited by ego (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like these guys are just being exploited by their own egos.
Perhaps, but I suspect that there are a couple of different personality types at play here. Some are clearly looking for experience they couldn't get. Hoping that eventually being paid for the work. While for most in the IT industry tech support seems like a lousy gig, to someone pushing food (or cleaning it up), a $14/hour tech support job would seem like a fortune. It's not unusual for people to use unpaid 'jobs' (internships, candy strippers, fund raising, etc) to gain experience in a field. However, shut-ins would likely just be doing it for human contact, something easy, and at their own pace. Sure some will be feeding over-sided egos, but in IT it's a common trait.
Eventually these companies will build systems to identify the best of these users and provide benefits/ privileges for them (free service, special handling, cash, etc).
Re:Does he know his impact on US economy (Score:3, Insightful)
"Oh wait, that means we end up paying the US to hire us..."
That's called an internship. We only do that to college students.
Inefficiency: Get Smart, Fix It (Score:4, Insightful)
These unpaid contributors, it seems, are motivated mainly by a payoff in enjoyment and respect among their peers. 'You have to make an environment that attracts the Justin McMurrys of the world, because that's where the magic happens,' says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon.
This is one of those shining examples of a market inefficiency that should be fixed, but which companies like Verizon have a hard time getting smart about. If Justin McMurry is creating wealth for your company, the best long-term profit solution for you, Verizon, is to find a way to get him a piece of the action.
I know, I know, it seems like letting the inefficiency run while it tilts in your favor makes sense. But that is a short term thing. If you don't feed this budding source of wealth, it will not last very long. Somebody is going to pull a GEICO on you; tighten up the cashflow streams, and take guys like Justin away from you.
Don't let that happen. Find a way to help Justin monetize his support. Put up banner ads on the forum and give him the revenue, for example. To paraphrase an old aphorism about customer service, "If you don't take care of your wealth producers, somebody else will."
Re:just great (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a Linksys cable modem I know of that has a recent firmware, and by recent I mean last year or so. Linksys wont release the firmware as they expect only the cable companies to do so. The cable companies only release it to people who bought their cable modems from them directly. So there are thousands of people putting up with bugs because they bought their modem retail and have no legitimate access to the updated firmware.
What if I pulled this firmware from a cable company owned modem and wrote these people a simple installer? Would the company sing my praises then?
The real issue here is that people frequent web boards for support because the paid phone support they get is beyond worthless. Level 1 people just read scripts and level 2 or 3 people cant release firmwares because of moronic policies. No wonder people are helping themselves. These companies should be ashamed of providing service on such a low level, not happy that someone has taken up the slack for them.
Re:Americorps? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ignoring the fact that the government is not, to the contrary of what the Republican party seems to want, a for profit enterprise, .
I don't want the government to be "for profit". I'd just be happy if government stuck to what the Constitution says the government should do, and spent as little tax dollars possible doing so.
Re:unpaid contributors provide corporate tech supp (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a rational reason for a productive use of time. This fool in the article is just working for a corporation for free. There is a difference.
He's working for other users for free, and enjoying it. Sure, it also benefits a corporation, but so what? I really don't see what's so foolish about it. What is wrong with doing something you like, purely for fun/gratification, and not fretting about whether it may benefit someone else as well (financially or otherwise)?
Charity Begins At Your Local Telco (Score:1, Insightful)
What a bunch of saps!
Instead of free work for a multi-billion dollar market capped Telco, these people should be helping one of the thousands of small non-profit organizations improve their IT infrastructure.
I run into non-profits every day that are using 10-year-old castoff hardware and software with networks put together with chewing gum & sheer will.
If all of us in IT devoted a couple of hours a week to our local non-profits, these agencies could be more productive and provide better service to their missions. That'll get you respect from your peers, your community and Karma.
Verizon can afford to pay tech support a fair wage. They don't need charity from anybody.
Re:Not for money (Score:2, Insightful)
Tell me no one reading this has given free advice in a RedHat forum.
Not 20 hours a week. And according to the article, Verizon tries to pile responsibilities on the "super-users" by creating their own forums for them, thus making working them a moral chain; people depend on them, they can't just quit. And really, I think that game companies pay money for doing that.
Plus retired people always have need for money; after all, they make less than they did when they worked. And, as someone pointed, their work keeps other from having a paying job.
Charity is magic? (Score:5, Insightful)
So you create an environment of such bad customer service that you basically require the charity of others to operate, and you call that "magic"?
I know people are going to try to compare the volunteer efforts of these folks to open source, but it's not the same. With open source, you're actually creating something, not propping up and enabling the bad practices of a corporation. It's the difference between giving a man a fish and giving him a fishing pole: if there's no goal of fixing the underlying problem then the charity can be worse than not helping at all.
Not Linksys....Cisco... (Score:2, Insightful)
Cisco consumed Linksys, continuing the grand tradition of the larger corporation swallowing the smaller, more nimble one in order to eliminate the threat the latter's better, smaller, faster, and cheaper [whatever hardware/software] and superior customer service posed.
Of course, I still mourn for DEC...