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Subject:Re: Documentation not as important anymore? From:Elisabeth Riba <Elisabeth_Riba -dot- LOTUS -at- CRD -dot- LOTUS -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 29 Apr 1994 14:11:49 EDT
From an article on tech support phonelines in the Wall Street Journal:
The questions are often so basic that they could have been answered by
opening the manual that comes with every machine. One woman called Dell's
toll-free line to ask how to install batteries in her laptop. When
told that the directions were on the first page of the manual, says Steve
Smith, Dell director of technical support, the woman replied angrily,
"I just paid $2,000 for this damn thing, and I'm not going to read a book."
Indeed, it seems that these buyers rarely refer to a manual when a phone
is at hand. "If there is a book and a phone and they're side by side,
the phone wins time after time," says Craig McQuilkin, manager of
service marketing for AST Research, Inc. in Irvine, Calif. "It's a
phenomenon of people wanting to talk to people."
