USA – Following our posts last week on Service in the USA, we’ve had an excellent response. We know we don’t have all the answers, and appreciate the fact that those commenting have the patience to give us the time to get them. It’s important at this point to say we’re going to continue this conversation until we do get them. Right now though, I just want to put a line in and outline the key questions still outstanding. Amy Gahran, who’s driven this conversation from the users’ perspective has done an excellent job of rounding up the key issues in her latest post on Contentious.com, which i’ve now summarised.
Service turnaround time
We’ve already outlined the standard service turnaround time, though some users have raised individual issues regarding their own experiences. The reality is the majority of users have a good experience, whilst a minority don’t. It’s Nokia’s job to ensure there are more of the former and less of the latter. We’re going to try and find out the latest on Nokia Care in the US, and what, if any, improvements are being put in place to ensure more users get the service they expect, and deserve.
We’re also going to look into the bigger issues of guaranteed service times. We have no idea of the practicalities behind this, so we cannot say what the outcome might be. We do though have an idea of what would work from a users’ perspective, which is as good a start point as any.
Service locations
As we reported previously, things are changing rapidly for Nokia in the USA. Whilst we’ve written about how many people are going to be assigned to product management, we haven’t written about what’s happening with service locations. We’re going to look into this further, get the lowdown on what happens right now and what the plans are for the future.
The update process
Three of the four people involved directly in Conversations use Macs. We’re only too well aware of the pain of not having a Mac-native Software Updater. So, we’re going to find out if there’s one in the pipeline, and if so, when we might be able to expect it. Some commenters also note the process isn’t very intuitive, so we’re going to find out what’s happening with the next generation of the Software Updater and what if any changes are going to be put in place to make the process as easy as possible.
New devices, new firmware
Some variants of the N95-3 seem to be shipping with the latest firmware, whilst others aren’t. We’re going to look into whether this is still the case and if so, why it is. We can understand some retailers having stock that long ago left Nokia and as such, still have the original firmware. We would expect that any device hitting the shelves fresh from the factory today though will most definitely have the latest version. If they don’t, we’ll be searching for an answer as to why.
So, lots for us to do over the next couple of weeks. We’ll bring you answers as soon as we get them. Meanwhile, please keep leaving your comments and if there are any other issues related to this conversation, let us know. We’re as keen as you are to get answers but please appreciate that this can take time.
Photo from Javan