🚀 go-pugleaf

dmurdoch@mast.queensu.ca (Duncan Murdoch) writes:
>For example, the traffic on BPROGA, the Compuserve forum dealing with Turbo 
>Pascal, is at least 10 or 20 times heavier than the traffic on 
>comp.lang.pascal

I find this pretty ironic. Actually, I haven't been able to convince
Tech Support management here that the Internet traffic would be that
small, and that is a factor in the current policy. Our tech support
staff is pretty heavily loaded now, and management is trying to find
ways to service the existing channels more efficiently while at the
same time finding and training qualified people. They aren't about to
try to handle another channel and risk not being able to service it
well while adding more strain to the existing services.

More and more people here are starting to monitor the newsgroups, and
I hope that it is only a matter of time before some of the lurking
tech support people are assigned to start answering questions. But
there are a number of higher priority projects at the moment.

By the way, the support we have on Compuserve, BIX and Genie is much
different than offering e-mail support. Those are more like
newsgroups, in that lots of people can see answers to questions, there
can be FAQ files, there are regular visitors who answer a lot of the
questions and take some of the load off of the paid staff. None of
that is true for one-on-one e-mail, and we don't offer tech support
that way on Compuserve either. Consider what happens when the phone
lines get overloaded: People get busy signals or end up on hold and
give up. That is not desireable, but at least it sets a natural limit
on the number of calls. E-mail has no such limit, and if as many
people tried to get support by e-mail as do by phone, the mail would
pile up and just wouldn't get answered for longer and longer and
longer times. That's the outcome that Tech Support management doesn't
want to happen, and that's the real reason that Borland does not offer
tech support via e-mail.

Customer Support is another matter: The volume is demonstrably lower,
and there is no reason to worry about the channel getting overloaded.

I should throw in this disclaimer: I am speaking for myself, as a
Borland employee who happens to be advocating increasing our presence
on the net, but not as any kind of official spokesperson for Borland,
and my opinions may or may not correlate with those of others here.

 -- sidney markowitz <sidney@borland.com>
    Borland International (Languages - R&D)