Back in the days when a floppy disk was considered plenty of storage space, I remember calling the WordPerfect Corporation for technical support. This was at a time when the state-of-the-art entailed a blue 80×25 character screen and “multi-tasking” was pressing Shift-F3 to switch to a second document.

As antiquated as the software sounds, WordPerfect had the most impressive technical support operation I’ve ever had the great pleasure to reach. There was a raft of toll-free numbers to call for any conceivable problem. Once connected, there was never any question of serial numbers or other proofs of purchase.

It was a customer-friendly operation, and nowhere was that more evident than when you were placed on hold. You see, WordPerfect had a live DJ for their queued callers. I remember hearing “and now it’s time for the traffic report: we’ve got 9 callers waiting for printer help, 3 callers…”

Sure, touches like that are expensive. But on the other hand, I’ve been put on hold hundreds of times since, and I can’t recall another time that the company actually improved in my estimation as a result.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2003 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.