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Something
Nice
By Michael Alan Hamlin
December 24, 2001
About the only thing you hear about Compaq these days
is speculation over whether it will be swallowed up, now that embattled
Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's planned purchase of its rival
is under fire, including opposition by the heirs of HP's founders,
David Packard and William Hewlett. If you're not familiar with developments
in the HP-Compaq deal, see today's issue of BusinessWeek. Since
that story was written, Ms. Fiorina has launched an aggressive communications
program in support of the acquisition, including advertisements
which don't contain the names Hewlett or Packard. Just HP. Carly's
obviously steamed.
But I'm going to say something nice about Compaq today,
rather than discuss its purchase, which plenty of other folks are
doing anyway. You'll recall last month my whining about Sony. I
was upset, and still am, that Sony provided no updates to allow
me to synchronize my Clie handheld with my new computer running
WindowsXP. I was also upset that no WindowsXP drivers were available
form my Vaio notebook. When I asked Sony why, the response, which
I received by e-mail very rapidly, was that if I had read the box
carefully I'd know that Sony had no intention of supporting WindowsXP,
at least not for my one-year-old laptop.
Seems that column struck a nerve. Not with Sony, naturally,
but with Sony's customers, some of whom, I'm delighted to note,
read this column. One reader wrote to say that his experience with
local Sony retailers and repair outlets was similarly dismal to
my experience with corporate technical assistance. Another helpfully
told my wife about a non-Sony affiliated service center that he
found when Sony refused to fix his nearly new component system (They
seem to break down a lot. This happened to me, too - TWICE!).
I did hear back again via e-mail from Sony's technical
support. I had responded to their unhelpful message with a vow never
to buy another Sony handheld or notebook (I probably will continue
to buy camera-related stuff, because so far it actually seems to
work without a lot of hassle.). The response to my response was
that my unhappiness would be passed on to people who are supposed
to matter.
In the meantime, I have kept my vow. I have given my
Clie to one of my editorial assistants, and purchased a Compaq iPAQ.
And I am in the process of buying a really souped up Compaq notebook,
too. And I did these things despite the cost of bolting Sony. For
instance, I have to buy peripherals like a fold up keyboard and
a USP synchronization cable on top of the cost of the iPAQ. And
I had to go to the trouble of rationalizing my decision to discard
the Clie (I'll use the Vaio for a while. The new Compaq laptop is
for my wife.). Lucky I've got that editorial assistant who'll be
happy to use it and will gladly tell me how much it increases her
productivity.
That brings me to the something nice I promised. Incidentally,
I'm obligated to say in the interest of full disclosure that my
firm occasionally does work for Compaq (I wish we did more.). At
any rate, as soon as I got my hands on the iPAQ I had to install
it. This is because I'm completely undisciplined when it comes to
technology. But when I installed ActiveSync, the Microsoft program
that synchronizes data on the handheld and the desktop, the program
couldn't find the iPAQ.
This was pretty humiliating. Here I'd gone and bought
a new piece of equipment because the old one wouldn't work with
WindowsXP. And now the new one wouldn't either. So, naturally, I
fired off another e-mail, this time to Compaq, to find out what
to do, and got back the computer-generated confirmation right away.
But I had to wait for the solution to my problem a bit longer.
In the meantime, I cooled down and went to the Microsoft
website to look for a newer version of ActiveSync than that bundled
with the handheld. Right away, I found version 3.5, which is compatible
with WindowsXP. A 30-minute download (much faster on broadband,
but that's another column) and a quick installation and I was in
business. Fully synched.
But that's not the nice thing. The nice thing is that
I got a note from Erin Choo at the Compaq Customer Contact Center
the next day telling me to do what I'd already done. Which I appreciated.
Because Mr. Choo, and Compaq, wanted to solve my problem. At the
bottom of his note was this line: "Live Chat and Online Support
available at: www.compaq.com/AsiaPacific/support." Unlike Sony,
Compaq is so concerned, it seems, that clients are satisfied that
they can go online to discuss their problems. That's hugely unique
in my experience, for the computer hardware industry.
I'm sure I'll eventually notice something about the
iPAQ and Compaq that I won't like much (In fact, I looked all over
MegaMall today for a fold up keyboard and couldn't find one.). And
there have been some quality issues associated with the iPAQ. But
Compaq quickly and painlessly, I'm told, replaces units that do
have problems at the service center here. Remember that Sony just
tells you you're stuck.
So for now Compaq is pretty good at showing how customer relationships
should be built, in my view. And that's nice.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing director of consultancy
TeamAsia and the author of three books on Asian economies and companies.
His latest book is Marketing Asian Places, of which he is
a co-author (Wiley, 2001).)
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