Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Self-inflicted wounds

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 01:50:28 -0400

Self-inflicted wounds
By Glenn Bischoff

Mobile Radio Technology
May 1, 2004

One of my favorite television commercials at the moment is one that
touts the services of a commercial wireless carrier in the Midwest. In
it, a young woman receives a call and records the message using a bulky
tape recorder she has fished out of her purse. She needs to do this
because her carrier never showed her how to use the voice message
feature on her handset.

What the commercial doesn't say is that the woman probably tried to read
the owner's manual and couldn't make any sense of it. If so, she
wouldn't be all that unusual, I think. Most of us learn best by doing,
or having someone show us how to do it.  I can still remember trying to
figure out how to operate my very first video recorder. After wasting
several hours reading the manual - and not having any 10-year-olds
around the house at the time - I sheepishly trudged back to the store.
Five minutes with the sales rep who sold me the unit were all that I
needed for the light bulb to go on.

Armed with this perspective, I am amazed at the lack of training first
responders receive concerning their radio systems. At the recent IWCE
2004 in Las Vegas, I attended a seminar on public-safety communications,
during which I heard story after story indicating that while police
officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians get plenty of
instruction in their job functions, they get little to no training on
the single most crucial piece of equipment they have in their
possession, in terms of keeping them alive.

Recently, I spoke with one of the session leaders, Steve Proctor, who is
executive director of the Utah Communications Agency network, a
quasi-state agency that operates and maintains a 10-county regional
communications system serving 109 separate public safety agencies. Steve
told me that police officers in his state receive 80 hours of training
per year in police procedures, but virtually none in how to use their
radios. He said the situation startled him. It startles me, too.

Mobile radio equipment vendors work extremely hard to continually
introduce advanced features to the systems employed by first responders;
the effort is for naught if first responders aren't taught how to use
them. Anecdotally, we know that most police officers never fire their
guns in the line of duty. But they all use their radios, occasionally in
extreme situations that require them to vary from their daily routines.

Given this, doesn't it make sense for officers to cut back a bit on the
time they spend on the firing range and use it to become as adept with
their radios as they are with their firearms?

© 2004, Primedia Business Magazines and Media, a PRIMEDIA company.
All rights reserved.

http://iwce-mrt.com/ar/radio_selfinflicted_wounds/index.htm

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From: charliesierra_2004 <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 06:42:47 -0000

> because her carrier never showed her how to use the voice message

That is indeed a very funny commerical, and the article is on target.
Personally I've always wonder about this same topic, and the best
thing I've been able to come up with is to give every new sub a DVD
specific to each phone model. Make it like those 'Video Professor'
things, this way every aspect of the device and service can be
completely demostrated at the customer's leisure at home or on a PC.

A DVD would only cost about $1, the customer could replay as often as
necessary, when (if?) they ever call CC, the reps could refer to
frames on the DVD. And most importantly the customer would feel better
about the whole experience because they'd finally think they were
getting their money's worth.

Telecom needs to get serious about customer self-service.

 
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