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By Rich Tehrani (News - Alert),
CEO, Technology Marketing Corp

Volkswagen Dealer Looks to IP Communications for Better Customer Service

Imagine my happiness when I saw a local dealer, Riverbank Volkswagen, deploying leading-edge IP communications solutions. The news brought back fond memories from the mid-1990s when I gave away a brand new yellow Volkswagen Beetle at a TMC (News - Alert) trade show because I happened to see one at this dealer. It also reminded me of my recent trip to Northern California where I visited with Megapath, who supplied the dealer with their voice-optimized, private IP-based Duet service, which is designed to increase productivity and customer service levels

According to Andrew Goldstein, president of Riverbank Volkswagen, “MegaPath's (News - Alert) cost-effective, fully managed Duet service gives the entire team from sales to technicians to office personnel a reliable voice and data service that translates into superior customer service and improved interaction with corporate headquarters.” He continued, “While we've had other providers in the past, there was an issue of reliability and excessive downtime in the service. Time is money and when the system is down, it has a trickledown effect from sales to the service department. In just four months as a MegaPath Duet customer, we've experienced no downtime, so we are always able to communicate with customers, vendors and corporate."

I met with Rich Sabin (News - Alert), director of marketing, and Dan Foster, senior vice president of sales, who explained that the economy has actually benefitted them – their ability to save money for their customers while enhancing their customer service capabilities has resulted in a 20 percent increase in business year-over-year.

Much of the company’s business has been growth and replacement of WANs with MPLS-based services. MegaPath sells broadband-based solutions for teleworkers, small businesses and enterprise customers, with an emphasis on vertical markets, such as retail, hospitality, restaurant, healthcare, legal and insurance/finance.

Another area of growth has been SSL, where the company has a Java-based client which is downloaded on the Web, allowing secure connectivity to a corporate network. This works much like a remote desktop or a Citrix solution, with similar benefits, including reduced complexity, no need for a standalone VPN client, and few, if any, thorny firewall issues. While it is replacing IPSEC with SSL in many cases, it does support IPSEC as well, along with providing intrusion protection, DPI, and unified threat management products.

As companies look for ways to save money, while improving their ability to deliver to customers, it thrills me to see technology and, in this case, IP communications, being one of the major ways for them to achieve their cost-cutting goals while simultaneously boosting productivity through a variety of teleworking and remote access solutions.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses every photo they ever took

Years back, I started to utilize ofoto to store my pictures – what a great service with its ability to share your photos immediately with others. Kodak (News - Alert) purchased the company and integrated it into its back-end photo processing systems. I am still a loyal customer of what is now called Kodak Gallery but recently, the company changed its policy, forcing users to order a certain dollar amount in order to keep from having their photos deleted.

I am a big fan of printing photos, but haven’t had much time for it lately. I do understand Kodak needs to make a living, and I also understand how hard it is for a company that once was a virtual monopoly to reposition itself in the digital era. But, rather than rushing to print more photos, this experience made me pause a bit. I am not thrilled to have a company change its policy on me after it told me there would be no charge to store photos. This is not what you call a stellar CRM experience.

This is probably the reason I didn’t act more quickly, and logged on today to find all my photos gone, wiped clean. My kids being born, my wife as fiancée, my cousins, parents, sister, friends… all gone.

I did learn when I called the company that my photos are actually not deleted but hidden. I suspected as much, but I am still having seriously mixed emotions about the company. After all, if they did delete my photos, I would likely be on my way up to Rochester to have a frank talk with the CEO.

Kodak is also looking for help from its community of fans to help it name its new pocket-sized video recorder. I invite them to use their own online photo storage practices, and proceed to call it the “Kodak iHostage.”

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