Here’s another thing service organizations can do to keep the lid on during my call: ask me, on a scale of 1-3, how tech savvy I am. In other words, can you follow a support rep if they use moderately sophisticated, therefore presumably efficient, language? If yes, let’s use that language to resolve the support issue, rather than treat everyone who calls as capable of no more than power-cycling the phone. Just a thought. But I do get tired of playing dumb just to satisfy an agent’s script.

Interestingly some operators clearly uses such info to figure out what format the phone configuration should be sent in, when the user asks for Data, MMS settings etc. I tried this with Telenor, and it was enough to mention the phone number and the service pulled up my phone model, including a picture of it.

A slight issue here is that the SIM card (if talking GSM) is not locked to a specific phone and many have pre-paid SIMs, hence a user’s phone model may vary over time, but in subscription plans consumers will likely have the same phone model they initially ordered with the SIM (at least as an initial hint), and that information should of course be readily available to customer support.

Another solution is outlined here:
http://www.abiro.com/news/2006/07/know-your-phone.html
This would always work, except if the consumer doesn’t even know the mobile number.

Some operators automatically ask for the phone number before getting in touch with a representative. That should be enough to pull up all my info before I speak to someone, but some actually ask for the number again (verbally) as if this system didn’t work.

There seems to be an opportunity for third-party customer support, possibly serving several operators, but the question is who should pay. Would operators be interested in outsourcing their customer support?

Russell