On customer service / Some politics / Traffic jams

Another week in Nokia started nicely. All clouds have disappeared, the blue sky, a few centimeters snow reflect the sky. I have no hurry, no stress. I just take it easy, arrive in office late, take the official position, look concentrated, send emails. The only diffence one can notice is that I do not prepare any slidesets. But difference from what, you may wonder. I will not tell.

On customer service

I must return my work phone and SIM-card. So I need to replace them. I got a phone from Petri yesterday. I only need a new SIM-card. After some surfing, I found out that Saunalahti has one nice subscription type without any monthly fees. But their web-pages do not tell whether it works in Boston. So, I called their customer service, which was busy. After several attempts, I decided to visit their headquarters next to our office. The receptionist called one customer service person from upstair. She promised to find out whether the Saunalahti-mobile works in Boston and email me the results.

This was maybe the fifth time this autumn, that I could not get through by phone, nor did I receive any replies to my emails. So, I decided to visit the company personally. And everytime I have received nice, personal, and fast service. It seems that the customer service personnel really want to deal with customers face-to-face and when someone dares to show up in their office, they are just happy to discuss and help. This works in banks, travel agencies, insurance companies, and apparently also in telecom operators. Strange, but good to know.

Some politics

According to LA Times Bush Presses Pentagon to Cut Its Budgets, which both fine and funny. It this a sign of mr. Bush coming to (his?) senses? Or just empty talk as most he utters. At the same time, even republican are getting enough of Rumsfeld. Let's hope that they get rid of him soon enough - his track record in waging a war is not so terrific. Meanwhile, the situation is not getting better. Another interesting comment on War on the Cheap.

Traffic jams

And interesting article " The slow and the furious tells about the worsening tarffic jam situation in Britain. Some calculation showed that an average driver spends an extra 42 hours per year in jams. But who cares? It seems that most of us prefer spending next to unlimited time in our own cars in traffic jams over taking a bus or train and arriving in time. Read the article, it is interesting. For me, concentration in tranportation systems is one option MIT. MIT has rather many interesting courses available and I thinking about traffic is rather important - consider for example the fact that the traffic situation is already terrible in China and getting worse. Sooner or later, we must find other ways to arrange our transport systems. And we must find ways to minimize the daily commuting distances. Etc.

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs December 2004".