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For the past few years, cable and phone companies have been neck and neck in many markets. Cable companies have introduced new phone services to compete with phone companies, and phone companies have started offering competing TV services.

In addition, Verizon has made big improvements in its customer care centers. One major change is that it has been staffing the fiber solutions centers, which handle technical issues with the fiber-to-the-home Fios service, with customer care representatives who can resolve billing and enrollment issues.

It’s implemented a new queue-busting system that monitors the flow of calls into call centers. If a center is getting overloaded with calls, more representatives are added dynamically to handle the overflow calls.

“If someone calls with a problem, chances are good that they are talking to someone in their town,” said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable. “But they will still have the big company experience in that we are sharing what we’ve learned from our 150 million calls a year to implement best practices that can be shared across the company.”

“I knew from the phone incident that there was no way I was going to get Verizon’s Fios service, no matter how good or fast the service was supposed to be,” she said.

Comcast has hired 15,000 new customer service agents and technicians over the past 18 months to help the company answer calls and provide service to customers. It has also rolled out new high-tech diagnostic tools for agents in the field and at call centers to help better assess problems. Comcast has also started re-dispatching field technicians if it looks like a certain technician may not be able to get to his next appointment.

My sister isn’t the only dissatisfied Verizon customer I’ve heard from. Several readers have sent e-mails and commented on the “Talk Back” of some of my blogs saying they have had similarly bad experiences when trying to get Fios service installed. Verizon executives acknowledge the company has experienced some growing pains, especially as it rolls out its new Fios service. But Tom Maguire, the company’s customer service czar, says the company is making improvements.

“Customers are making choices every day,” said Rick Germano, senior vice president of Customer Operations for Comcast. “They are trying to figure out which company to go with to get TV, high-speed Internet service, and now phone service. And their perception of who is offering those services is a big driver in who they choose.”

“It’s more cost effective and better marketing to take care of the customers you already have than to go out and try to acquire new customers.” –Tom Maguire, Verizon’s customer service czar

Verizon’s Maguire said that his company is doing something similar. Like Comcast, Verizon has a team that monitors blogs. And Maguire himself often answers e-mails from customers with complaints as part of what the company calls a “you touch it, you own it” philosophy.

Customer service agents are also starting to work on Saturdays and Sundays to schedule and serve customers when it’s most convenient for them. And it’s offering real time online chat services so that customers can talk live with a customer account executive.

Unfortunately for Comcast, its customer service has taken a beating recently. Just last month, the company got the lowest score it’s ever gotten on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, a major customer satisfaction study conducted by the University of Michigan. And last week, it ranked as the second worst company in terms of customer care in an MSN Money customer survey.

Now, more than ever, consumers seem to be influenced by their perception of a particular company and their own experience with customer care. What’s more, the Internet has changed things. It used to be that a single disgruntled customer would influence only a few friends and neighbors. But with the advent of blogs and forums all over the Web, unhappy consumers can find a much wider audience, potentially reaching thousands or even millions.

“Our goal is to make it easier for customers to do business with us,” Maguire said. “It’s more cost effective and better marketing to take care of the customers you already have than to go out and try to acquire new customers. And the magic formula for doing this is really the golden rule. Treat customers how you want to be treated.”

“Improving customer service is a journey that really has no end point,” he said. “We’re always striving to do better. But I do think things have gotten better. One indication is there are a lot fewer calls that get escalated to my level than there were when I started.”

“Comcast takes full responsibility for what these surveys are saying,” he said. “We don’t disagree with the results. And we’re listening. We get it. But we look at this an opportunity for us to improve. As a business we have to do it.”

Germano acknowledged the company needs to improve its service and perception.

In fact, my sister who recently moved to a suburb near Boston chose to get her Internet and TV service from Comcast even though Verizon’s new Fios service was available in her town. Why? The reason was simple. The Verizon technician who was scheduled to set up her basic phone service didn’t show up twice for his appointment.

Another major trend that seems to be filtering into every major broadband provider is a greater focus on standardizing processes. While local branch offices will continue to handle local service calls and dispatch technicians directly to customers, bigger service providers, such as Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner Cable, say that it’s important to make sure that best practices are shared throughout the company.

“I don’t think anyone wants to be known for providing terrible customer service,” he said. “Everyone wants to do the right thing for the customer. So we have to figure out how to remove obstacles that are preventing us from delivering great customer service every time. If we can’t deliver the best product with the best service, the customer will go somewhere else.”

On the broadband front, cable and phone companies now offer similar speeds in feeds in many markets. While cable has historically been priced slightly higher than services offered from phone companies, these too are evening out in many markets with various promotional service offerings.

As cable and phone companies slug it out in markets across the U.S., improving customer care is becoming a core part of their strategies.

Verizon also has improved its voice response system to help customers resolve certain issues on their own. And it’s given customers who would rather reach a human representative a way to navigate out of the voice response system.

Comcast’s main competitors, AT&T and Verizon Communications, have faired better in these surveys than Comcast. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t pockets of dissatisfied customers.

Maguire, who took over as Verizon’s head of customer care late last year, said he’s already started seeing an improvement.

The phone company is also starting to roll out a new text-messaging system that automatically alerts customers when a technician has been dispatched to a location. It will alert customers if the technician is running late.

Winning customers over
So what are these companies doing to improve?

These results follow publicized tales of a technician sleeping while on the job and a hammer-wielding grandmother going crazy due to poor service. And it also follows accusations that the company throttled BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic.

Germano said the company is trying to listen to customers more, and that includes establishing a special team within the company to follow blogs, like the Consumerist.com and online forums where many problems are often reported by customers.

Ina thinks Windows XP will continue to be sold on what are now cheap laptops running Linux. Quoting: “The biggest area where XP is likely to stick around is in the nascent but growing market of low-cost, flash memory-based notebook computers, such as the Asus Eee PC”.

I wrote a trio of postings here on why I think XP is the better choice for Windows users (just comparing XP and Vista, not considering Macs and Linux)
– I pity the fool (Windows XP good, Vista bad)
— When to convert from Windows XP to Vista, Part 2
— Putting Windows Vista on trial

In short, until Vista is at Service Pack 2 or has been around for at least another year and a half,
it shouldn’t be on your radar screen.

In large part, Mike’s argument comes down to this: “I’ve been running Vista on three machines for well over a year. Compatibility issues are beginning to disappear, my wireless network connection no longer mysteriously vanishes, and other random glitches appear to have been fixed.”

One reason Mike cites for the Vista assimilation is that “Dell launched a Vista migration program to nudge big companies toward the OS. The PC maker’s ‘client migration solution’ will cut migration costs…” I see this as evidence of Vista resistance. If there was value to Vista, the cost of migrating would not be an issue.

Mike also writes that “Microsoft is greasing the skids for Vista acceptance by offering free telephone support for Vista Service Pack 1 through March 2009″.*   Microsoft never did this with XP service packs, so why are they doing it for Vista? They are trying to get people to go where they don’t want to go.

*How many of us believe that the free tech support from Microsoft will be useful? For example, see this item from Leo Notenboom about how Microsoft was unable to help him install a legal copy of Windows XP. They didn’t know what their own error message meant. Incompetent being the applicable word.

**See my Linux vs. Windows page

Back in November, I wrote about a dog and pony show where Microsoft tried to scare
people about how insecure Windows XP was. That they have to use FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to sell Vista says a lot. Think of a politician trashing their opponent rather than touting themselves.

And the message wasn’t the price cuts (hardly anyone buys Vista in a box on the shelf of a retailer). The real message was that Service Pack 1 was about to be released, news that normally stays within the IT industry. The subliminal point being that while Vista may have been bad initially, now it’s OK. An unusually well done bit of PR.

But, to keep the machines cheap, flash ram needs to be minimized. Linux is a perfect fit because it needs relatively little hard disk space. The $300 version of the Asus Eee PC has a 2 gigabyte “hard drive” that fits the operating system, applications and still leaves room for some of your data files. Try that with Vista or XP.

In other words, Vista works for me, so it’s ready for the world. Many of the reader comments here at CNET make the same point. Vista, no doubt, runs fine for many people. That doesn’t make it the right choice for you.

The personal computer field is maturing to the point that people will soon be cognizant of two hardware categories: full-blown personal computers, typified by Windows and Macs, and stripped down ones for
children, senior citizens or traveling. Linux is perfect for people with simple computing needs (see Is Linux right for your mother?).

Cheap Laptops Running Linux

My perspective is defensive computing. To that end, I want mature software, and Windows XP, with 7 years of bug fixes applied to it, is the more mature option. I also want the one with the best chance of working with assorted peripheral devices. Score another for XP.

On top of this, the Linux GUI is flexible, extremely so. No doubt this will result in some horrible user interfaces, the XO from OLPC comes to mind. But, it will also result in some that are more appropriate for children or senior citizens than a full-blown copy of Windows or a
Mac. And people comfortable with Windows XP can find versions of Linux that mimic XP. One of the cheap laptops running Linux ships with a simple interface but it can be reset to the normal user interface of the underlying Xandros Linux.

Linux benefits out of the box from being immune to the vast majority of malicious software being spread online. Thus, children, senior citizens and anyone else craving simplicity doesn’t have to deal with anti-virus and anti-spyware software.

As for Mike’s point that “XP may work, but it’s not pretty”, that’s damning the OS with faint praise. The four regulars on the Personal Computer Show agree on only two things: making backups and avoiding Vista. After Hank Kee kicked the tires on Vista he was challenged to provide reasons to migrate from XP. All he could come up with was a comment from his wife, “it’s pretty”.

The Cloudbook has a normal hard disk, but that won’t last. The future for ultra-cheap laptops is flash (a.k.a. SSDs or solid state devices) and flash ram is expensive. All laptops benefit from flash ram because it’s rugged, consumes less power (no moving parts) and creates less heat. Cheap small Linux machines especially need the faster read time offered by flash ram, it helps offset their relatively slow processors.

Microsoft may be able to brow-beat the world into using Vista on fully functional PCs, but if they walk away from XP on simple, cheap computers and cede the market to Linux, they are a dead man walking.

Mike Ricciuti of CNET says Windows XP is “doomed” and that “most of us will likely be using Vista sometime in the near future” (see Microsoft: All roads lead to Vista). In contrast, Ina Fried of CNET writes that Windows XP may get another reprieve, the title referring to the fact that major computer manufacturers are slated to stop selling Windows XP in June. Who’s right?

I don’t think Don’s article went far enough though. To me, the price cuts were intended to break out of computer industry news vehicles (like CNET and ComputerWorld) and be reported to the general public. No techie is going to decide to go with Vista because its a few dollars cheaper today than yesterday. No, the audience for the price cut announcement was non-techies.

Linux does simple.**   It can be stripped down as needed. In 2004 I reviewed a product called NASLite that converted an old computer into a Linux-based file server. It was a useful product, but amazing for its size - it fit on a floppy disk. A single floppy contained the operating system, networking software, an internal website used for reporting and a telnet based administrative utility.

I don’t know that Microsoft is smart enough to see the threat from these machines. Way back, it was IBM that didn’t take PCs seriously. Now, perhaps, it will be Microsoft that doesn’t take simple, cheap machines seriously. Every new version of Windows is bigger and more complex. I doubt they can do simple. Large companies usually can’t.

Let’s not forget the price cuts to
shrink-wrapped versions of Vista which were to take effect at the same time Service Pack 1 was released. As Don Reisinger wrote (see Vista price cuts show how much trouble Microsoft is in), those price cuts were really a publicity stunt.

Twitter is not all about you anymore. Now go drown your sorrows in a bottle of delicious maple syrup that you’re about to pour on that giant stack of blueberry pancakes.

So what’s new? Well, the interface is cleaned up and is a little more aesthetically pleasing, with Twitter’s bird mascot now fluttering around a Twitter logo vaguely set up to be a sunburst emerging from some fluffy clouds. (They sure do think highly of themselves over there!) There’s a big Twitter Search button to “see what people are saying about” a given topic, putting the service’s utility front and center. Then there is a roster of trending topics by the hour, day, and week.

Twitter’s mantra has changed from “What are you doing?” to “Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.” Chances are, new visitors to Twitter.com are checking it out because they’ve heard about it in the news–or even integrated into news coverage, as the likes of CNN and MSNBC have started doing. The new language reflects that.

Indeed, the microblogging service unveiled Tuesday its revamped home page, which doesn’t change anything for people who are already using Twitter–it’s just a different look and feel for twitter.com if you haven’t logged in.

Dear Person Who Constantly Tweets About What He Or She Is Eating For Breakfast,

“We’re eager to see if encouraging a sense of wonder and discovery leads to a better first impression of Twitter,” Stone concluded in his blog post. So let me get this straight: Twitter has evolved into a 140-character magical mystery tour with a pretty cartoon bird to lead the way. Insert your favorite Harold and Kumar joke here!

Deep.

“Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved,” co-founder Biz Stone wrote on the company blog. “Twitter began as a rudimentary social tool based on the concept of status messages but together with those who use it every day, the service has taught us what it wants to be.”

And when you click the “Sign up now” button? You’re invited to “join the conversation.” Yeah, that’s right. Now think about whether “the conversation” really wants to hear about that pint of Ben & Jerry’s you’re about to dig into.

(Credit:
Virgin Mobile)

In its tradition of affordable prepaid phones, Virgin Mobile has just launched the Flare (otherwise known as the LG LX175), a simple flip phone without a lot of bells and whistles. Features are predictably bare bones, like a speakerphone, mobile web browser, and Bluetooth — there isn’t even a camera on this thing. But for something as low as $29.99 without a contract, it’s not too shabby. You can pick it up now via Virgin’s website or any of their retail partners.

LG Flare

Meanwhile, nongovernment groups like Google.org have also embarked upon projects to use text messaging, as well as services like Twitter, for both disaster awareness and rescue.

Cellular service providers can opt into the new system, called the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS); then, their customers will receive three varieties of text message from a not-yet-specified government agency.

“No one questions the value that an effective Commercial Mobile Alert System will have on the safety and welfare of the American public,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a statement issued Thursday, admitting that there is not yet a federal agency in place to handle the messages (PDF).

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a plan on Thursday to team up with wireless carriers for emergency text message alerts.

A release from the agency hinted that as mobile technology evolves, audio and video alerts may be implemented as well.

When there is, carriers that choose to participate will have 10 months to comply with the FCC’s rules. “We are hopeful that we have initiated the dialogue that will allow an appropriate federal entity to assume that central role in an expeditious manner.”

CNN reported that T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and AT&T indicated that they would be likely to sign up for the FCC’s system.

There will be “presidential alerts” for major national emergencies like terrorist attacks, “imminent threat alerts” for localized emergencies like hurricanes and tornadoes, and Amber Alerts for missing children–which have been broadcast to cell phones since 2005.

Facebook has asked tech veteran Marc Andreessen to join its board of directors, according to Kara Swisher at All Things D. The deal isn’t finalized, apparently, but Andreessen has “verbally agreed” to the commitment.

Current Facebook board members include Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and PayPal co-founder and Founders Fund investor Peter Thiel.

Facebook, meanwhile, has been padding its ranks with seasoned industry leaders as a means of competing with the Valley’s biggest names. Google sales executive Sheryl Sandberg was brought on recently as chief operating officer, and this week it was announced that Google communications czar Elliot Schrage would be making the jump to Facebook as well.

The Netscape founder is currently at the helm of his own social-networking site, Ning, which lets Web users create their own branded community sites without technical expertise. Because of its focus on niche communities rather than mass communication, it’s not a direct Facebook competitor.

Don starts out the show discussing the
Wii, Mario Kart, interviews his girlfriend and much more. After that, he sits down with Opera’s VP of sales to discuss that company’s future and rants about video game violence. Listen now:

Download today’s podcast
EPISODE 13

TODAY’S LINKS: Opera Stories Don talked about.

Maybe you’re shopping for a player with an FM radio, a larger screen, better sound quality, or maybe you’re just short on cash. Whatever your motivations, here’s a roundup of our favorite non-iPod MP3 players for the Mac.

Some Apple devotees wouldn’t dream of questioning the Steve Jobs-sanctioned threeway between their Mac, iTunes, and their iPod. But the truth is that there are other fish in the sea when it comes to finding a
Mac-friendly MP3 player (in fact, there are some great iTunes alternatives for Mac, too).

(Credit:
Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

In an announcement that will surely test the patience of Zune fans, European newspaper GNT has quoted Microsoft France’s Francois Ruault as saying the third generation of the
Zune MP3 player will likely have a worldwide release during the holiday season of 2009. While folks in the European Union are probably happy to hear they’ll be getting the Zune at all, the rest of us have just glimpsed a long wait for a Zune 3 hardware refresh.

The article goes on to hint that Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace digital music download service will eventually be rolled into the Windows Mobile platform. While knee-jerk speculation points to the Zune’s iPhone-like ascent into a mobile phone, more than likely this is just Microsoft adjusting to the partnerships companies like Rhapsody and Napster have struck with mobile carriers over the past year.

(via AnythingButiPod)

Looks like the first and second generations of the Zune will have to wait until the end of 2009 for a new member of the family.

Amazon’s global media sales rose a sharp 28 percent to $2.54 billion in the quarter, compared with last year.

And in forecasting its second quarter and year-end, Amazon expects to generate greater revenues or stronger earnings than a consensus of analysts, according to Thomson Reuters, which tracks analysts projections.

Wall Street was expecting the company to report earnings of 32 cents a share on revenues of $4.08 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

“Our sales growth this quarter was driven by low prices and millions of in-stock items available for immediate shipment,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We’re grateful to our customers.”

Shares of Amazon, however, were down roughly 4 percent in after-hours trading to $77.77 a share.

And while analysts expect Amazon to post operating income of $125.3 million in the quarter, the company said it expects to do between $120 million to $160 million.

Amazon.com posted Wednesday stronger than expected first quarter results, in part driven by strong sales in its electronics and general merchandise categories.

During the first quarter, Amazon generated net income of 34 cents a share to $143 million, up 30 percent compared with the previous year. Revenues jumped 37 percent to $4.13 billion in the quarter, verses the same period a year ago.

The online retailer got a large leg up from its worldwide electronics and general merchandise sales, which soared 56 percent to $1.48 billion in the quarter, compared with year ago figures.

And on the revenue front, Amazon expects to generate $19.1 billion to $20 billion, compared with Wall Street’s projections of $19.3 billion.

The online retailing giant also issued a forecast for the current quarter and year that shows greater strength than Wall Street’s current estimates.

The online retailing giant expects its year-end operating income will outstrip current year-end estimates, saying it expects to raise between $740 million to $940 million in operating income. Wall Street had been expecting Amazon to do $662.3 million for the year.

Although Wall Street expects Amazon to post revenues of $3.84 billion in the second quarter, Amazon gave guidance it expects to exceed that level - with expectations of generating between approximately $3.88 billion to $4.1 billion.