Computers are in everyday use. No-one can deny this. This particular woman has had, as I said, two previous accounts with us. A quick look at her usage summary shows that she (or someone) uses it a lot. And she's not alone. From what I've seen, about 50% of people (or at least, 50% of my company's customers) are completely ignorant of the standard applications of these little beige boxes that control their lives. Judging by the number of people who keep calling the sales center when they want technical support, people can't use their phones either. Once I tried dialling my company's number, just to see how difficult it was. An excerpt:
Phone: Welcome to <company name removed to protect my job>. For all telephone inquiries, press 1. For all internet enquiries press 2.
Me: <BEEP> (pressing 2)
Phone: If you would like to sign up for a new internet account, press 1. If you are having problems connecting to the internet, press 2. For all billing related inquiries, press 3.
How could this be any clearer? Yet I still get countless customers saying 'the internet is broken' or 'about my bill...' This internet thing will never last, people will kill it with their determined ignorance.
</rant>
Hey, this looks like the day for rants...
I know, I've gone a bit overboard with the formatting. But I think it deserves it.
NOTE: This writeup does not display properly in Opera 6 (on Linux anyway). Please do not downvote it for the formatting, I noded it at work on IE.