Linked List: June 13, 2014

Friday, 13 June 2014

Average Kindle ‘Mayday Button’ Response Time Is Under 10 Seconds ★

Amazon:

Eight months ago, Amazon launched the Mayday button, connecting you to live, on-device tech support 24 × 7, 365 days a year — for free. Today, Amazon announced that the Mayday button is now the most popular way for Fire HDX customers to contact customer service, and the average response time is just 9.75 seconds.

“When we set out to invent the Mayday button, we wanted to revolutionize tech support — and we’re happy to report it’s working!” said Scott Brown, Director, Amazon Customer Service. “75% of customer contacts for Fire HDX now come via the Mayday button. Even as the Mayday button has grown to become the most popular way for customers to ask questions, the team’s been able to beat the response time goal of 15 seconds or less — our average is just 9.75 seconds.”

That’s truly remarkable, and a unique Amazon advantage. No one else has anything like this.

Like Members of the Family ★

I named my black iPhone 5 “TMA-1”, and the PowerBook G4 about which I wrote this review was, of course, named “Joker”.

Peak PC ★

Jean-Louis Gasseé on the flattening of PC sales:

Intel doesn’t have the luxury of leaving their game — they only have one. But I can’t imagine that Brian Krzanich, Intel’s new CEO, will look at Peak PC and be content with the prospect of increasingly difficult x86 iterations. There have been many discussions of Intel finally taking the plunge and becoming a “foundry” for someone else’s ARM-based SoC (System On a Chip) designs instead of owning x86 design and manufacturing decisions. Peak PC will force Intel CEO’s hand.