How May I Help You?

It's not often that I have call to rave about an experience with a company call center but today I'm gonna.

I manage the content for the house website. Just getting the website into a form that makes sense for it's numerous uses (information, story telling and fundraising) has been a challenge, partly because I've been working with a web designer who has been doing this as a volunteer. Ouch. But we finally have the templates where I want them and now it's up to me to add the pages and content that will take the site from a vision to a reality. There's a lot of work ahead (including adjusting a picture the second I get to the office today because I just saw what it looks like on a little monitor) but it will be fun. Lots of writing (which I love) and just enough geeky stuff to keep that side of my brain from atrophy.

That said, yesterday I needed to add a Paypal button to the site. Easier said than done, primarily because the software I use doesn't show me the html. Most of the time I don't need to see code. I'd rather not; I'm not that much of a geek. But in this case, I couldn't figure out how to make the string of code Paypal gave me turn into a button on the site. I called Paypal and they were all, "Uh, ma'am, we don't do that sort of thing". So I called Adobe, makers of "Contribute", which is the software I use.

First I talked to "Georgia", who swiftly turned me over to "Amy". (Those are not their real names. Neither were the names they gave me because I don't know a lot but I'm pretty sure DeAnn and Beth aren't common Hindu names. (And yes, JP, I almost taped the conversation to send to you and Smay)). Now I admit, I have big problems with call centers in India. Big problems. Politically, economically, and frankly, just from a plain old customer service point of view. I want to talk to a person who has a command of the same language I speak (selfish like that) and who actually understands my problem and is not just reading from a script. Fortunately, yesterday that was exactly what I got.

"Amy" knew her stuff and she led me through all my options until we found a solution that worked. (And let me tell you, the final solution was way, way more techie than anything I would have ever thought myself capable of, let alone accomplished with the assistance of someone in an off-shore call center). "Amy" stayed with me through the whole process and voila! there was my Paypal button. And it works. It was superfantastic.

Then I made some changes to the home page. Without any help.

Then I pretty much spent the rest of the day playing with MAB because sometimes we work really hard and sometimes we need to make scrapbook pages.

I have a great job.