Subject:
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Customer service
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Sun, 9 Feb 2003 15:44:48 GMT
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Original-From:
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Bruce Boyes <BBOYES@spamcakeSYSTRONIX.COM>
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Viewed:
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553 times
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At 02:00 AM 2/9/2003 -0500, Rob Limbaugh wrote:
> The article has to do specifically with the fast food business, not
> traditional product manufacturing or retail sales. It talks about how
> fast food places pull customers in with gimmicks and then push them out
> the door, so to speak.
But the quote was about customer service, and I think it matters not
whether it's a hamburger or a new car, people expect the same quality of
service. We learned this years ago selling software. It didn't matter if
the package was $50 or $500, people have almost identical expectations
about customer service and support. I know that may sound crazy, but we
found it to be true. What this taught us is that the support on a $50
product can kill you. This is why there is an industry trend to reduced
support, customer "call centers", endless waits on hold, etc. It's hard to
provide $20 worth of support on a $50 network card.
As engineers, we can't and won't do that to our customers, since we don't
want to be treated that way.
> The passion you have for your creation is great, and truly admirable. I
> applaud your strong belief in your product. And no, I don't think you're
> nuts for making the JCX. I just think you're nuts for wanting $500 for a
> base system that controls 8 sensors and 4 motors in real-time when that
> same goal can be accomplished with a much, much cheaper solution.
That also includes a CPU which can natively (meaning Java byte codes are
its 'assembly' code) execute 3,000,000 Java byte codes per second. You can
plug in boards for 8 or 16 more sensors or 4 or 8 more motors and have the
resources to handle it. Plus add vision sensors, etc.
> It doesn't matter how good/bad your service/support is if you are the only
> place the JCX comes from and supports it.
What do you mean -- Lego Mindstorms come from one place and they seem to
be doing fine, and Bill Gates has done pretty well with Windoze.
But we want a lot of people to adopt the JCX system and that is why we are
supporting so many open standards. The JSimm bus is a version of the
widely used SimmStick. You can get schematics and source code online. There
are already numerous open source projects for our CPUs - XML, IrDA,
databases, etc are already available. Part of this is due to the wide
popularity of Java. There are hundreds if not thousands of projects
available which you can leverage.
> My job involves supporting computer systems. I see people/places willing
> to throw away computers just because they upgraded to something
> newer--nothing wrong with the 2-year-old system.
With a modular system like JCX you can just plug in new or additional
boards from any vendor. It never becomes obsolete. The backplane is passive
so there's no "motherboard" that becomes obsolete. The CPU board plugs in
too. The backplane is even designed to support multiple CPUs - you can
isolate signals of any slot from any other slot as the photos show:
http://jcx.systronix.com/backpanel.htm
Or make your own backplane out of SimmStick connectors and boards:
http://www.simmstick.com/
Or use your own PIC or Atmel CPU (you won't have all the premade Java
software, but you could use it as a "coprocessor" on the backplane).
> I'm sure that in your world of dealing with college funded projects, what
> you ask for the JCX seems reasonable.
Comparable robots are $1500-$2000 and are nowhere near as open and modular.
> You'll start getting my attention when the JCX drops to around $200.
We will probably never be *price* competitive with 20-year old 8-bit
technology. An assembled 68HC11 HandyBoard is $300... It's more likely the
price will stay the same but power will go up. That seems to be the case
with PCs. I just bought my third or fourth notebook and it was about the
same price as all the others, only a lot nicer in capability.
We're a small company and don't have a lot of resources, so we can't do
this all overnight. It's already gone more slowly than we'd like. But we're
getting there.
Bruce
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Customer service
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| (...) For a product like this, I'd expect the majority of the support activity to be associated with the software. The way to avoid the software support hassles is to release the software as OpenSource - then let the community enhance and maintain (...) (21 years ago, 9-Feb-03, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Customer service
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| I wouldn't mind paying up to $250-$300 (depending on wether it has a case or is bare) for the initial core product. Enough parts would need to be included in the "basic" set to hook up a small number (4?) of motors and same number of sensors and (...) (21 years ago, 10-Feb-03, to lugnet.robotics)
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