Digital BW, The Print

C. David Tobie-



I'm taking time to respond to your post in hopes that you might find an appropriate opportunity to pass my opinion up the ladder at Datacolor (or elsewhere).




I've been a working photographer for over thirty-five years, a university instructor and program director for twenty-eight years, have taught and been associated with a variety of national and international workshop programs and organizations, and currently own K2 Press, Inc., a digital fine art printing business in Austin, Texas. I have been, and continue to be, responsible for a good bit of both soft and hard inventory purchases.




What is absolutely infuriating to me is the money and effort companies spend on trying to market excellent customer support, rather than investing the money in actually providing excellent customer support. This business strategy has never made sense to me, and never will. It definitely effects the purchasing decisions that I make or have influence over.




Do companies really think that customers don't notice when:

- PC connections are eliminated from camera bodies

- Ink is left in cartridges that read "empty" by OEM print driver software

- Products never tested by photographers are sold to photographers

- They cannot get a human being on the telephone in a reasonable amount of time

- A company hides behind it's web site, instead of providing real customer support

- Companies make executive decisions to change the way color management is implemented in their software

-=2
0"Experts" are rewarded by companies to ghost-post on forums and lists (a good or bad thing, depending on how transparent the experts behavior is; David, you have always been transparent. Thank you.)




The list goes on and on. If I were King for a Day, I'd tell companies to start viewing their R&D and Customer Support departments as being the same thing. Some of the very best smaller companies (Inkjet Mall and BetterLight come to mind) do exactly that. It works and I make purchases through them as often as possible.




Bill Kennedy

K2 Press, Inc.

Austin, Texas










-----Original Message-----
From: C D Tobie <CDTobie@...>
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 1:10 pm
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Changes at Xrite


























    

            


On Feb 24, 2009, at 1:24 PM, Greg wrote:



> I've kind of been waiting for this to happen, and now it has been

> confirmed. The guys at Colorvision are going to have a good time with

> this little tidbit.



Its a tough economy, and we are all trying to find the best way to  

continue to be viable, and meet users needs. At Datacolor, for  

example, we have chosen to discontinue phone support, as our web-based  

ticket system provided the best results, as well as being more cost  

effective and more flexible. This will cause dissatisfaction from a  

few customers, who want a real pers
on to talk to (maybe even shout  

at), right this minute, but those who want real answers to technical  

issues will understand that the support system was always the  

practical route to advanced assistance.



From my perspective: X-Rite made a couple of daring acquisitions  

right before the market changed, and as a result has had to make some  

pretty radical changes and reductions, first to eliminate the  

redundancy caused by the mergers, then to deal with the current  

recession and drop in sales, which required refinancing to service  

their rather extensive debt. Our company looked carefully at the same  

possible acquisitions at the time, and chose to pass on both of them,  

which left us debt-free and cash positive. At the moment that  

certainly seems like the right answer, but only time will tell.



The other factor is that our Digital Imaging division has continued to  

sell product at about the same rate as last year, so we can continue  

to offer service, since we have not seen a drop in sales. If the  

circumstances were different, we might be significantly reducing  

intangibles as well. I had too many friends in a number of countries  

at (I have to take a deep breath to type up this long list): Logo,  

Gretag Macbeth, Monaco, Sequel, Pantone, and X-Rite to make light of  

the current difficulties of the combined organization, or that of the  

rest of the world economy, for that ma
tter.



As for the Spectrolino, it was the standard for our industry for many  

years... but that was quite a while ago. We certainly are not offering  

continuing support for products that have been off the market that  

long; though of course our products are not designed for recalibration  

and repair, quite the way a Spectrolino was; given its higher price  

point. So, if you expect me to make fun of X-Rite on a product, don't  

choose Spectrolino support; I'd suggest ColorMunki sales instead... ; )



C. David Tobie

Global Product Technology Manager

Digital Imaging & Home Theater

CDTobie@...



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Datacolor

www.datacolor.com/Spyder3



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