|
Forums, blogs, etc. would certainly be nice (plus it would be great if the blog contained more than just links to reviews and product videos, there are already sections where this fits nicely, the blog would be ideal to build a community and give some "behind-the-scenes" info) but it would not replace the necessity for a solution for email support.
As for easy, I think the fact that Bookeen admitted to lack in support in their blog is a big leap ahead. Not many companies will admit to that and rather try to spread the blame all around. It may sound easy to implement a forum but in a big company there's quite a bit of work involved: You'd need to evaluate a few products (get an open source solution or do we need a special support contract?) which depends also on what you want to handle yourself (which, in turn, depends on the number of people you have with the required skills). Then you would have to set up a test system and have a few people from the support team work with that for some days (in addition to their normal work, of course). If everything looks fine, you need to buy hardware and bandwidth according to your expectations or find a suitable provider and deploy the thing.
A lot of work goes into this and if you don't do it right the first time (don't have a few dedicated people) a community won't build and the forum will be dead right from the start. I'd assume that right now Bookeen has no time to spare to pour into something like this. I know it's kind of paradoxical if you say that you don't have time to do something which will save you a lot of time. If only it would be possible to take out a loan from a "time bank" ;-)
|