Showcasing Impact Mozilla Finalists, Part IV
As only about 48 hours remain until voting closes for Impact Mozilla, we want to present the final installments of “Showcasing Impact Mozilla Finalists”. The impactmozilla.com voting site is here, and please make sure to check out Part I, Part II, and Part III of this series. With Part IV below, we’ll be highlighting “Phone Support” and “Project MOE”.
Phone Support
“Phone Support” argues that the Mozilla community needs to be more and more hospitable to very non-savvy computer users, and a key approach is by providing world-class support and customer service. The plan lays out these steps for executing a one-day experiment offering phone support to new Firefox users:
- Launch a build of Firefox, for a single day, with an alternate first-run and whats-new page, that both include the phone number for real-time tech support
- Have participating Mozilla Employees answer support questions
- After three days, shut down phone number and direct users to support.mozilla.com
The result? This experiment aims to gain insight into two areas: the demand for phone support and the psychology of users during the trial period.
Project MOE
“Project MOE” aims to effectively showcase the emotional benefits of the Mozilla brand. To do so, the plan proposes developing a Mozilla Open Education platform (”Project MOE”), which will teach core programming skills to students in developing nations. The project would leverage global collaboration in allowing Firefox developers to structure and submit course content. Student success stories would be publicized in popular media and via a dedicated website. The plan then expects to see resulting buzz generate a more loyal Firefox user base and socially-conscious internet users (using other browser brands) be more eager to switch to Firefox.
I think phone support is a great idea and would probably be the most effective of these program ideas (although it isn’t the most glamorous one). I help moderate the webmaster at mozilla dot org address and we get several emails each week from people saying they have a problem and just want to talk to someone to fix it. If we had a way for these people to talk to someone, I think we could keep a bunch of users from getting frustrated and giving up on using our software.
I think phone support is a *hilarious* idea and would love to participate. Unfortunately on balance I think I should probably be closing JS crashers. In fact I should probably be doing that instead of writing this comment.