February 20th, 2008
Remember this, BlackBerry: when it comes to customer communications, it's NOT all about the carriers
Once again, there were scattered BlackBerry service outages yesterday. This time, it was maintenance on the BlackBerry Internet Service side of the business. The one that forwards your other email account messages to your BlackBerry.
Unfortunately, yesterday proved that when it comes to letting customers know what the you-know-what is going on, BlackBerry’s notification processes are extremely flawed.
These outage notification processes seem to entirely consist of:
Email alerts directly from RIM to key commercial accounts.
There doesn’t seem to be a system in place for letting smaller accounts, and individuals who access BlackBerry services via their cell carrier from knowing what is going on.
No “we have reports of scattered BlackBerry outages” notifications on the BlackBerry and RIM sites. There also doesn’t seem to be a regular structure in place for letting carriers know of these disruptions in a manner that would enable these carriers to post outage-related notifications and updates on their own sites.
These have been flaws ever since I can remember.
Plainly, these flaws call not only for engineering new business processes that let all BlackBerry customers know about outages.
If it means taking a few carriers by the scruff of the neck and getting them in the customer alert loop, then so be it.
I still have my doubts this will be done right away. Even if the will to do so was there, BlackBerry is so subservient to their carriers I doubt they lack the will or the vision to architect subscriber alert systems such as the type I am proposing here.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
