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June 29, 2010
A Second Westlaw Outage Leads to a Quick Question: Where's the Communication?
Late yesterday afternoon I learned that for the second time in a week, Westlaw access was unavailable. This by way of a ORALL listserv query from a county law librarian -- can you login? In this case the problem apparently was only affecting Westlaw Patron Access accounts. Had this query not been posted to the listserv, we might have left our after-hours patrons staring at a blank Westlaw display wondering what's up.
Now, I know systems crash and the IT folks in the Westlaw bunker are some of the best in the business who will fix them but, perhaps, they should wake up someone in the TR Legal Librarian (Marketing) Relations program to blast AALL listservs with a message informing everyone that "Hal" is misbehaving but is being worked on. It's not like the Librarian (Marketing) Relations folks don't know how to use our listservs. Even better -- got an email distribution list? Could use the one that sends us 20%-off offers. A simple but prompt explanation of the problem and its scope will suffice. We know you can't say exactly when the problem will be fixed.
Twice in One Week. I wonder how many law librarian hours were spent in the Tech Support telephone queue. [JH]
June 29, 2010 in Electronic Resource, Legal Research, Products & Services | Permalink
Comments
Amen! Say jalopeno!
Posted by: John Hightower | Jun 30, 2010 9:29:30 AM
T-R Westlaw has never been able to say "the network is d-d-d-d[own]." To them, the network is never d-d-d-d[own].
It has always reminded me this poem:
"And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod.
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God."
Make of that what you will.
For the record, WL Patron Access goes DOWN more often than anyone knows. I suppose we could post to Law-Lib about it and get a better idea. Yes, we all assume it's a local problem, and sometimes it is, and sometimes it's communications. But sometimes, yes, it's TR Westlaw that is d-d-d-d-down.
On occasion they will even admit it when we phone. At least the tech folks do, mostly because they actually do know if there is a problem.
Yes, they could easily email Law-Lib, but when even Anne Ellis doesn't seem to be allowed to post to Law-Lib directly, I'm not sure what they (WL) consider good customer service.
We surely don't expect perfect connections. Things do go wrong. But why they can't grasp the bare essence of good old customer-company communication is a mystery to me. In any business, airlines, retail, cable, most of us are able to say, "just tell us what is going on - we know things go wrong - just tell us - just talk to us. Just don't waste my time."
Good customer service is not rocket science (as Southwest Airlines and Nordstroms seem know), except I suppose when one is too big to fail.
Sigh.
But maybe I'm wrong.
Laura
Posted by: Laura | Jun 29, 2010 5:26:00 PM
I've mentioned to my Westlaw rep. more than once that they should send an outage alert to administrators/users. Apparently they don't feel that it's offline often enough to merit this type of customer service alert. The one time Heinonline was out, they sent an email to all administrators indicating that it was "out", and another alert when it was back online. They are a small company, with a much cheaper service and they can send a customer alert. You'd think Westlaw customer service could keep up with them.
Posted by: M Roberts | Jun 29, 2010 11:23:51 AM
