- Amy Gahran

When you say the Nokia Care folks have been involved in your discussion forums, could you provide some links to examples? Nokia’s forums are pretty complex, there are many subdirectories, and it’s pretty hard to figure out where to raise those issues there. I’m all for communicating with the right people in a way that actually reaches them.

That said, I do think it helps that this discussion is happening here, in such a public and findable way. Because even if the Nokia Care folks don’t jump in here, eventually they’ll be hearing about what happens here from above — and I think that’s especially likely after the next firmware update release, because I expect many more US N95-3 users will be reporting problems with the updating and service then.

Also, it may help to consider guaranteed service turnaround time as a key competitive issue in the US. As I mentioned before, Nokia’s leading competitor in the high-end US phone market (Apple) offers fast, excellent service. Apple (and AT&T, which also retails iPhones) understands that people who pay a premium price for a premium device that they rely on daily are not willing to tolerate even the risk that they might be left without that device for more than a few days at a time. From the consumer’s perspective that’s a huge issue.

Maybe in the short term Nokia could look into a premium add-on service agreement that would provide overnight shipping for an equivalent loaner phone, while the customer’s main phone is being repaired? If that service were priced comparably to, say, Apple’s ProCare, that might help a great deal.

Also, concerning a Mac-friendly firmware update process — here too it’s important to remember that Apple is your key competition in the US. And also, people who are likely to want a n N95 specifically for its advanced content creation and distribution capability are also especially likely to be Mac users, and bloggers. Which means they might also be especially likely to complain in a very public, findable, linkable way if they encounter obstacles with expensive tools like the N95. So although Mac users are still a minority of the overall computer market (and among the overall Nokia market), it might be worthwhile to give US Mac users special consideration for competitive reasons as you promote your N-Series phones in the US.

Thanks again,

- Amy Gahran

These issues are very important and we are working hard to activate the Nokia Care folks to get involved in this discussion (beyond the discussion forums they already have).

We here at Conversations are not really the right folks to help out and we feel we are just getting in the way, relaying messages back and forth.

Yes, there is a need for Nokia Care to set up something to carry on this discussion, directly with you guys. As you can tell, there’s only so far we can carry on here at Conversations.

Good news is that it seems we are getting somewhere in getting Care more involved in this conversation.

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Charlie, Nokia Conversations