I see my friend Ragnar online so I want to revisit his earlier question.

One thing I will say for Nokia, from my experience: the company EXCELS at problem containment for commercial customers. I would put Nokia up against ANY company in that regard, including Apple, and they would hold their own.

Our factory in the US had over 98% on time delivery and under 3% field failure rates due to issues under our control. That's damn good numbers folks.

Where Nokia broke down was in failing to take that success upstream as well as out to consumers. I'm not revealing secrets here because anyone dealing with end customer service has seen it. The definition of containment in that regard tends to mean "pretend the problem doesn't exist (okay, hyperbolic, but it's how end customers feel)".

Within a factory it was easy to shed light on this but only because we were self-contained. From a corporate ivory tower perspective it's hard to see that lines of communication are broken.

This issue is common to many large companies YET some manage to succeed in service anyway. A while back there was a popular thread here on the subject (that started with poor tablet service) and I mentioned Lexar media and Apevia as companies that managed to create a delightful repair experience (chew on that for a while, PR experts!).

Anyway, there's more to say, but I have to get back to my presentation...