If I paid you $100 per answer would you...

[AreaCode707]

I've been giving some thought recently to a crowd-sourced method of customer support for corporate enterprise software and I'm curious what Anandtech's response would be, since this is a population that would represent my target "crowd" to provide the support.

If you could:

• submit to a basic identity check (to make sure you're not a competitor)
• take some free online trainings (anywhere from 1 hour to 3 weeks that might include phone meetings with an instructor based on how in-depth you wanted to go)
• go to a site that had client questions posted (anything from super basic "how do I..." to very complex "I got an application error that is going to require serious research to figure out"
• select any questions you want to research and answer, where each question has a price tag (basic how-do-I might be $20, basic troubleshooting might be $100, advanced troubleshooting might be $300)
• post an answer that would be validated by an employee of my company and provided to the client

Would you do it?



Assume that as you get to know the software you'd be able to pick off easy questions in a matter of minutes, and that the price for harder questions would be reasonable-to-high compensation for your time.

 

[skyking]

yes

 

[AreaCode707]

yes

Poll added, sorry was slow finishing up the answers.

 

[amdhunter]

nah. Too much time involved.

 

[herm0016]

could be interesting. Give me a way to make a little money on my week off. Would we have access to a remote or something to try out solutions and duplicate problems on said software?

 

[DaveSimmons]

It's an interesting idea, but I'm paid well enough that I'd rather spend my free time playing a game, reading a book, watching a movie, posting here . . . .

(Windows application developer, also do a bit of PHP + MySQL)

 

[Smoblikat]

Yes

 

[nickbits]

only if i was unemployed

 

[AreaCode707]

could be interesting. Give me a way to make a little money on my week off. Would we have access to a remote or something to try out solutions and duplicate problems on said software?

Yeah, would have cloned instances with data anonymization so you'd have free reign to troubleshoot as much as needed.

 

[lotus503]

I would do it, however how do you stop folks from competing to answer?

Some poor chap would spend 8 hours looking for answers to have someone post it a minute before.

 

[herm0016]

I would do it, however how do you stop folks from competing to answer?

Some poor chap would spend 8 hours looking for answers to have someone post it a minute before.

each person would have to take ownership of an issue. so... you would have to pick a question, and then that would not be up for grabs anymore. At least that's how i see it. if you end up needing help, maybe a way to post the work you have done on it and the original question?

 

[sdifox]

You are every late to the game

 

[Rhoxed]

yes

 

[AreaCode707]

each person would have to take ownership of an issue. so... you would have to pick a question, and then that would not be up for grabs anymore. At least that's how i see it. if you end up needing help, maybe a way to post the work you have done on it and the original question?

Yeah, I think we'd have to differentiate based on difficulty - on easy questions there'd probably be a benefit to incent competition, on hard questions it would make more sense to have a "claim for a period of time" / "renew ownership every x period of time as long as you're actively working it" model. There's a fair amount of work that would have to go into a tiering / pricing system in general.

 

[Farmer]

Basically a consulting agency.

 

[Leros]

Couldn't this be done with cheaper labor from places like India? Your dollar amounts seem way too high to be practical.

 

[ultimatebob]

Didn't Mahalo and Google Answers try a web based "pay for an answer to your question" site like this,and fail miserably? It seems that people are willing the find the answers if you pay them, but most people aren't willing to pay for the answers.

I guess that It depends on what the software product was... If it was a cool product Or something similar to what I already knew, I might be interested.

 

[RossMAN]

Yes if the compensation is cold hard cash similar to focus groups.

 

[kranky]

I think for people who are well-versed in the application, it would be easy money. If I had more time I would do it as I think I have enough experience with that type of software to be able to pick it up pretty easily.

Unless it's SAP, in which case forget it. I can't stand using it for the things I must use it for.

 

[Andrew111]

Couldn't this be done with cheaper labor from places like India? Your dollar amounts seem way too high to be practical.

Yep...that dollar figure is way too high. OP you do realize thousands upon thousands of people provide pretty decent answers on Yahoo Answers (for various subjects...including IT) for free right? Obviously you would expect higher quality answers if you paid people to do it but it certainly is not worth $20 even for very basic how-tos...and certainly not $100 for for troubleshooting. To make it sustainable you can only offer a few dollars at most per answer (if that)...and you won't attract enough quality people to participate.

 

[Andrew111]

https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome
Might want to check the prices floating around on Mechnical Turk per work unit.

 

[Ken g6]

Sounds tantamount to posting a bounty on http://stackexchange.com/