How does a computer software maker get onto a person's list of heroes? By having competent, helpful, professional technical support. And when I last needed their help with a problem, they did it for free. That's been years ago, and that says something about their products.

WordPerfect Corporation never pointed the finger at another company. Instead, they simply told you how to fix the problem - even if it wasn't their product - that caused WordPerfect to have problems.

The finest example of this is in my 1991 installation at Cannon & Blaylock. The printer, a nice Hewlett Packard LaserJet (I think it was a IIID) was having trouble with forms from a real estate package. The software support folk for the real estate package (who nearly made my Hall of Shame) told me to replace the printer. Now where am I supposed to find another IIID printer? But the thing that got to me was that this didn't "feel like" a printer problem - I thought something a little more insidious was up. I suspected problems with the real estate package (it would have just been one more to add to a whole pile of them).

On a hunch, I tried a few graphics from WordPerfect - at the time, version 5.1, a truly great DOS product if ever there was one. The first one, a small one, printed fine. The second, a larger one, appeared garbled, with parts of the picture printing in the wrong places. Figuring that WordPerfect support, who had never let me down before, might have some idea of what was up, I gave them a call.

I don't remember much about the call - it was that short. The WordPerfect support person IMMEDIATELY knew what my problem was - a bad version of Novell's Print Server program. He even gave me the filename to download from the WordPerfect BBS.

This was *NOT* WordPerfect's problem. They could have taken the easy way out - re-install the software, change printer drivers, or any other useless thing - but instead, they had COMPETENT, INTELLIGENT, KNOWLEDGEABLE Technical Support people who didn't care WHY I couldn't print, but were going to make sure that, when everything was said and done, WordPerfect was going to print, no matter what they had to fix to make it work.

WordPerfect changed hands several times before ending up in the hands of Corel. The support isn't what it was, and hasn't been for years, but the example that WordPerfect Corporation set cannot be ignored. WordPerfect Technical Support defined the standard of technical support excellence. For that, they deserve a place of honor in my Hall of Heroes.

This page last updated 11/13/2006 .