Home again, home again... and an amazing customer service story
Note: Back in Portland, now, and still way behind on writing up my trip. I'm working on it, and hopefully in the coming days will have more up here. In the meantime, I just got a photo printer, and decided to take a break from writing about India to write about my experience with the new gadget. All sorts of notable and interesting info awaits.
An excellent customer service story
I just bought a Canon Pixma iP4200 photo printer, and thus far it is an excellent piece of equipment. I paid around $130 for it, and am getting incredibly good photo prints out of it— especially when you consider the price. I bought it mainly because I wanted a way to quickly and easily print off 4x6 prints of my pictures. For anything larger, I think I still prefer Costco (optical prints, as opposed to ink-jet; calibration becomes Somebody Else's Problem), but it's nice to be able to get snapshots right at home.
The absolute best part thus far has been the out-of-box experience. This has been the first printer I've dealt with that was absolutely pain-free to get set up. It came with full ink cartridges (not half-empty "trial" ones), five sheets of photo paper, a driver cd, an excellent paper manual (a rarity in this day and age), and a four-color setup guide. This guide covered installation of the print head and ink cartridges, then split in to the "Windows Driver Installation" and the "Macintosh Driver Installation". Amazing- a consumer product that actually provides good Macintosh documentation!
The whole process was almost comically easy, and was full of very nice small touches. For example, each of the five ink cartridges has an led light to indicate that the cartridge is installed completely. As you click the cartridge into place, the light illuminates. When a cartridge is low on ink, its light blinks. Now, this sort of feature couldn't have added more than a couple of cents to the unit's manufacturing cost (LEDs are insanely cheap, and all of the circuitry to monitor ink levels was already in place), but it has an enormous impact on how pleasant the device is to set up.
Another small touch- the online documentation for most peripherals ends up sitting in a folder as a collection of HTML documents. It's usually up to the user to find it, and it's easy to forget that they're there. This device's online documentation integrated itself with OSX's "Help Viewer" application, and now there are three more options in the menu alongside "Safari Help" and "iPhoto Help". One for the electronic version of the printer's manual, one for the print driver itself, and one for Canon's "EasyPrint" digital imaging software. It's clear that the Mac version of the software was not simply an afterthought.
Once I got the thing installed and working, I had a question about the ICC color profiles that the driver had installed in my system (in the correct location, I might add). There were eight of them, and while I was 99% sure that they were meant for use with different paper combinations, there was no documentation on which profile was for which paper. After some unsuccessful Googling, I decided to give Canon's tech support phone line a try. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised.
I was initially put off by the overly cheerful tone of the automated menu, but once I got over the voice and started paying attention to the words, I found that whoever did the scripting knew what they were doing. There were never more than three or four options to choose from, the options were completely unambiguous, and each successive menu gave an indication of how many more menus were left (i.e., "Just two more questions for you", and so on). The automated part was all over after about four short menus, and when I finally reached a support person, I found him to be both knowledgeable and friendly.
He actually knew what color profiles were, and, best of all, once he realized that I was using a Mac, he came right out and said that since he wasn't sure if the Mac driver installed the same profiles as the Windows driver, and that he didn't know much about Macs, but that he would transfer me to one of the Mac specialists. The Mac guy was able to answer my question in about ten seconds, and that was that. He was also able to clear up some ColorSync related questions I'd had, which was huge- it meant that Canon's CSR folk are not simply reading off of a script, but actually know something about digital imaging and printing. Furthermore, they seem to have pretty low turnover- both of the people I talked to were familiar with particulars of printer models from more than a year ago, which implies to me that they were around then. Having worked in a call center environment for a couple of years, I can really appreciate both a) how difficult it is to retain agents for any length of time; and b) how critical that kind of retention is to providing quality customer service. Canon's call center seems to have its act together in a big way, and it shows.
Honestly, this was possibly the most enjoyable customer service experience that I've had in years. I'd fully expected to be forced to wade through menu after menu of lousy, ambiguous options only to be faced with an unhelpful CSR ("Ummm... color profiles? What're those? Are you sure you've got the USB cable plugged in to the right port? What version of Windows are you running? You're not running Windows? MacOS X? I'm sorry, sir, that's not on my list... are you sure you don't mean XP Pro?"). Instead, I got my question answered and learned a few interesting bits of Canon printer errata that I wouldn't have otherwise learned.
And now, in the spirit of "Stupid things I've figured out so that you don't have to", here's an explanation of which ICC profiles to use for which papers. The names might be specific to the iP4200, but the general naming schema should map to other Canon PIXMA printers. The iP4200 driver initially installs eight profiles:
The first one, the "BJ Coolor Printer Profile 2000" is essentially a calibrated sRGB. For the others, the numerical suffix relates to the print quality desired. Lower numbers are higher quality. The two-letter code relates to the kind of paper. MP is for the "Matte Photo" papers, PR is for the "Photo Paper Pro" line, and SP is for the "Photo Paper Plus" line of papers.
One thing to note: apparently, the printer driver is responsible for doing the color profile conversion. So, if your photo is in the AdobeRGB color space, you don't need to manually convert it to one of these profiles in Photoshop. The printer driver should do it automatically depending on the kind of paper and quality level you select in the "Print" dialog box. If for any reason you want to do it manually, the way to do this is to set "Color Correction" from "BJ Standard" to "ColorSync" in the "Color Options" screen of the "Print" dialog box. This will cause the driver to not apply any color correction, and just take what it's given.
From what my initial test prints show, the driver seems to do a pretty decent job of profile conversion. The pictures that come out of the printer are pretty close to what was on the screen- certainly well past the "good enough" point, and probably on towards "damn good". That said, I've only done 4x6 pictures thus far, and none of the pictures have been terribly challenging from a color standpoint. I'm sure if I was printing out a larger or more important photo, I'd be spending more time obsessing over the color output. As it is, I'm quite happy with the output I'm getting from this device.
Kudos to Canon for an excellent and affordable product, for not skimping on the Mac support, and for providing superb customer service. I still prefer Nikon's cameras, but your printer has won itself a nice cozy place on my desk. Keep it up!
An excellent customer service story
I just bought a Canon Pixma iP4200 photo printer, and thus far it is an excellent piece of equipment. I paid around $130 for it, and am getting incredibly good photo prints out of it— especially when you consider the price. I bought it mainly because I wanted a way to quickly and easily print off 4x6 prints of my pictures. For anything larger, I think I still prefer Costco (optical prints, as opposed to ink-jet; calibration becomes Somebody Else's Problem), but it's nice to be able to get snapshots right at home.
The absolute best part thus far has been the out-of-box experience. This has been the first printer I've dealt with that was absolutely pain-free to get set up. It came with full ink cartridges (not half-empty "trial" ones), five sheets of photo paper, a driver cd, an excellent paper manual (a rarity in this day and age), and a four-color setup guide. This guide covered installation of the print head and ink cartridges, then split in to the "Windows Driver Installation" and the "Macintosh Driver Installation". Amazing- a consumer product that actually provides good Macintosh documentation!
The whole process was almost comically easy, and was full of very nice small touches. For example, each of the five ink cartridges has an led light to indicate that the cartridge is installed completely. As you click the cartridge into place, the light illuminates. When a cartridge is low on ink, its light blinks. Now, this sort of feature couldn't have added more than a couple of cents to the unit's manufacturing cost (LEDs are insanely cheap, and all of the circuitry to monitor ink levels was already in place), but it has an enormous impact on how pleasant the device is to set up.
Another small touch- the online documentation for most peripherals ends up sitting in a folder as a collection of HTML documents. It's usually up to the user to find it, and it's easy to forget that they're there. This device's online documentation integrated itself with OSX's "Help Viewer" application, and now there are three more options in the menu alongside "Safari Help" and "iPhoto Help". One for the electronic version of the printer's manual, one for the print driver itself, and one for Canon's "EasyPrint" digital imaging software. It's clear that the Mac version of the software was not simply an afterthought.
Once I got the thing installed and working, I had a question about the ICC color profiles that the driver had installed in my system (in the correct location, I might add). There were eight of them, and while I was 99% sure that they were meant for use with different paper combinations, there was no documentation on which profile was for which paper. After some unsuccessful Googling, I decided to give Canon's tech support phone line a try. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised.
I was initially put off by the overly cheerful tone of the automated menu, but once I got over the voice and started paying attention to the words, I found that whoever did the scripting knew what they were doing. There were never more than three or four options to choose from, the options were completely unambiguous, and each successive menu gave an indication of how many more menus were left (i.e., "Just two more questions for you", and so on). The automated part was all over after about four short menus, and when I finally reached a support person, I found him to be both knowledgeable and friendly.
He actually knew what color profiles were, and, best of all, once he realized that I was using a Mac, he came right out and said that since he wasn't sure if the Mac driver installed the same profiles as the Windows driver, and that he didn't know much about Macs, but that he would transfer me to one of the Mac specialists. The Mac guy was able to answer my question in about ten seconds, and that was that. He was also able to clear up some ColorSync related questions I'd had, which was huge- it meant that Canon's CSR folk are not simply reading off of a script, but actually know something about digital imaging and printing. Furthermore, they seem to have pretty low turnover- both of the people I talked to were familiar with particulars of printer models from more than a year ago, which implies to me that they were around then. Having worked in a call center environment for a couple of years, I can really appreciate both a) how difficult it is to retain agents for any length of time; and b) how critical that kind of retention is to providing quality customer service. Canon's call center seems to have its act together in a big way, and it shows.
Honestly, this was possibly the most enjoyable customer service experience that I've had in years. I'd fully expected to be forced to wade through menu after menu of lousy, ambiguous options only to be faced with an unhelpful CSR ("Ummm... color profiles? What're those? Are you sure you've got the USB cable plugged in to the right port? What version of Windows are you running? You're not running Windows? MacOS X? I'm sorry, sir, that's not on my list... are you sure you don't mean XP Pro?"). Instead, I got my question answered and learned a few interesting bits of Canon printer errata that I wouldn't have otherwise learned.
And now, in the spirit of "Stupid things I've figured out so that you don't have to", here's an explanation of which ICC profiles to use for which papers. The names might be specific to the iP4200, but the general naming schema should map to other Canon PIXMA printers. The iP4200 driver initially installs eight profiles:
- BJ Color Printer Profile 2000
- Canon iP4200 MP2
- Canon iP4200 PR1
- Canon iP4200 PR2
- Canon iP4200 PR3
- Canon iP4200 SP2
- Canon iP4200 SP4
The first one, the "BJ Coolor Printer Profile 2000" is essentially a calibrated sRGB. For the others, the numerical suffix relates to the print quality desired. Lower numbers are higher quality. The two-letter code relates to the kind of paper. MP is for the "Matte Photo" papers, PR is for the "Photo Paper Pro" line, and SP is for the "Photo Paper Plus" line of papers.
One thing to note: apparently, the printer driver is responsible for doing the color profile conversion. So, if your photo is in the AdobeRGB color space, you don't need to manually convert it to one of these profiles in Photoshop. The printer driver should do it automatically depending on the kind of paper and quality level you select in the "Print" dialog box. If for any reason you want to do it manually, the way to do this is to set "Color Correction" from "BJ Standard" to "ColorSync" in the "Color Options" screen of the "Print" dialog box. This will cause the driver to not apply any color correction, and just take what it's given.
From what my initial test prints show, the driver seems to do a pretty decent job of profile conversion. The pictures that come out of the printer are pretty close to what was on the screen- certainly well past the "good enough" point, and probably on towards "damn good". That said, I've only done 4x6 pictures thus far, and none of the pictures have been terribly challenging from a color standpoint. I'm sure if I was printing out a larger or more important photo, I'd be spending more time obsessing over the color output. As it is, I'm quite happy with the output I'm getting from this device.
Kudos to Canon for an excellent and affordable product, for not skimping on the Mac support, and for providing superb customer service. I still prefer Nikon's cameras, but your printer has won itself a nice cozy place on my desk. Keep it up!
posted by steve | 1:51 PM
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