All: Henter-Joyce President Ted Henter asked me to post this to you on his behalf. Thank you, Wilson Craig Marketing Manager Henter-Joyce Dear Members of the JFW List Serve: Since the release of JAWS for Windows 3.3 there has been a great deal of discussion on the list about Henter-Joyce, our products, our policies and our procedures. With the release of JAWS for Windows 3.3 and MAGic 6.1 behind us and the summer shows rapidly approaching, I would like to explain some of the recent changes and enhancements to our services here at Henter-Joyce, specifically regarding technical support. Much has changed over the past two years at Henter-Joyce. The release of JAWS for Windows 3.2 was a remarkable time for us and the best product, to that point, that we had ever released. With the industry's first FREE software synthesizer "Eloquence for JFW," its ability to reformat web pages and the addition of the list of links and list of tools dialog boxes it was by far the most impressive product we had ever produced. Sales of JAWS for Windows 3.2 set records and expanded our client base exponentially. In this segment of the software industry, rapid growth of that type is a two-edged sword. On one hand, the increased sales allow us to increase our development, support and other resources. On the other, the new customers bring additional issues to our attention, all of which we, in accordance with our mission, must strive to address. To this end, we will continue to focus on a broader range of applications. Earlier this month, we released JAWS for Windows 3.3, a product that, more so than any previous release, directly address our mission to provide people who are blind and visually impaired the technology that they need to access computers at work, home, or in school. With support for the Microsoft Application Object Models and MSAA, the ability to speak the attributes of rows, cells and table in Microsoft Excel, unparalleled functionality in commonly used word processing programs, and ever-improving capabilities in commonly used applications, we consider JFW 3.3 to be the finest product we have ever released. That the product has been chosen by many of the country's top corporations, universities and government institutions as a standard for accessibility is something that we, as both users and developers of the product, take very seriously. With large clients including the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, Citibank, UPS, M.I.T., U.C.L.A., Purdue University and many others comes a great deal of responsibility. Ensuring that the product meets the vast needs of these agencies and individual users like you is one facet of this responsibility. Ensuring that expert technical support is readily available and of the highest quality is another. Henter-Joyce has done a great deal during the past year to enhance our technical support services. In doing this, we have implemented as many of the suggestions posted to this list as possible. As valued and important customers, we would like to give you a general description of the changes that have taken place in our technical support department recently and an indication of the high level of quality and service you can expect from us. The Henter-Joyce Technical Support Department includes seven on-site and two off-site engineers, all of whom are blind or visually impaired power users. Each of our engineers had extensive experience with our products before coming to Henter-Joyce, and they continue to improve their knowledge of and expertise in the products every day. Each of the engineers has a minimum of two years experience with JAWS for Windows, MAGic, or both, and our senior engineers have been working with the products daily for more than five years. The technical support staff at Henter-Joyce continues to grow. We are proud to announce that we will add two new technical support engineers during the month of June. Both are blind and are long time users of JAWS for Windows. Our technical support engineers are currently serving an average of 84 callers daily through the direct support hotline. Ninety percent of all callers on this line are connected to an engineer within three minutes. To use this hotline, call us at 727-803-8600 from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Eastern Time. We also provide a toll-free voice mail system where you may leave a message describing your problem and one of our engineers will return your call at no charge. We are currently receiving an average of 35 calls daily through this system and have been able to return most of these calls on the same day they were received. Please remember that it is not possible to reach a technical support engineer directly when you call this toll free line. To use this line, call 1-800-336-5658 and select option 2. Technical support e-mail is currently averaging 57 messages per day, and most of these are being returned the same business day. For JAWS for Windows technical support by e-mail, please send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For MAGic technical support by e-mail, please send a message describing your problem to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In addition to the services listed above, we have also initiated a quality control and customer service-monitoring program through which we place telephone calls to users like you to determine the quality of the service you receive. As always, we appreciate your questions, comments and suggestions regarding any and all aspects of the work that we do. Feel free to send e-mail to any of the addresses above, or any of the others found on our web site. We are currently developing an on-line feedback form for the web site that you will be able to use to send us your ideas. We will let you know when it is ready. Thank you for your time and consideration. We wish you all the best, and look forward to working with you in the future. Sincerely, Ted Henter President Henter-Joyce, Inc. - Visit the jfw ml web page: http://jfw.cjb.net
