Bezos Seeks to Delight with Amazon May Day, 24-7 Tablet Support

What's This?

By Lance Ulanoff2013-09-25 04:00:21 UTC

When Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said he wanted to show me a new feature called “May Day,” I instantly imagined some sort of panic button and, in a way, that’s precisely what it is: a soft button that staves off high-tech panic by connecting Amazon Kindle Fire HDX owners to live, 24/7, 365-days-a-year tech support.

It’s a feat almost unheard of in modern-day support and one Bezos clearly relished showing off.

Bezos revealed the fascinating new feature as part of a larger product introduction meeting that included three brand-new tablets: the Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch, the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9-inch and the updated Kindle Fire HD. You can read all about those tablets here.

Kindle tech support is not, in and of itself, new. “We have a lot of people on tech support phone-supporting Kindles. It’s something we’ve done very well and I think customers have been very happy with what we’ve been able to do there in terms of helping them.”

May Day, however, is not your run of the mill, phone-call-based consumer electronics tech support.

Hands On

Bezos walked me through the feature. May Day sits under quick settings and as soon as Bezos hit it, I was staring at an Amazon support representative who was waiting to take our call. Our rep, Dillon, appeared in a small on-screen box. That box can be dragged and dropped anywhere on our Kindle Fire HDX tablet screen, or, this is the wild part, Dillon could move the box by himself.

For example, if the Dillon wanted to explain something on the Kindle Fire HDX interface, but his little 1.5x.1.5 inch box was blocking it, he could move himself out of the way — which he did on more than one occasion.

The use-case scenario for May Day is typically pure tech support.

“A lot of the things you do with devices today, you don’t do frequently. The ones you do do frequently on a daily or weekly basis you sort of learn how to do or you’ve got them down, but every once in a while you want to change a configuration or a setting it can be time-consuming to find or in some cases really difficult to do,” said Bezos. That’s when you tap May Day.

Of course, setting up your tablet to work with your corporate VPN is not the only way Amazon and Bezos anticipate you using May Day.

During my demo, Bezos asked the Dillon about which game app “is really hot and people are seeming to enjoy?” Dillon said Angry Birds Star Wars II was pretty popular and then, when Bezos asked him for more information, Dillon guided us to the Apps menu by remotely drawing on the Fire HDX screen.

“Think about how hard it is to do tech support over a phone,” said Bezos, “because the first thing you’ve have to do is get the customer to describe the state of their device. The second thing you have to do is say, ‘okay, you should see the word Apps somewhere on the top towards the left,’ and it takes a long time to explain those things.”

Next he had Dillon, via May Day, guide us through how to change the settings for the Kindle’s parental control feature “FreeTime.” The whole time, Bezos is playing the role of the semi-confused consumer, and Dillon patiently guided him through every step. Of course, Bezos is the CEO, so what else would we expect?

May Day is not just about guidance. It can be control. If you give permission, the May Day tech support rep will control your tablet. Bezos showed me how Dillon could remotely adjust our tablet’s screen brightness.

Security

That level of interaction and control could give some people pause.

To make changes in FreeTime, for example, Bezos had to enter his password. Obviously, since Dillon is in some far flung Amazon office watching Bezos’s tablet activities, he could see him enter his password, as well. However, Dillon preemptively paused his own screen at this step so he could not see Bezos enter what he jokingly called, “the world’s most secure password.”

Bezos explained that, first of all, the video is one-way only. This is done both for privacy and so customers don’t have to worry about how they look before they connect to May Day.

That offers some comfort, but, of course, I had to ask Bezos how he could assure May Day users of their privacy and security. How they would know that Dillon really turned off his screen and did not see my password?

“There’s the reality and then there’s misperceptions. We can’t do anything about misperceptions. We can say what’s going on and we can rely on people like you to clarify them. Any new thing always creates a certain number of misperceptions," said Bezos. He also reminded me that a May Day session can only be initiated by the customer.

Bezos also compared May Day to some other potentially far less secure activities we engage in almost every day, “It’s actually way more controlled than going to a retail store and handing your device to a tech support person, because then you can’t even see what they’re doing.”

There is also, of course, the option of turning it off.

Other Details

As I noted, May Day is free, it comes with the purchase of a Kindle HDX and you don’t have to be an Amazon Prime Member. It’s for a Wi-Fi environment, but if connectivity is weak, you can switch to a voice-only session.

In limited beta tests, Bezos says people’s “jaws hit the floor.” They’re “really surprised when a real person comes on the screen and can walk them through – drawing on the screen surprises people. I have high hopes that people will be delighted by this.”

What do you think of May Day? Would you use this kind of tech support on your tablet? Let me know in the comments.

Topics: amazon, Apps and Software, jeff bezos, kindle fire, Kindle Fire HDX, Mobile, Tech