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Tech Support: Sucking Even More
Tech support has become synonymous in most consumers' minds with corporate arrogance and greed, the dehumanization wrought by technology, and the frustration millions of people have felt at being hung out to dry by computer makers, access providers and online retailers. People struggle to assemble products, to install software, to access the Net and the Web, to locate passwords, codes and IDs they belatedly discover they need (or have just misplaced). No other business would survive a month operating this way.
Customer service and tech support are the contact points between the public and much of contemporary technology. It causes the greatest fear and anxiety, generates the most anger and resentment; it's become a scandal, branding the computer industry as perhaps the most insensitive and exploitive in America. Computer manufacturers and software-makers make used-car salesman look thoughtful and concerned about their customers -- at least you can go back and find the lot where you bought the car.
Customer service and tech support are constantly being promised and invoked, even as they are rarely delivered. Extortionate service contracts are now routinely offered -- special arrangements by which people who spend thousands of dollars on hardware and software spend hundreds more just for "priority access" to get the kind of minimal support that's standard in other businesses, and that ought to be included free with their purchases. Can you imagine paying extra to call up the store that sold you a sofa to ask where the legs are?
This week, the research firm Jupiter Media Matrix will release the results of a survey showing that while some companies doing business on the Internet are actually responding more quickly to customer e-mail inquiries compared to previous studies, those gains have been more than offset by a sharp increase in the number of companies that don't respond at all.
Of the 225 U.S. companies Jupiter surveyed in February, 38 percent responded within six hours or sooner to an e-mail message sent to customer service. That was an increase from 29 percent in Jupiter's previous survey in September. Only 16 percent of the companies responded with 6 to 24 hours, compared with 25 per cent last fall. The percentage of companies that responded to customers within a day, therefore, remained static at 54 percent; note, though, that many of those responses were in the form of automated e-mails. That doesn't mean the customers complaints were addressed or satisfied.
And here's the truly shocking and maddening finding: 24 percent of those companies surveyed didn't bother to respond at all, up from 19 percent last fall.
But nobody really needs a survey to know that tech support is a nightmare. Support and customer service jobs are often considered boring, low-paying and difficult. The more noise companies make about providing customer service and tech support, the worse they seem to treat the people they hire to do it, paying them little and overloading them with cases -- almost ensuring high turnover rates and bad service. It's hard to keep good people in those jobs, and those who stay are generally miserable and stressed out.
Small wonder they catch the brunt of consumer wrath at the outrageous way in which computers and related products and products online are sold and serviced.
The average consumer, according to a Jupiter analysts, expects a resolution of her complaint or query within six hours. They're not likely to get it. At a minimum, consumers are entitled to e-mail response within a business day, instand and equal access to customer service reps if they need it, and prompt resolution of their problems.
From my personal experience, and that of others, some companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard stand out. They answer e-mail queries and complaints promptly, and provide instant and knowledgeable support. (Microsoft, though, charges customers extra for those "priority" contracts which put them on the top of long phone queues. Hewlitt-Packard takes calls as they come, spares customers complex and eternal phone menus, and even helps customers who haven't paid extra. Dell customer reps stay with customers throughout the life of a complaint. Consumers actually have a name and a number to call, even if the problem takes days to resolve.)
But as the Jupiter survey suggests, tech support generally remains miserable for most people who buy products online or need technical assistance. I'd love to see a survey of how much time and money has been spent by people trying to reach companies that abandon them to elaborate phone menus, keep them waiting for hours on hold, then often can't or won't help even those who survive the access process. As bad as it's been, apparently tech support sucks even more than it used to.
The sorry cocksuckas in question was the Tech Support staff on the west wing of the third-floor general administrative office. Me and my crew here on the east wing of the third floor, we hate them west-wing tech-support muthafuckas. They always be tryin' to muscle in on our turf wit' they muthafuckin' control of the company's computa network and fuckin' wit' my accounting software and otherwise tellin' me what to do and shit. Thass bullshit! The only person who can tell the H-Dog what to do is his mama. And Allah. All the rest of y'all muthafuckas can go fuck yo'selves.
This whole east-west beef started about three months ago. Before that, it was all good: All the departments be chillin', doin' they own thang, know what I'm sayin'? But then, this past March, this muthafucka named Ted Wegerle gets hired as the new Tech Support supervisor, and he starts makin' all these changes around the office, devisin' ways to make the computa system run more efficient and shit.
About a week after he be hired, Wegerle send his computa bitches around to check all the extensions and power cords and shit in every department to make sure they be secure and don't need no replacement. So one of these computa bitches rides up to my cubicle and starts snoopin' around on his knees under my desk, his li'l Dockers-wearin' ass pokin' up like he gonna give me head or something. So I says to him, "Yo, what tha fuck you be doin' under there?" He raise his head and say that I gots too much plugged into my power strip, including two adding machines and another extension cord, an' that I should have nothing but my computer and desk lamp plugged in there. So I say, "Well, then why don't yo' pussy supervisor get my department bigger power strips, you wack-ass bitch?" When I says that, the li'l bastard turns all red and runs back to his fuckin' turf. He was shit-scared, I know it, 'cause I gots a rep for being the hardest muthafucka on the whole damn third floor.
Then, a few weeks after that, Wegerle goes and upgrades my accounting software without consultin' me. When me and my posse logged on to Lotus, we got all this weird extra shit I ain't never seen before. Man, I was so pissed, I packed my Letter Opener Of Death and fuckin' invaded the west-wing turf, demandin' to see Wegerle. So I says to him, "What the fuck y'all do wit' my accounting shit? It was def before all y'all changed it. Change that shit back before I cuts you and the rest of you wack computa bitches."
I was about to go all American Psycho on those muthafuckas, but Wegerle says, all cool and shit, "Herbert, the only real changes on your software are some upgrades to the graphics, the addition of a few hot keys, and a quicker downloading time. Otherwise, nothing has substantially changed. If anything, you'll be able to do your spreadsheets much more efficiently now."
So he talked me out of slicin' him and his software-installin' bitches, which ended up being the worst fuckin' mistake I coulda made, 'cause it sent them the message that they could fuck wit' tha H-Dog. When I figured this out, I decided to get me some allies against Tech Support, in case those fuckas tried to invade my turf again. So I goes up to Myron Schabe, the Accountz Payable supervisor.
Now, normally, I just be laughin' at Myron, 'cause he be this old candy-ass fool who wear Sansabelt slacks every day to work. But Accountz Payable be in the middle of the third floor, in between tha east and west wings, so they in the crossfire when the shit go down. They is, therefore, of strategic significance and all that army shit. If Tech Support tried to invade our turf, the Accountz Payable Krew could tell them to back the fuck off, and ain't no way they could reach tha east wing. So I ask Myron to join my posse and offer him some of my secret stash of Wisconsin Dells admission discount coupons I be keepin' in my desk.
But Myron just say, "I'm not getting involved in this, Herbert. If you have a problem with Ted, you can take your grievances to Bob Cowan in Human Resources." I shoulda known that dickless ol' bastard would say somethin' like that. "Thass cool, sucka," I say. "When tha shit goes down, you just be in tha middle anyway."
Sure enough, last Thursday, the shit with Tech Support went down when I made this hardcore, dope-ass image for my desktop. Man, that desktop image was the shit. I went down to the Marketing Department and used their scanner to scan this picture of a forest with tha inscription, "Attitudes Are Contagious... Is Yours Worth Catching?" You ain't kiddin', muthafucka! I saved it on a disk and loaded into my computer, so when I reboot, I get this muthafuckin' dope-ass shit on my desktop instead of that goddamn Windows logo.
The next day, the entire office be gettin' these memos in they mailboxes. "Lately, it has come to my attention that several people have been creating personalized desktop images for their computers. We ask that people stop doing this and return to using one of the default desktop images included in the office-wide Windows 95 operating system. Aside from being an unnecessary activity which wastes office time and resources, creating a desktop image takes up a lot of memory and can create problems within your departmental LAN. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Have a good day. Ted Wegerle, Tech Support Supervisor."
It was muthafuckin' zero hour, man.
I stands up on my chair and shouts across tha floor, "Yeah, I gots a question, Ted Wegerle, you muthafucka. Why you be fuckin' with tha H-Dog and the East-Wing Office Krew? I gots a vendetta out against you and the rest of the west-wing tech-support bitches, 'cause you be dissin' me and my posse and makin' me look the fool in front of my homies. You can't tell tha H-Dog what to do. I gots seniority, muthafucka. I gots da money, da shorties, and tha Employee Of Tha Month plaques to prove it. You only been here three months and still be on probation, cocksucka. Just because you know computa shit don't mean you can fuck everybody over. You think you all that, but you ain't, muthafucka. You just frontin.' So fuck you, bitch. Fuck you and yo' homies and yo' wack-ass Spiderman neckties, too, 'cause you ain't no playa, beeee-yaaaatch! H-Dog over and OUT."
I sits back down, and everyone in tha east wing be whoopin' and givin' me high-fives like they be on Arsenio. Myron Schabe be shakin' his head and havin' this hangdog look on his face, 'cause he be in the crossfire and can't get no work done. That was Myron's goddamn problem, though. He coulda joined my dope posse.
The next day, there be another memo in our mailboxes, this time from Lawrence Kanner, the Midstate Office Supply vice-president. "In order to improve the effectiveness of the Technical Support Department, we have decided to move Ted Wegerle and the rest of his staff to the second floor in the space adjoining the mainframe computer. The Marketing Department will relocate to Tech Support's former offices on the west wing of the third-floor general administrative office."
Like I said before, those who fuck wit' the H-Dog get they sorry asses BEAT DOWN. I didn't even have to say nothin' to the vice-president: He knew that the H-Dog was out for muthafuckin' blood, and that he had to defuse tha situation before things got violent. I gots more clout with Kanner than that muthafuckin' Ted Wegerle pussy and the rest of his wack posse combined. And, on top of all that, right before Wegerle left the third floor, I stole the ball out of his fuckin' mouse, too.
I don't expect no problems with Marketing, 'cause Marketing's full of some of the flyest hos you ever seen, and they'll all be wantin' to freak tha H-Dog, 'cause they know I be hung like a muthafuckin' horse. H-Dog over and OUT.
Super Steve! yes, that's right, super steve jobs. this is the exact kind of thing he's been looking to do for awhile. which is terrible to see my favorite companyt run by a guy so concerned with niche marketing that the stuff appeals to about 8 people (his ego accouting for 3 of them). this apple product will be too much power for what's needed and will cost too much money to appeal to anyone but rich people and/or geeks. well, not even geeks - we know how to use our computers. so that kind of puts us back into our current situation. apple, have for the rich. incidentally, the new discover card ads are just WEIRD... peace
The total number of mod points in the system has passed the point of no return. As each new generation of modded-up posters gains points from their increased Karma, they will in turn mod up more posts and create an increasingly large army of moderators. The whole thing is gonna blow any second now.
After working on a software project with some real idiots, I looked forward to doing some 2nd level tech support just to deal with people who appreciated my help. Unfortunately, management clearly thought everyone working in tech support was trash and ALL callers were wasting company profits. I went back to software development to get away from the scumbag software support management.
I have to agree that there are many problems surrounding good tech support from geeks getting promoted and less than qualified techs suggesting idiotic programs like Dr. TCP to adjust Max Rec Units and MTUs, however, I believe the root of the problem (experience with 4ISPs and a hosting company) is the companies emphasis on "customer care" is the idea of a 3 minute phone call when it takes ten to twenty for the customer to even correctly relate the problem. I had always great customer relations, but poor QA scores due to the time it takes to get a customer's problem resolved --- Too many customer support reps will say the problem will resolve itself in ten minutes and call back if it persists; which further aggrevates the customer and places them back in the "unusually large call volume" queue and hopefully they will get someone who actually surfs the net to find the answer to their problems which was mentioned earlier and always a favorite technique of mine. I would love to have access to the chasms.com logs to see how many other support groups use their online resources to resolve customer issues. I say focus on quality of service and resolution as quickly as possible --- the ideal 3 minute call to fix blue screens caused by installing a companies localized version of IE or netscape is a friggen joke. once the customer has it in their mind that it is your problem you need to either resolve it or show them it is not your problem and proactively forward them to a place/retailer/service center than can get their problems resolved.
AnonyCoward NYC
My boss bought a Dell dimension with their 2 buisiness day in office fix it warranty/package. The day I got the machine I stuck a CD into it to listen to while I was doing some work. I put the CD on pause while I went to do something elsewhere... and when I came back I noticed the hard drive was thrashing like mad. Having done technical support in the past... I played with the machine a bit and came to the conclusion that the hard drive was being paged whenever the CD-rom was in pause. This was pretty much a CD-rom driver issue. I knew it. So I called up Dell, told them what was going on... and they had my reformat the hard drive with the factory installed image. That didn't change anything. I told them again, it is a driver issue and that they needed to replace the CD-rom. They insisted that it wasn't. So then I called again, and was told AGAIN to wipe the hard drive, but this time use the image that came with on the Dell CD rom. So I did. And it did not fix it. So once again I insisted that they replace the CD-rom. No such luck. This goes on for a MONTH. Never mind DELL not following through in good faith on the service contract we had. Finally I get a supervisor on the phone who tells me that there is NOTHING they can do. That I would have to buy a new CD-rom from the dells store, and swap it out with the one I had paying the difference for the new drive. This INFURIATED me. So I ripped the supervisor a new a-hole. I'm not kidding, when I got off the phone my entire office was staring at me with fear in their eyes (by the way, I now had a new CD-rom drive on it's way to my office plus a promise to have a technician dispatched once the CD-rom arrived.) Basically what it came down to was that after 20 or so phone calls, and speaking with several departments that supposedly had responsibility for whatever duty... it turned out that Dell had a HUGE inconsistency in their customer service policy. Tech support thought that Sales had to handle the type of transaction I was asking for. Sales thought it was a Customer Service Department issue, Customer Service thought it was a Tech Support issue. So arround the circle it went. Having been the only party in the phone calls to have actually witnessed the inconsistency I was able to point it out to the supervisor, demand he warm transfer me to the Sales rep, who would NOT do what the tech support super thought he would do.
I spent over an hour sitting on hold with AT&T@home to ask if they could put the charge on my cable bill. I eventually gave up, they're still billing my credit card. While I continue to get a seperate bill for my cable TV service (also from AT&T). Get your shit together people! Not only is that annoying, it COSTS AT&T more money.
Let me get this straight - people pay the absolute bottom dollar for products by searching the Internet - then they're mad because the tech support sucks? Ever hear of "you get what you pay for?" Companies won't pay for employee training either. Way back in the dim distant past, you got training when you bought these things - because there was some profit in them. Check it out - same with the super stores. Buy a fridge at Circuit City or something - you think they got repair people? SURE they do......
>> I've never heard of any university graduate that has to do tech support. I guess you've never heard of a liberal-arts degree.
It isn't just knowledge (or lack thereof) on the part of the consumer and the tech support agent that creates this dark cloud that swirls in everyone's mind when the words "tech support" are spoken. It also is very much about attitude (again, both the consumer's and the agent's). I work in tech support, and for the past year have been on of the supervisors (of about 50 techs).
The attitude of the tech and the attitude of the consumer play the largest role in the satisfaction of both people. If the consumer explains the problem without anger and the tech explains the solution without being condescending (i.e. making non-essential remarks that demean the intelligence of the consumer), the call generally turns out well regardless of whether the problem was fixed.
On the other hand, if the caller just wants to complain or the tech repeatedly points out the caller's lack of knowledge, those calls end badly for both people.
The type of support I work in is supporting an e-commerce website. If someone can't shop, or has problems logging in or with their browser in general, we help them. However, consumers sometimes mistake a fault with their computer as being a fault of our website (like running a filter or personal firewall and wondering why they can't shop). Even so, I've had many people that were happy that we helped them upgrade their browser because it was three years old and explain why all those temporary files are stored on their computer and why it is safe to delete them. Most are equally as happy when we explain why their problem is the fault of their ISP and explain to them exactly the question to ask when they call. If we just tell them it is their ISPs fault without an explanation and they call their ISP and their ISP says it is our fault, who is the caller going to be upset at?
Attitude plays a big part of phone support (not just tech support). The better the attitude and willingness to help is, the better the responses from most callers are, and the better the motivation of the tech is.
A new survey of Slashdot readers shows that Jon Katz articles suck just as bad as ever and that I'm not wearing any pants.
News at eleven.
Look, I don't want to listen to you tech support people b-tch any more. I work RETAIL at Officemax and I know my stuff, I work there for the uber-flex hours and several friends work there (both good for stressed out college life). I can tell a customer anything about any computer producy officemax sells, including walking them through setting it up over the phone, without looking at the manual.
Point: about 35%-40% of all customers who need tech support are too darn stupid to call tech support, instead they call and whine at me because they just bought a G85 and can't figure out how to scan something! What do I do? I tell then to call the toll-free tech support number, what do they say? I don't need to read the manual, and since you sold it, you should provide support. I say, um, no, we are a RETAIL store.
So they call the district manager, he tells me
"Look, your the only person in the district who knows what he's talking about. I know you get paid minimum wage but you should still provide good customer service."
!Whatever!
So now I getting paid six bucks an hour to have customers tell me I'm a moron and I shouldn't be providing tech support, then they call my managers and tell them how talented I am, flaming @$$holes. Then, one moron last week deleted his C:\windows directory and didn't have a CD. I told him, "Hey, your just gonna hafta buy a new copy of windows and install it, it costs $179.99" and he calls me some not-so-nice things and asks to talk to my supervisior (another moron) and then my supervisor writes me up (that's bad) for providing unauthorized tech support. WTF?!?
So, for all you people bitching about getting poor tech support, that's why. Don't be a moron or an ass, read the manual first, and call the right people and maybe, just maybe, you'll get the tech support you're looking for.
I provided technical support for computer manufacturers for eight years then left for double the pay doing a consulting gig. The company that I consulted at bought out my contract and I am now making double what I did as a contrat employee. Funny thing is, I'm still doing pretty much the same thing only it is far easier! Working the TS or even the CS desk involves a lot of BS. Believe it or not, it is mostly from the customers but there is a fair share from managers as well. You need exceptional people skills and phone skills to survive, you need good to excellent techincal skills in order to hammer through the calls and make your goals. Thirty calls a day to keep your job, fifty to be considered good. That's hammering belive me! Looking back on those years I blame the customers more than I blame the managers. If you bought a car and spilled a cherry shake on the rug, you wouldn't expect Chevrolet to help you clean it up but that is exactly the same kind of thing that customers expect out of technical support representitives at no cost. Customers routinely lie and decieve. Managers need to make decisions based on the facts that they have presented to them. Customers who refuse to do something reasonable can reasonably expect a company to be reasonable. Work with us and you will be surprised how far a technican will go to help you. Don't ever blame a technician for your errors (like forgetting to back up your important data). When it is your fault, own it. Deal with it. Work with the tech not against them. When the worst happens, expect to have some downtime. If you can't live with that buy a second computer! Duh! Computers are machines. Machines break. It is that simple.
You get what you pay for! It's that simple! I used to work at a consumer electronics chain and customer service and support was paramount. Then a competitor moved in with lower prices and NO service. Care to guess what happened? Business model changes and now there are 2 poor-support consumer electronics chains. The computer business is no different. If you live California then you know about a company with the WORST service in the universe. I wont give taht place a name, but you know who I'm talking about. Why do people buy their computers there? Cheap cheap cheap! If you want support and service to change take a stand and stop buying from companies that don't give decent support.
When a customer installs programs they dloaded from the web, and their registry explodes, they are angry it happened and want it fixed NOW!
When a cust doesnt know how to move an icon or format a word document, they want the pc seller to fix it NOW!
a tech worked with had a great metaphor for explaining what we didnt support to customers. If you buy a car from a dealership, do you expect them to give you driving lessons? If you wreck the car and bring it back, do they fix it free? If someone keys your car, is it the dealership's fault? of course not. But that is the level of support that ppl expect when they buy a PC.
plus, ppl are dumb. you dont know how many MY SOUND CARD IS BROKEN calls are fixed by having them plug in the speakers.
I called Linus at home to fix a problem on the latest kernel and he just hung up on me. Called back and got the answering machine. Bad tech support for sure.
This allowed:
(1) people to fix problems themselves or
(2) allowed local "fix it" shops to proliferate and do repairs.
Ditto with software. Source used to come standard. In the early days, on Unix for example, it was a given that "/usr/src" always had source in there. Now the direct is there but is empty on any non GNU/BSD Unix unless you (an one of many buyers of the product) pay enough to cover an entire years salary of one of the vendor's programmers, and then have to sign NDAs up the ass.
Today source and schematics are all considered "proprietary, burn before reading" secrets, with laywers ready to have you bankrupted and jailed for reverse engineering anything on your own.
The result? No one but the company that made the product can help fix it when it breaks, or troubleshoot problems. And they get swamped since lots of 3rd party tech support (software) or 3rd party repair shops (hardware) can no longer exist because their tools have been taken away by the mega corps.
The mega corps want things to break so you will buy a new frob or buy their $599 "upgrade" to Adobe Premier. Heaven forbid you should be able to fix things yourself, or have shops sell "pre debugged" software that they BOUGHT, modified and recompiled and are now selling.
And don't tell me how "everything's ASICs" and how schematics are useless today. Most electronics that fail, fail in the standard components OUTSIDE the ASIC (e.g., regulator burns out, resistor melts, etc.)
There are a couple of nice things about tech support. I've done support for many years now.
First off, you get to be the "hero" on a daily basis. Maybe some hotshot coder made the fix, but he made the mistake in the first place, being shot for being the messenger is one thing, but it also feels good for being praised for being the messenger too. That's what I love about this job.
Also, I just like working with computers, and I've tried programming, and frankly, I just don't have the time and patience for it. I understand it, but I don't want to spend months of my life getting involved in trivial API details that are going to change the minute Microsoft feels paranoid that the competition is catching up.
And let me tell you that the worst thing about being a support rep has nothing to do with dealing with retarded or frustrated customers. It has to do with dealing with retarded (sales) managers, and primadonna programmers who take it personally when you suggest that their code is flawed, or needs to even be looked at; and all the political fallout that results from that. You have to handle these people with kid gloves, all the while, commiserating with the customer to make them happy, and trying not to let that feeling rub off on you. The second you "go native", is when you get screwed.
I've been doing support for years, and I think I'm going to keep doing it. I do love it. I really don't see myself becoming some anal IT jerk who gets off on modeling his life on BOFH, and while it would be nice to be a programmer and try to code things "right the first time", trying to do that would shatter my illusion that it can actually be done right the first time. (I have a strong subconsious suspicion that in reality, that's impossible - in THIS computer industry).
You say consumers are getting dumber. This isn't true. What's happening is, computers are becoming more widespread. Most of the people who are too dumb to use a computer simply weren't using computers a decade ago. Now, in an effort to increase sales, companies have managed to convince those people that they're not too dumb anymore.
On top of this, there is a huge number of people who, for some reason, seem to believe that computers are inherently scary things. Say something that normally makes perfect sense in any other context, and the moment they get the idea that it has to do with computers, they are suddenly reduced to drooling idiots. These are the people who believe that plain-English status and error messages are a secret code that can only be decyphered by computer people. This is the sort of delusion that people need to get over.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
In my experience, the problem with our organization (I'm in California) is that it was viewed by the company as just tech support, when in reality they actually have a bunch of CM Administrators with people skills. I dunno about Europe, but the west coast operation has a hard time keeping people (at least, non-HB1 workers) once they realize they (a) can get 30% more someplace else thanks to the training they've gotten, and (b) don't have much of a meaningful future within the support organization.
It is unfortunate that support of interesting and somewhat difficult products (like the aforementioned CM tool) tends to get grouped together with the guys answering the phones at AOL.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
One of our competitors has support that you basically can't get on the phone. Their programmers are in France and don't even speak English, so you're certainly not going to get any response back. Their price is higher than ours for most configurations. Their ad budget is fifty times what ours is.
Guess who sells more?
Hint: It ain't the guys with the good support or the best price. It's the guys with the big ad budget.
Technical support is crappy because Americans only give lip service to support. What it all boils down to is that most Americans are sheeple. They buy a product because they've seen the most ads for a product or because it's "popular". Support never enters the equation. How else to explain the popularity of Microsoft?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
So, let's say you provide internet access to a customer at $20/mo. This includes dialup, e-mail, personal home page.
Let's say that most of your clients call tech support once a year and their problems are resolved within 15 minutes of technician time. If your average technician makes $8/hour, that cost $2. You don't mind eating that cost.
Let's say you have clients who call twice a week and haggle for a half hour. That's $32/mo. Wouldn't YOU drop this customer?
Most companies have no interest in providing quality tech support. The companies that do find it essential because while that loses them money, it at least reflects positively on their organization and can hopefully bring on larger business. But even they can draw the line.
We provide decent quality tech support because it makes us the friendly neighborhood ISP that you can count on for everything please consider speaking highly of us.
These impressions don't matter at all to companies that saturate the market with advertisements and try to scoop up commodity dialup customers at an already discounted rate.
We must be the only tech company today that has a human being answer the phone within the second ring when you call tech support. We'd like to believe that our customers will see this as a gesture of good faith and speak well of us. Most companies find it pays better to just ignore their existing customers and keep advertising instead.
This is the one thing that really gets me. When a customer demands to talk to a manager - as if it's going to help them. It's not. My manager doesn't know much more than you do about the technical end of computers. Escalating calls to this point only slows down the whole process for every other customer, and gets in the way of the operation of the process and resolution of the case.
Of course, with some organizations, there's no choice, because the support organization is set up to dead-end issues that need development attention, and in that case, going through the manager is the only recourse the customer has. Organizations that don't set up clear and honest escalation policies (and train their senior staff properly to avoid needless escalations), are doing themselves a disservice, because the customer has nowhere else to go but to bark up the wrong tree.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I've seen both extremes.
.
I've talked to customers who made WAY more than 2 times my salary, who couldn't work their way out of a wet paper bag, I've talked with dyslexic IT admins who could not tell the difference between / and \ (I told them to use an unshifted ? and |, that worked).
And I've also helped IT admins who were grossly underpaid. One extreme example, was a Novell admin back in the early 90's, who should have been making $50k considering the work he was doing, and competency, and he was making about $16k. He needed a dental plan more than anything else (more than anyone else I'd ever met! yeesh!). I guess he was just too much of a wuss to figure out what he was worth and get it. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
nope.
just experienced at buying and owning American, Japanese, and European cars.
In every case, with regards to maintenance and reliability, the American cars (Dodge Dart, Chevy Camaro, Impala, Malibu, Ford Escort) I've owned were not even close to that of my Japanese (Acura Integra, Isuzu Trooper) and European (Volvo 240, 740 GLE Turbo, VW, Porsche 944) cars I've owned.
American cars are empirically garbage, plain and simple.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Consumer Reports agrees with me, by the way.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
" don't have to do that with my car today. Yes I change the oil, yes I put air in the tires. But in 28 months of ownership I have not yet had it break down, stop working or otherwise require maintenance outside of oil changes. "
You must not buy American cars. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Well now that's an interesting side argument, which I'm sure you won't respond to because of your AC status.
:(
;)
As others pointed out, if you go to my homepage, I do indeed own an Infiniti G20 which is Japanese made.
Prior to this, however, I owned an Acura Integra. This car also happened to be japanese made.
The Integra also happened to be require bimonthly trips to shop for maintenance. It therefore rates into my HUNK OF TRASH category.
It would be rather foolhardy to make a claim that Japanese cars are better, at least not based on my experiences.
However, I would have to say Infiniti is better than Acura.
I never trolled rec.autos.driving. I did respond to an awful lot of trolls, and it sounds like perhaps you are one of them?
I don't.
:-(
I owned an Acura Integra.
But that's rather the point.
This hasn't been the case.
But it should be.
My father used to work for Zenith back in the early 70's. He has an MSEE and designed audio amplifiers at the time.
Throughout my childhood we had Zenith televisions and radios. A 26" color console in fact.
Did he have schematics?
Yep, we had the schematics, he had the design specs. He knew exactly how this thing was built from his work at Zenith.
And the fact of the matter is... YOU HAD TO KNOW THIS BECAUSE THAT TELEVISION WAS A HUNK OF TRASH!
I'm not saying it wasn't a good TV for the day, but once a year some tube would blow out, and we'd make the regular trip down to Radio Shack or wherever to get a replacement. This was pretty common for televisions of that day and age.
They finally replaced it with a Magnavox 26" which used transistors around 1980 or so. That worked for 15 years before the powersupply went bad and couldn't be easily repaired.
The point is, over the years the quality of the televisions improved to the point that you no longer need schematics... BECAUSE THEY DON'T BREAK ONCE A YEAR!
The same is true of automobiles. The VW Beetle used to be regarded as a wonderful car. Not because it was good to drive, not because it was comfortable to ride in... it sure didn't have a working heating system, etc.
The reason it was regarded as a good car at the time was because you could overhaul the engine on the side of the highway with a small box full of tools.
And once again... You had to do this because the blasted thing would break down on the side of the road once a year and require an overhaul. IT WAS A HUNK OF TRASH!
I don't have to do that with my car today. Yes I change the oil, yes I put air in the tires. But in 28 months of ownership I have not yet had it break down, stop working or otherwise require maintenance outside of oil changes.
As a consumer, I should not need schematics...
I should not need source code. Your product should work as designed. If there is an API call into the OS it should be well documented with defined inputs and expected outputs. It should work exactly as documented.
If I need source, if I need schematics, if I need service manuals... Your product is a hunk of trash and I don't want it.
For example, the situation in January when, after 2 weeks of having my cable modem installed, I was still getting randomly dropped packets, and a generally unstable connection (cable link light flickering).
After troubleshooting it myself (hooking up a local network and testing connectivity and file transfer with >1gb files, replacing every bit of coax and cat5 I could get my hands on (out to the wall socket - I would replace the line from the socket to the basement, but it goes into a lockbox, so I can't get at the basement end of it) - I couldn't fix the problem. So, I assumed it was either a bum modem or problems down the line. Either way, I needed to call support.
So...I gathered up some logs, did a few traceroutes, and basically got as much evidence of the problem as I could. Then I started the process.
The problem continues to this day. I've called them 3 more times, and gotten the run-around each time. I've asked SPECIFICALLY if I could get a tech to come to my apartment, open the lockbox, and allow me to replace the coax that drops from the apartment to the basement - nope - they can't do that. Even if I supply the cable, run it to the basement myself, and have their tech watch over me as I make the switch.
DSL won't be available until August - even then I am leery of getting it, considering the recent troubles in THAT industry. I can't get a stable connection to a dialup ISP through the 50 year old copper in the building anyway...
I've been considering 2 way sattelite, but that is MONSTROUSLY expensive out here.
So it's really no wonder that the techs don't want to be there. Overworked, underpaid, non-respected employees have a valid REASON to not want to be there.
So they bide their time until they have the skills to move elsewhere. Then they quit, and move on to a job with better pay, better hours, better respect, and less "public" contact.
This isn't to say that tech support should suck - it's just saying that there are valid reasons why it sucks, and until those reasons get addressed, things aren't going to get better.
And this doesn't even touch on the fact that the people you need to deal with, as support personnel, are generally VERY clueless - to the point that seemingly SIMPLE instructions are NOT simple to them. I'm not even going there. You've all heard the war stories before.
Sometimes products come with minimal (and superficial) documentation under some sort of patronising assumption that the consumer doesn't need to know or shouldn't know. That can cause all sorts of problems and probably increased phone traffic to tech support. Then there are always people who are too lazy to read the manual, or maybe it doesn't even occur to them that such a thing might be written down. Sometimes documentation is on a CD or the web, and if the customer doesn't even know how to get on the web or the concept of "documents and folders" (or files and directories when I were a lad) is unknown so they will just not be able to find what they need to know. Perhaps a radical new approach to prividing information to users is needed. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
I work for Sun as a tier 3 support engineer. I don't see more than 10 percent of the calls that come in because our tier 1 and 2 engineers solve 90 percent of the problems. We train people to do the job right. We do charge a lot for support contracts - I don't do the pricing, but I know that my time and our developers' time costs a lot to provide.
Somebody else complained about larger companies ditching calls on technicalities. To that I say: large companies like Sun support _known_ configurations of hw and sw. Patches are included as a known configuration. If you are unwilling to apply a patch ("but how can I be sure it fixes my problem?") then you are really doing yourself a disservice. Why? Companies like Sun produce patches to fix problems, and asking customers to apply one or more patches is a due diligence thing: we want to get rid of side or chaff issues which might be masking a real problem. Time is money, and we prefer not to fix the same problem over and over, wasting your time and ours.
Tech support quality is dependent on margin. You can't expect a manufacturer to provide top-notch tech support for basement bargain software. If they have to hand-hold over the phone for an hour and half every customer that bought an 30$ encyclopedia on CD-ROM, they'll go bankrupt.
... Go to Program ... Yes, use the left mouse button ..."). However, when I call BellNexxia (our commercial ISP), the guys with whom I speak is knowledgeable and responsive. His service are targeted toward net admin and other professionnal : they can 't just have any freshly-trained monkey answering the phone because people serviced are above that level (should I note : we pay the service dearly).
Tech support cost a lot of money, thus it is not profitable for low-margin consummer software. I am working as a tech support. Here, people pay a few thousands $$$ per year, or 150$/hour (CDN$) for tech support. Even with such outrageous rate, tech support is barely profitable.
Competent and timely tech support is within the reach of everybody : give a call to any of your neighboring mom-and-dad computer shop and they'll gladly help you setup MS Office for 60$/hour. However, don't expect to have a dedicated account manager because you bought a 300$ software.
Also, this might just be a coincidence, but tech support competence is usually proportionnal to the the level of their audience. This is unfortunately true : most user can be really boneheaded. A few week in tech support usually destroy any illusion you can have concerning the average computer user skill. So there is no value in paying a seasonned network admin to hand hold Joe Luser through Outlook configuration ("Click Start
My conclusion : you can't expect top-notch support for a 30$ game or your 10$/month unlimited dial-up because of simple economic. However, if you are ready to lay some cash, you can buy service of quality proportionnal to his price.
:wq
From my personal experience, and that of others, some companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard stand out. They answer e-mail queries and complaints promptly, and provide instant and knowledgeable support.
There is a reason why some big name manfacturer have such a great support (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc). They are mostly catering to corporate account and most of their unit are sold to organisation with solid internal tech support. When I call Dell, it usually goes along the line of "I need a RMA for a failed drive...". Five minute and the call is closed, the shipping cost is low and they don't spend a dime on workmanship. Thus, their tech support cost per unit is much lower than that of the typical consumer product. That way, they can afford to offer good support.
Anyway just my 0.07 CDN$ (including US exchange, custom and GST)
:wq
Providing top-quality customer support will create more business for a company, and, therefore, they will make more money. Good support is not a money-losing proposition, and there isn't any reason why it shouldn't be free, for that reason.
In the end , somebody or something need to pay for support. It might included in the retail price of the software or sold separately, but its cost must be taken into account. Recouping cost by the volume is not an option since support cost will grow (near) linearly with sales. If you spend 150$/average to support each user (it add quickly!) and you sell your software for 100$, you're losing 50$ per sales, no matter how many you sell (aka the Amazon principle). There is two solution : sell your software for 250$ (the right price) or sell a support option for 150$. The former is not an option since the competition will probably undercut your price while providing lower quality technical support and win in the market. The latter is quite viable, but customer must first realize the value of good support ...
I had worked in many tech support position, and I can assure you that tech support cost a lot of money to provide (salary, training, phone line, traveling cost, overhead, ad nauseum). Product quality is definitely a factor but they are cost associated with it too.
:wq
Let me present People's Exhibit A.
People wonder why tech support isn't helpful? Well, they can't spell, capitalize the word I properly, or use punctuation. Yet you expect them to somehow be able to, from 1500 miles away, instantly determine the current state of your computer, and tell you in one sentence that doesn't contain the phrases "regedit", "dynamic link library", or "virtual memory addressing", how to fix whatever it was you were doing that caused your computer to break in the first place.
I don't mean to harp on n3r0.m4dski11z in particular....sorry about this. But people need to realize that we're putting people with no "people skills" in a position that not only requires them to be technical, but to be technical and translate to non-technical, and to do so while the person on the other end wants to know why their coffee cup holder keeps cutting their styrofoam coffee cup in half, and paying them marginally more than minimum wage.
The companies JonKatz mentions above - well, have you compared the price of their computers to the price of what people buy at OfficeMax or Walmart? They're significantly more expensive. Do you know where that money goes? Customer support. You can't expect the same amout of customer support when you buy a computer that has 15% of the profit margin that computers sold be companies like Dell or Compaq or IBM have. You get what you pay for, either on the front side or the back. Sure that $300 computer is a sweet deal, but you're gonna be calling Bob's mom for tech support, and she just got her second computer 6 months ago, so she's the senior tech support person at that store. If you want good backend support, you need to pay good frontside money.
Just like n3r0.m4dski11z says - he's the tech. He's not being paid to be customer support, and doind so not only gets you bad customer support, but destracts him from his job of being a tech, which causes more problems in the manufacturing, which creates a need for more tech support...you see where this is going?
Tech Support is not free. You will either pay for it up front when you buy the computer, in the price tag; or you will pay for it on the back end, when Microsoft tells you that it's 49 bucks per call to diagnose your problems. The trend of "Free just for name recognition" is coming to an end; the free web sites are just the first to go. The ISP-cobranded computer (AOL, MSN) will be next, I think, then all sorts of other amenities people have gotten used to. The idea that tech support should be free worked well when the only people that needed tech support were people that had at least half a clue what went on in a computer and could cause things to break. Now, when someone's monitor resolution gets screwed up, they get all freaked out and run to tech support. Tech support doesn't have the time to help these people and the ones that really need help. Not only that, but in order to help them with whatever they broke, they need to spend 3 times as long explaining enough to get the customer to the point where they understand the explanation about how to fix what is broken.
In summary: You get what you pay for. If you paid $50 for your computer, you have no right to bitch about bad tech support - you should have known there was something you weren't getting when you saw the price tag.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
That's my point. Even with this stupidly simple interface there is still far too much that can go wrong. Every extra piece of functionality increases the potential for things to go wrong. Basically the problem is that computers are open-ended and there's too much that's outside the seller's control. (That doesn't excuse sellers from supporting properly the software that *they included* with the machine.)
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The reason computer support sucks compared to sofas is that a computer system (including software) is much more complicated. If you want to offer a product that Just Works, and support that doesn't require either great expertise, guesswork over the phone, or dealing with thousands of trivial problems, you'd need to make the product much simpler.
Imagine a computer with three buttons: Send Mail. Read Mail. Browse Web. And a keyboard, a one-button mouse, and a big 'Go' button for when the message is composed. You could support that easily enough, except when the user goes to a website which itself is broken. You'd need to certify websites to some standard which says they will work with your software, and (trickier) that their user interface works the way the user expects. And of course you can forget all about third-party software.
Does a sofa have any of these problems?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What does tech support mean in an OSS world? Standing behind a product which you create, yes - but what if you didn't create it? There is certainly the opportunity to build a support business behind OSS products, but it's more difficult than you might think - look at LinuxCare and it's problems.
The "community" isn't enough for many enterprises and organisations, either. They need to be sure that they've got 24x7 access to tech support for the applications (and OSes) that they rely on, and until we have a robust model for providing that support, it's one area that will continue to hold back take-up of OSS software. None of the models we see at the moment see to provide enough yet: Linuxcare and their ilk are having difficulties (maybe because they cast their net too wide, and didn't concentrate on particular apps), IRC and web-based guru services aren't going to convince large businesses. The Sendmail model is an interesting one, but what about scalability? Could it handle Evolution, for instance, when that goes 1.0?
I think that this is an issue which we, as a community, really need to address.
sorry, wrong.
if there are 2 hour waits (at odd hours) then the company needs to do something to fix that.
I am not calling to have you fix WinAMP, I am calling to have you fix an ongoing problem with ping responses to the gateway (an easy fix, add more bandwith, something that Verizon is quite capable of doing)
I do NOT want to speak to just a manager, I want to speak to someone who will fix the fucking problem. If you say "I cannot help you with that" then there is someone else that can. Find that person. I don't care if it is going to increase the call length, I have already been on hold long enough that it doesn't matter at that point.
Customer Service doesn't help with the problem either. They are not fixing my poor ping responses.
Fix the problem, be done w/it.
dumbass. It isn't my NIC (roommate is running a different computer w/a different OS on the same LAN, no problems) tech has been out (from Verizon) to tell them that there is a definite problem with THIER system.
They are connecting TWO shelves per T1 instead of ONE. They know they are doing this, but they don't care.
I don't have a MSCE nor will I ever get one. I am a History Major not interested in any sort of computer related job. This is VERIZON PEOPLE telling me that this is the problem.
Get a clue before you think you know what you are talking about.
ahhh yes. Most people do realize that you are human, but we don't understand how you can just sit there and tell us "I'm sorry sir there is nothing I can do to help you, good bye."
9 /1826218&cid=19">Verizon needs help</a>) I expect some results. I don't expect to hear bullshit excuses, run-around, etc.
When *you* can't do anything, I want you to do your job and HELP. Find someone else that CAN and WILL help. If your supervisor can't, tell him to find someone that can.
When I sit on hold for 2 hours (<a href="http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/04/2
There is absolutely NO reason that someone cannot find an experienced tech rep that can help w/ANY problem.
There needs to be some sort of career progression within tech support, or the best ones will keep getting promoted away.
Maybe a second level of tech support, where you don't have to talk to any clueless losers.
It's common in the Northeast USA, at least in the mid level city I work in.
I have a BSAE, and I started as a contract, then became a direct hire tech support person. Now I'm called a Technical Support Engineer, and rarely talk to customers.
Some of my coworkers on the hotline have:
as well as lots of 2 year degrees.
Most of the 4+ year degree people I know have moved on to become developers, debug engineers or managers.
Cynically, I think our hotline prefers 2 year degree people, since they have a much harder time moving on, as the other divisions demand a 4 year degree before you can transfer. If you get into the hotline with a 2 year degree, you're stuck forever.
... Is a simple fact, Tech Sup. has a High turn-over, either you acknowledge it and harness it or you SUCK. Train the new employees, and provide a place within for your Tech Supporters. 2nd and 3rd level support are perfect. They can provide much needed systems experience to application programming groups as well. A good indicator to a companies health is the number of employees who've climbed the ladder so to speak...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Problems of customer service has always been a difficult job no matter what industry you are in. I used to do it at grocery store ,as a tech at a shipping company and a internet company. It is very difficult to deal with people in general. Also when you add on support problems it gets even worse. This report is not suprising.
I hear people shop there because they have latent sado-masochistic tendencies.
heck, I'd go there just to experience it.
I'd give you the exact url, but my workplace forbids it.
later, thermo
If ever there was a case for an industry having the financial and information resources, the expertise and the need to use expert systems.
Instead we get ignorant kids (they can't help it, they're kids, they literally don't know any better yet,) answering the line as a form of punishment detail for as near minimum wage as firms can pay.
The last time an expert system was used properly for support on a complex problem in this industry was XCON the RC1 based expert system for configuring DEC Vax'es.
Not a trivial problem and one which would have destroyed DEC in the early eighties if they hadn't solved it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
But I'm not trying to cure an illness, draft a contract, design something, mend pipes. Using a tap is the equivalent of using a calculator or texetext, not a PC. Calculators are purpose built, unlike PCs. Teletext is purpose built, unlike PCs.
no, it's because companies are cheap, and don't see customers as people. rather, they are simply a number at the bottom of an excel spreadsheet somewhere. the quality of the service doesn't matter, it's how low you can bring the end user price to sucker them in.
But Jon's point was that other industries aren't like that, and this is in part because our industry is arrogant and elitist.
Don't you think that saying our companies don't see customers as people. rather, they are simply a number at the bottom of an excel spreadsheet somewhere. supports his argument? It's a rather arrogant, elitist attitude, wouldn't you agree?
-
I think it basically comes down to the fact that the cost of tech support is not factored into the cost of most products.
That's because we're arrogant enough to assume our products are usable without support, and elitist enough to not care whether the people who need support get it or not.
They're "lamerz" or "lusers", and should "RTFM" before they call support, right?
Jon has, as usual, hit it right square on the head for the exact reason that he's not a part of our industry.
You can't see the forest because you're a tree.
-
I'm surprised by the number of people here blaming the "customer" for most problems. Remember that the next time you get a video card that doesn't work as advertized, for when that sound card doesn't work right with your motherboard and neither vendor will take responsibility for the problem. How about when you email the company that makes or provides the service you've purchased and never get a reply, and calling them results in the typical "We were having email problems"? Or when your DSL or cable internet provider tells you to check your "Network Control Pannel" when you call to report that your service provided modem seems to have burst into flame. Remember things like these the next time you complain about "stupid users"
You sound like one of those people that worked in tech support that didn't reply to emails, gave out the wrong information, and was just generally rude to callers. Must be the customers' faults.
Remember all of your little rant the next time you try and email Creative Labs about your sound card and they never reply. Or when the drivers for your video card hose your system. Or when your motherboard won't work with your NIC.
It is my understanding that this is not entirely true. You must be 18 or have a co-signer only if you are trying to get a loan to buy the car. If you pay the entire amount with cash upon purchase, I don't believe there are any age restrictions (or need for a co-signer).
Granted, this probably doesn't happen too often to those under 18.
-Byou never see someone buy a new car, and then call up the ford company asking how to drive. driving is taught through classes and you have to pass the classes to get your license. any idiot can go out and buy a computer, and not know anything about it.
my personal example:
when i worked support, we had a guy call up that had just went out and bought the newest $2000 computer from dell. i was doing support for an isp and he called up asking how to make it get on the internet. some of his buddies were talking about the internet, and i guess he felt left out. once i setup his account and walked him through setting up his computer, i instructed him how to dial into the internet. he hung up and tried it. 10 minutes later he calls up and says "well, it dialed in, now what?" he didn't even know why he went out and spent $2000 on his computer. so then it was up to me to train him how to double click, use his mail client, use his browser, and i ended up setting up his printer just for kicks.
my point is that anyone can buy a piece of technological wonder, but they need to ask themselves first, "what does this new gadget do, and do i really need it?" the marketting cronies are more interested in quantity instead of quality, so they will beat it into your head that you need the internet and the internet is the answer to all of your problems. when the "internet" doesn't deliver, the consumer ends up burned.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
When you _have_ to work with closed systems and proprietary hardware/software - and those same systems are fairly expensive - you do want to use tech support. Also, when something goes wrong and it is obviously the vendor's fault, you want to call on the vendor to solve the problem - that's why you paid a few thousand for the stupid support license (that you were forced to by from them).
Not all support questions can or should be solved by the "books with black&white drawings of animals on the front covers."
A thing to be aware of: A person is not a company. The somebody using the company name may have sold those promises, but the odds are considerably better than 99 out of 100 that the help desk support tech didn't. And nearly as good that they had no control over this.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I don't know much about the probabilities that you cite. Perhaps you are correct. OTOH, I've encountered enough useless technical documentation (Linux) and just missing documentation (Windows, Mac) to have doubts.
... (I don't have this memorized. I do know that when I got there it wasn't helpful.)
... nobody noticed them, so they didn't get documented. I don't know the solution to this, but things do tend to get better over time.
Just consider. If you install some Linux distributions, and have trouble connecting to ppp, the instructions say to log onto a web site and check
Part of this aspect of the problem is that if the problem occured to someone while the system was being created, it was likely to be communicated to someone who would fix it, so the only problems documented tend to be those that don't happen (they've been fixed!). But the problems that occur anyway
OTOH, I am told that "in the old days" everyone learned to hand configure their text files. Somehow I never happen across the documentation that they must have used. (Actually, I have some of it, and it doesn't help that much. I suspect that a lot of it was oral tradition.)
But if I am having a problem with, say, TarboCUD, to disguise the name slightly, the only answer that I can get is to buy the newer edition. Now I have a strong suspicion that the real problem is that they aren't backwards compatible to Win95 without IE4.x installed, but they won't admit it. They just try to sell an update. I bought one twice, but never again.
Now I don't know whether they are clueless (There isn't much info to give them. All I can say it "It installs fine, but it won't run".) or just greedy (this would be the company rather than the techs of course). But it left me rather permanently displeased with them. Books? The only one's I seen are totally useless wrt this problem. Usenet help? Where? This isn't a major product from a major company. And there aren't that many Win95 users anymore, but for other reasons there is no alternative to Win95 that is acceptable.
So. This is, from my point of view, poor tech support. From the company's point of view, I'm not sure. Perhaps they don't have a fix, and don't intend to. In that case they sold two extra copies.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Vote with your wallet? By the time you place a tech support call they already have your money.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Thank you. I'll try to remember this if I ever think about buying a Dell computer.
I can accept that given the management structure you have, etc., you are doing the best job that you can. But I wouldn't like to have that job done to me.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is the Apple Computer business model. It can be done quite well, but I wouldn't like the largest computer (name your product) to use it, because it can also be a stranglehold. (Small markets tend to be ignored by the large company, and if the flexibility to deal with their needs isn't present...)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Liquid Audio today laid off its entire Customer Care department today. This from a friend of mine who (now formerly) worked for them.
Shows you how much they think of Customer Care.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
The problem was that we don't have internet service right now thanks to the twin horrors of Northpoint going out of business and Ameritech being predatory (that too is another story though). QuickBooks, which I remind you is accounting software, requires an internet connection to run. I cannot tell it to just use the old tax tables for this cycle, I cannot tell it to use a disk. It requires an internet connection.
Worse still is that I called to find out what the deal is and, at 5:30 PST, no one could help me. I was told that I must call the tax table people during business hours the next day.
So, my $350 ripping cool accounting package had me resorting to looking up peoples last checks, writing down the deductions (fortunately salaried staff, not hourly) and manually entering them into the forms (oh, another thing. I had to write them down because QB makes the paycheck detail a modal window so I can't open two of them and just copy from one to the other. I had to open one, copy the info, then open another and type it in).
Thanks for the great service guys! I appreciate it.
--
Poliglut
Let's face it, there are a bunch of idiots on both sides of the lines.
For instance the woman that called me up one day because she couldn't get here email from our server. After a few minutes I figure out that she can't get logged into her ISP, and refered her to them. Of course she get's pissed at me, and expects me to get her dialed in and logged in to her ISP. This person is an idiot.
Of course there's the tech support side where you can hear the gomer flipping through a notebook or typing into a database search, and as a community service to all I won't even address the fugitives from third world countries that can't even speak a fucking word of english, or understand clear english sentances unless they are repeated back very slowly and would be better off behind the fucking wheel of a taxi cab.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I used to work tech support. ( I left to get a Solaris admin job, thank God) That post is something that needs to be required reading for every tech support caller.
-Wintermute
Tech support sucks because people aren't willing to pay for it.
It costs money to provide tech support. Therefore, companies that have good support must charge more for their products. This gives consumers a choice: buy from the cheaper vendor with no support, or from the more expensive vendor with adequate support. Consumers routinely choose the cheaper alternative, even when they know that the support will be terrible.
Witness the runaway success of vendors that have a reputation for having flagrantly bad service. Fry's electronics is a perfect example. Everyone who goes to Fry's ends up saying that they will never go back. Then Fry's runs an ad for RAM at $5 less than their competitors, and all those consumers who swore them off go right back to Fry's.
If people were willing to pay money for support, and people flocked to the vendors offering more service, then companies would be climbing on top of each other to offer more support. People don't actually want support, despite what they say. People say one thing and do another. What they prefer is to save the $5 and forgo the support, then bitch for 2 hours about how badly they were wronged and how bad support is nowadays, then they pocket the $5 and repeat the process.
I've seen your experiences before.
I've heard about the "18 month mark." My friend in tech support lasted over 2 years. He's not a quitter, so he hangs on under really awful cnditions. I'm hoping he's managed to move on (I'm awaiting word as I type).
As for the psychological trauma of tech support, it isn't a joke. I've seen people so sick of tech support they hate to TALK over the phone to others.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
One currently has lasted two years, and is completely burnt out. He gets paid pretty well and gets good benefits, but over time the demands have gotten higher and the management more insane. At this rate he's ready to quit and find a different job rather than put up with it.
In my experience Tech Support is getting worse all over. It's a nasty cycle:
Your best alternative is to make sure you, your office, your company have knowledgeable people on staff. You can't count on many companies out there - and if you find those you can count on, hang onto them.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
It would be nice if people realised that paying for the extra service at the small shop is worth it, but it has been shown time and time again people will go for cheaper
And how do you know that the extra service at the small shop is worth the extra price? For some people it is, and for some it is not.
A very simple example -- in my town there is old/small/family hardware store, and a Home Depot close by. Small items (hangers, adapters, boxes of nails, etc.) cost one and a half to two time more in the small shop than they cost at Home Depot. For technical questions (such as "can I use widget foo with attachment bar and do I need qux for it?") the salespeople at the small shop are about as useful as the Home Depot droids, which is to say not at all.
To me it seems that the small shop just cannot compete. I don't see any additional benefit to me from buying stuff there, so I don't. I would assume that most people around do the same thing.
Now, why again, "paying for the extra service at the small shop is worth it"?
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
When I was a rebellious OS/2 user, I sent at least a dozen detailed bug reports on the OS to IBM tech support. Usually I got some sort of human response, and a couple times I worked out the problem with the engineers over the phone. And me being just a lowly student/user. Try getting this level of support from Microsoft!
Nowadays I don't even bother to send in bug reports for anything, except on the Sun Java JDK, which has an excellent and completely public bug-reporting system. If I reported every crash in every piece of software I use, I'd be a full time beta tester.
Anyway... what was the point of this article? Oh yeah, tech support sucks. So do taxes, death, nukes, and movies with Julia Roberts.
How the hell are you supposed to learn how to read schematics when they're not to be found? I learned how to read them by presenting them to my father and asking him to explain them to me. How can I do the same for my own kids when the manufacturers treat the products as some sort of secret black box that nobody would ever want to fix?
I think the popularity of free software illustrates that some people need DIY access to the things around them, and if the manufacturers of consumer products insist on locking consumers out of the guts, then we'll just have to DIY from scratch. That or reverse-engineer the products despite them and publicise the results.
Every car *should* come with the source code for the engine computer. I've made mods to my car that would greatly benefit from minor tweeks to the code in that flash chip. No source code? No interface specs? For something I just paid you for? Fuck you too! I don't care if Mrs NineNine down the street can't read them. She could bloody well ask me to help. What does it cost them to provide this info? What do they gain by keeping internals secret? Why, exactly, do they want to get in my way? Who's making more money this way?
They don't have to deal with The Terminator, aka Arnold Schwarzenegger. (These are MP3's of prank calls using some movie clips, they're great.) I really admire the tech support people here who kept their cool and kept trying to help despite Arnie's insolence.
(See more fun non-tech support prank calls at http://badlinks.brutal.com/arnie/. The limo driver is one of the best. To get the links to work you might have to manually change spaces to "%20"s)
From my personnal experience, DELL (France) sucks too!!!
;-) !!!
Had my computer serviced 4 weeks ago for a noise in the graphics card fan. They LOST IT (the whole computer, not just the fan
And 4 weeks later, dispite the initial "we will build you a new machine within 10 days", still no computer. They have screwed up all along the line (where about to deliver me new machine with no graphics card at all!!).
But the worst part is that NEVER have THEY called me, to say they were sorry, to say the thing would be late, or that they had made a mistake. NEVER! It is always I who had to call, at 1FF a minute!!!
And of course, there is no way of talking to someone who can actually make a decision or do something!!
Individuals are really treated like shit...
If GM Provided Tech Support.
- Hell, my vacuum cleaner is lethal to Travan tape drives (it's probably either the vibrations through the floor or it MIGHT be drawing enough current to provide a sufficiently strong magnetic field... and I'm not going to systematically test tape drives in a quest to find out), and doesn't even need to touch the case for this to happen.
I remember having a Commodore 64 floppy disk erased once because it got too close to a vacuum cleaner. You're probably right on._______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
FC Closer
I worked at F50 Corp as a 10 year engineer and got tossed into phone support after the powers that be decided that paying an outside firm to answer clueless calls from potential customers cost too much and, hey here's an Engineering Dept with lots of experience, we'll make them do phone support.
I was supporting customers in the lab who had real problems with the products, using Logic Analysers, PCI bus exercisers, serial debug units and other real tools, overnight, the whole group is locked down in cubes reading manual pages back to people who are too lazy to open the manuals themselves and read them. Needless to say, this was not going to be good for my career, so I bolted.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)
Now of course software choices may also exhibit these distasteful clashes and still function; perhaps running exchange and mysql on the same server would be an example. However, unlike the the furniture analogy, these two may not peacefully co-exist upon install. I suppose with the advent of "smart furniture", where the items have the built in capability to rearrange other pieces or the fundamental geometry of the room in question, we may start to see very similar problems in furniture space. However, at present tech levels, the analogy is suspect.
Take a look here:
h tm l
Three dead trolls in a baggie's sketch on Tech Support
http://artists.mp3s.com/artist_song/698/698011.
(I'm not HTML-ing on goatse grounds)
This is completely incorrect.
I worked for a Future Shop as tech support for two years. We had to work directly with AST, Acer, IBM and various peripheral manufacturers. The problem for our customer's was not us, but the manufacturers. Even though they sold their product in Canada their level of service for Canadian customers was appalling(sp?). In most cases the customers would contact us about how poor the service they had experienced from the manufacturer was and we would take over for them and contact the manufacturer ourself.
The advantage for our customers was twofold.
1) we had reseller direct numbers so we could avoid the long queues that regular customers had to deal with
2) we had better knowledge of the product and causes of the problems so it was easier for us to deal with the weak tech support diagnostic process that occurred at the manufacturers
All in all, our customers (and I certainly don't speak for all Future Shop locations, or current conditions) were much better off contacting us.
I understand what Katz is saying. However, my point is that it is because of the volume of support requests that there are "dozens of automated menus" and "[waits] on hold [for] hours at a time". It is because of the complexity of the technology that such measures exist in computer tech support and that they don't in the sofa industry.
The comparison in the article of the sofa to the computer industry is ludicrous. The reason somebody doesn't have to "call up the store that sold you a sofa to ask where the legs are" is because people are well aquainted with sofas and how they work.
The problem with the tech industry is the lack of knowledge of the end consumer. It is the complexity of the technology that is causing the need for tech support unlike any other industry. You don't see a sticker for 24hr technical support on a couch now do you?
Until the end user is better educated in how computers work (read: take a fuckin class), tech support workers will be overworked and the quality of tech support will look poor because of the sheer volume they must process.
When I worked as a tech support person I received 30-50 calls per 10hr shift, the majority of which required long periods of time to resolve due to the damage originally caused by the customer's trying to do things they didn't understand the consequences of and then their infamiliarity with the technology when I was stepping them how to fix it. If customers were only contacting tech support for 'real' problems as opposed to ones caused by user error and lack of knowledge, the perception of quality of tech support (specifically in response time) would drastically rise.
The majority of the times I've needed to call tech support (once with Apple and once with Microsoft), I've had useful, friendly support, and I believe that both problems were resolved within 15-20 minutes.
What especially stood out to me was that both of my problems involved systems that the company in question wasn't specifically responsible for.
I called Apple when I was having problems (on a IBM-compatible) handling formatting of a Syquist (sp?) drive/disk for sharing files between a PC and a Macintosh (yes, I tried calling Syquist first). The representative seemed perfectly aware that this was a common problem, and had an instant solution and explanation.
With Microsoft, I found an incompatibility with MS Flight Simulator (I believe it was version 5) and a Pentium Overdrive chip I had upgraded too. Again, I called and explained my problem, and even though I had not sent in my registration card for the software, they sent me a free shrink-wrapped copy of the next version of FSim that came out which didn't have the problem.
Pretty much any other time I've needed help, I've found what I needed either on corporate web site searches or through DejaNews.
--craig
Not at YOU directly, but rather your company by proxy. Either that, or she's completely loony.
The ENTIRE blame lays with the Marketing department. Never forget this. The customer BOUGHT the computer because the packaging told him it was EZ to use. They ain't.
Here's why Linux will never have desktop dominance : It's a real operating system. Sheeple don't WANT a real operating system, they want to push the ON button, and be online. (and then have some other buttons, bells, lights, slider, clickers to keep them busy.) Why are the DLL's even exposed to a luser in exploder?
Hey, from that standpoint, why don't you start playing therapist with the customer, and try to convince them they really don't want the computer, and they should return it.
"Sorry lady, you don't really want a computer, take it back to the store right now, they'll refund your money, go out to dinner or something. Use the computers at the library. They're MUCH easier to use..."
I don't think theres anything in a persons daily life that works correctly without you having knowledge of how to use it. In another context, owning a car requires a drivers license. You also have to be aware that regular maintainence is also needed. You can't just show up at the dealer, take the keys and be good to go. Pretty much every guy that is fairly handy can chagnge his own oil/battery/tires or what have you. The use of an automobile has a prerequisite of at least basic automotive knowledge.
Uh.... That's a *rotton* analogy. Computers aren't sold like cars, computers are sold like TOASTERS, people expect them to work like toasters. (Maybe more like a VCR, though... With the untapped potential there, of having it tell you the time, IF you set the clock...)
And Car dealers have service departments what suck mightily, too!
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
It's important to make the distinction, I guess, between two kinds of tech support:
(1) fixing a faulty product and
(2) explaining the complexities of a working product.
Divides up even further than that. Other relvant factors might be if it is installation or use. If the person who is asking is an adminstrator or an end user. What happens when a program causes problems with some other program, etc...
First of all, in order to train all those people, you would need a lot of techies with people skills to run the classes.
Do you have motor mechanics teaching people how to drive? In order to train people to use the software you need people who are familiar with its use...
Alan Cooper wrote a good book called The Inmates Are Running the Asylum and it is about how poorly most softare is designed these days. Software is designed by programmers and it is designed for how a programmer would like to use it. It has numerous powerful features that most users don't need or want but are cool to the programmer.
You can probabably subsitite "marketer" for "programmer" here. If programmers did the design things would probably work better...
Reasonable people know not to interfere with things in their daily lives that they don't understand, but suddenly when it comes to computers we're expected to forgive them for screwing around with things in irresponsible ways?
Problem is that with the Windows family of systems not only is it typically quite easy for the end user to fiddle with things. It is frequently activly encouraged both by the software itself and some "support" people.
It's rather non trivial to let someone change their screen resolution without also making it possible for them to change the whole video card driver...
Nowadays documentation is written to be user friendly which means:
1: Don't offend your customers by telling them they need to know how to turn on their system befire they start. and
But possibly describe how to do it in very fine detail
2: Don't discuss advanced topics that might confuse them.
Tough luck to the network adminstrator who actually needs this information. It's quite possible that the supplier "support" has only the user manual for reference and the real technical information does not exist anywhere.
The other favourate appears to be software which is only ever tested on a standalone machine in the first place...
Remember when every TV, stereo, washing machine, electronic toys, and even early VCRs came with a schematic diagram?
With these kind of things this information is still available in "service manuals".
But nothing of the kind exists for software.
Developers for non "open" platforms develop mysterious black boxes that are supposed to flawlessly integrate with thousands of other mysterious black boxes (closed hardware and software) automagically.
If they were well behaved and self contained black boxes then this might work. In practice it can be closer to trying to get something you can eat by mixing several plates of pasta together.
And it is unnecessarily complex. What, we can't integrate SMTP server information as a standard handshake on log-in?
You don't even need to, see RFC 974. Even RFC 2821 which obsoletes it says that the "smarthost" concept isn't the best idea for SMTP.
Given a choice between doing a DNS lookup and it will "just work" and expecting the end user to configure something (and change it if they change how their connection works) dosn't it make more sense to do the former?
Doesn't this seem abusrd -- the notion that a "corporate" entity has the same rights (and obligations) as a "human" entity?
Except it simply cannot work this way. e.g. a corporate entity can be in several places at once... Also when it comes to the law (especially criminal law) people and corporate entities are treated very differently.
A lot of modern software is unforgivably arrogant, sending its tentacles into parts of the system that it has no business going near and demanding the lion's share of the computer's resources.
Even with Windows it is perfectly possible to design programs which are well behaved, self contained and don't do idiotic things like insisting on opening files read/write all the time...
I'd just like to point out the huge difference between tech support for Joe user and tech support for other techies.
Problem is that you also need to make sure that joe user isn't getting the tech support for techies and that the techies arn't getting the suuport aimed at joe user...
The latter appears to happen far too often.
I've been on both sides of this, being the tech support rep with someone who 'thought' they knew what was the issue, and with being the customer who was 'sure' he knew what was the problem. Granted, I've always been dead on in describing the problem as the customer but that's neither here nor there. In the instance where the customer says the SMTP server isn't responding, you shoudln't have to go through the ANSI standard robotic testing procedures until you've at least tried having him test it by following precise directions, and move on from there. As a tech support person you have to be able to find the actual problem using the fewest possible steps.
Here's the catch.
I'm smart enough to do that. But I don't work in tech support. Why? Because I'm a software engineer. Because being smart enough to do that means being smart enough to not have to talk to disgruntled people all day, because you can get a better job. Frankly its the same with most IT positions. If you're smart enough to be really good at troubleshooting IT problems, you've probably got enough knack to be getting paid more to do something else. Simple as that.
The only solution would be to either increase the number of clever people in the world such that their individual value goes down enough that they'll settle for a tech support job, or make products more foolproof. Its possible.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
No, but when I drive the car, I don't expect that because I'm going exactly 33 miles per hour when I turn on the air conditioner, the trunk explodes. Or that because I install a radio that wasn't made by the same company (or sometimes one that was), I have to replace the spark plugs because the old ones aren't compatible. But this sort of thing happens in the software world all the time.
Look, there are good arguments on both sides here. Companies don't make 'good enough' products or take 'enough' responsiblity for them. On the other hand many companies are swamped by idiots that don't take responsibility for even the most basic learning of how to operate something they've purchased.
There are horror stories on both sides, but the fact is that software is still a maturing technology. Really. Think about it. Most modern computers could probably store all eglish written information created before 1800. Your floppy drive controller contains more processing power than the apollo program and your CPU makes the original space shuttle computers look like an abacus.
Give it another generation to get rid of all the people who've never used a computer but expect them to be as easy to learn as a microwave to die. Give it that much time for software to mature to the level where computers will approach that ease of use. Then reexamine both the need for and quality of tech support.
Until then, buckle your fuckin' seatbelt.
Jherico
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Take this man (or woman). Show him (or her) to Congress. Watch pro-cloning legislation take off like a rocket.
Jherico
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
The price for this enormous complexity and low price is, unsuprisingly, a lack of high reliability.
These are the main reasons that hoping or demanding decent technical support is pretty much futile.
First reason:
/. message I have ever posted and those poor sould that are still is HS have some homework to do.
Too many companies (the ones that are doing in-house tech support) believe that once you buy the hardware, you can skimp on the people to support it. I see there being two reasons why people walk aweay from tech support with a bad impression. 1) The tech dude is incompetent (not entirelly uncommon) or not qualified for the position or to answer the question. 2) The tech guy has too much to work on and therefore he/she does not have either the time or the patience to solve the problem.
Second Reason:
The tech people themselves.
I work with some of the people in my school's tech dept (and yes, they skimp there big time)(and yes, I am in High School). After dealing with two cases of "its not working" and needing only to plug it in, one case of a bad battery on an older mac, being chewed out by an administrator for not carrying around a pass everywhere (won't go there), and finally being sucked into the room of a teacher that LITERALLY needs help finding the power button, I am exhausted. How does this relate? Well, if at this time someone has a simple problem that has to deal with crappy programming by M$ (aren't we shocked), I am too exhausted to really do anything. I get away from it as fast as possible. This is how many phone-support people deal with it. They either move you to a different operator or give you a response that makes you call back another time. Therefore, I have to say that most tech support people are either overworked or not born with enough patience to handle it.
Last, I ave to say this. Think of how many problems are caused by the companies/tech support themselves? For instance, people's printers and pc's suddenly drop of the network andomly. Why? Because the tech people for some unknown reason remove their connection from the servers switches! Second example: If you have ever had to deal with your ISP, how many times it is because THEIR servers are messed up, and yes they try and say its your fault?
Anywayz, this is the LONGEST
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
But when you buy a car and it breaks, you can take it down to your nearest garage and get parts replaced, tuning done etc etc As the previous poster said, shops (ie skilled people) used to be able to fix software problems / conflicts, like garages can still fix cars... sure they can't fix every problem, but some problems are akin to having a flat tire; and you shouldn't need to go back to the company that made your car (Not just the dealer, the original factory) just to get a tire changed...
Tech Support is mostly hell. I've done it.
However, it's a double-edged sword.
1. Most Companies do not want to pay for technical support of their products. Therefore, the least competent people are put into it.
2. The companies that do put competent people in tech support charge you a lot of money for it.
Speaking as an Oracle customer, who spends $2,500+ per server per year on silver-level support, it's nasty. I have to spend that to get an operator on the phone with a decent wait time who knows what they are doing. However, I don't consider Oracle as inherently complex as Windows 98, simply because there's less stuff to break. Oracle also doesn't bundle Internet Explorer, the bane of support operators everywhere because it can and will break anything in a system.
This ties in with the fact that there aren't even dependency lists for what things a program installer screws up. Most software manufacturers just don't let support communicate to the developers.
Did I mention how much developers and engineers usually despise the end-user support people? There is a definate hatred there, and I've seen it way too many times.
Technical Support, in most cases, is isolated from the rest of the company. Microsoft is especially guilty of this, unless you pay $250 per incident for support. Oracle is better, when you pay them a lot of money for Silver or Gold support.
However, most users don't have that money. They also are stuck using extremely buggy products, like Internet Explorer, and software that can and will change every DLL and system library to the version it was built against (ICQ, Visual Studio, Internet Explorer, and Office 2000 are especially guilty) and not run if it doesn't find the right version. It's an unfortunate situation here, and not even the best tech support operators can handle these issues over a phone.
What needs to happen is for software to be built right, documented, and then supported right. Unfortunately, the consumer technical support is not there because the margins must be the same as computer hardware as they are for software, razor-thin. Ideally, stable build environments for the software made these days too would help, since 90% of the problems I have run into are because of version dependencies.
Then, maybe, I won't have to pay out the nose to get support like I do now on non-enterprise products. I'm more than willing to pay for support if I get extremely competent people on the phone.
Seriously, it's here
Best Slashdot Co
amen to that...
Worst thing is I have a friend, basically works for home-user front line support (reboot/click -ANY- key etc.. and she earns more than I do. Pathetic.
EZ
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Speaking as a tech support engineer (and coming from a background of 10 yrs as a developer and sysadmin)..
The stupidity of some people in our industry (and I am talking about IT professionals here.. I support a large CM product) is incredible.
The people who really suffer are the clever ones, who have read the manual, checked the FAQ, understand the product in the first place, and only call when they have a -real- problem. By the time I get to them I am generally fried from saying RTMF 25 times and the speed and completeness of my response to them suffers as a result. Plus you have the disconnect between what marketing/sales will sell, vs. the actual capabilities of the product, guess who is expected to sort that one out (hint, it's not the salesman, he already has his comission).
I'm getting out of support and going back to sysadmin, at least I can call someone an idiot and then justify it face-to-face with their manager.
EZ
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
I am sure anyone here who has worked with end users has answered calls along the lines of "I have a foppy here that is too powerful for my version of the internet. Can you help me make my connection to hotmail faster? I think that there is a problem with the server."
There is just too much information and too many words being bounced around for the average joe user to handle... It has almost become the case that to operate a computer without hassles, you must understand how to build one. Can you imagine if Ford said that they expected everyone to know how to build a car before they could expect to be able to drive?
I had a friend call me up the other day who had gotten the "mystical spiral" on his screen from the haha@sexyfun.net virus... It was impossible for me to explain over the phone how to fix it, like this:
As things get more and more complicated with individual PCs, I thnk that there will be a lot of money to be made for the first person who starts an app-server like network in which there is NO maintainence to be done on the user side. If you do person-to-person support it is easy to see the gulf of knowledge that is creating the unquenchable demand for tech support...
+++ ATH0 +++
Obviously, you don't have the dual-recliner, fold out center table w/ build in speaker phone, and massage units in the recliners.
Of course, all the sofa said to do was plug in three things (2 AC, one phone), and we haven't needed any other instructions on it.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I called Yamaha because my CD-RW drive stopped reading rewritable discs. After I described the problem, the guy on the other end said things like, "The circuitry might have gone bad" and "you might want to look into getting another drive." After I hung up, I remembered that I (stupidly) hadn't tried cleaning the lens first. Voila! I could read RWs again. However, the fact that the guy didn't even suggest cleaning the lens gives me serious doubts about his competence.
The customer is #1, right? Well, maybe not. Companies are not in business to make the customer happy, they are in business to make money. Generally, making the customer happy leads to making money, but not always.
Tech support is one of those areas where the best interests of the customer and the best interests of the company diverge. Tech support is generally seen as a *cost center*, ie. it is a part of the business that takes in more money than it generates. Sales would be seen as a *profit center*, ie. it is a part of business that takes in less money than it generates. Cost centers are something a business wants to minimize as much as possible. In an ideal world, for the company, it would never ever provide tech support at all. Which is why most companies never seem to have enough tech support people to adequately do the job, from the customer's perspective.
Granted this situation pisses the customer off, but generally the company tries to provide just enough tech support to keep the customer from leaving and going somewhere else. If the company is a monopoly, you the customer, are screwed.
The customer, if he truly wants quality tech support from the manufacturer is going to have to stop buying products from that manufacturer and somehow associate the loss of revenue with crappy tech support. Good luck.
I think that companies will try to move the customer off of this complex beast that needs tech support onto something simpler that doesn't require tech support at all. Something with a few buttons, no access to the OS, and maybe 1 or 2 baked in apps. It'll either work or it won't, and if it doesn't you'll get it exchanged for a new one that does.
Either that, or we'll move to an openly specified complex beast, where your corner technician can diagnose and repair your problem, must like cars are diagnosed and repaired by countless small operators distributed throughout the land.
Not only can it be used by any idiot, but it's a nice piece of furnishing too, just like your comfy sofa!
Case in point: My modem has been acting poorly for my ISP lately (as in, I can't connect). Now, if I had called 3Com/USR, we would have done several tests, and we would have found out that the modem was fine, and it's a line problem (something I've managed to do on my own already). 3Com/USR can't do a thing to resolve this problem. They don't control the phone lines. They don't deal with the phone company. In fact, they probably have less clout with my phone company (QWest) than I do. How are they supposed to help out there?
GPL made simple: What was my stuff is now our stuff. If you improve our stuff, please keep it our stuff.
Anyway, they were talking about how the advent of more technology in the customer service sector (automated response, dial-through prompts, hold please, hold please, hold please) as well as the strong job market (I could get a dollar more and hour at the shop down the street) has caused training to go out the window and that most of the live people on the end of the line are not fully qualified for handling the questions thrown at them. Not because they're stupid people, but because they just don't have the information they need to do the job.
The interesting thing is that, with the recent economic downturn, we could get better service, because employees will be more likely to stay on board and not jump ship every six months, providing for more qualified service representatives. It also might cause businesses to realize that personal service does matter in holding on to your customers and they'll be working hard at providing this in order to stay alive in the shaky economy.
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
You can probabably substitute "marketer" for "programmer" here. If programmers did the design things would probably work better...
Cooper is talking about design in the sense of "how it appears and functions to the user", as opposed to implementation, and Cooper's exact point is that programmers think that they can design good user interfaces, and they can't. It's a separate skill.
This book also includes an interesting sidelight on the Amazon 1-click patent: when the programmers came up with their first implementation of 1-click shopping -- under that name -- it brought up a confirm box when the user tried to buy something with 1 click, thus undoing the whole point of it. In other words, this "obvious" feature was non-obvious enough that the programmers didn't understand it at first.
I too have worked at a company that stressed short call times, left little time for research, didn't allow callbacks, had no feedback loop to developers, etc. After about 18 months of being bitched at by clueless newbies, for problems that they usually caused, I moved on. The final straw was the release of a product with known MAJOR bugs. I pointed out in a meeting that the company mission statement said we shouldn't be releasing such a piece of crap, and I was told that it didn't matter, we were shipping it, bugs or not. I appreciate the training that I recieved there, but I'm glad to be gone.
After a few contract gigs doing various forms of IT helpdesk type stuff, I took another chance on tech support, as a contractor. I liked it so much, I ended up taking a permanent position. I now go to new product training at least every quarter, have software developers looking at the bugs that I file, only spend 20 hours of my 40 hour work week actively taking customer calls, AND I LOVE IT. I do get the occasional newbie, but those calls are usually a slam dunk, and let me surf slashdot a little longer. I could get a job as a sysadmin, making about 30-40k more a year, but then I would have to actually work, nahhh!
The systems I support are not home peecees by any stretch of the imagination, and I would NEVER go back to supporting them (peecees) if I could avoid it. Sysadmins might be clueless in their own ways, (backup? naw, we don't do those) but at least they know where the power button is. Well, most of them at least.
The way these 2 companies address the tech support issue seems to be the crux of the problem. The first company had an 800#, and only charged for tech support if you wanted help outside business hours. Tech support was a red-headed step child, one that cost the company money. The company I now work for charges for any support above the warranty level, and the support division is a revenue generator. By being a revenue generator, it makes it much easier to pay people well, staff to keep hold times down, and hire competent people.
file:
I've worked tech support for many years, and it is not my experience that tech support people are getting more arrogant or in any way "worse" - but that the average PC owner is not as intelligent as their ancestors. And, no, I do not say this out of arrogance, as some may accuse. It just happens to be the truth, as anyone who has spent any time working tech support already knows.
The PC literate of today bought their systems, perhaps assembled their systems, and largely figured out everything themselves. That was part of the joy. But no more. Now, a growing number of consumers buy a computer and expect the sales staff or tech support to hold their hands forever. I can name several customers, not otherwise stupid people, who phone me on a semi-regular basis and are mad at ME because THEY have once again forgotten how to format a floppy disk or copy files.
They consider a PC an appliance, which it is not. Advertisements from AOL, and salesmen pushing Compaq or Hewlett Packard solutions often sell them as such, so this is part of the problem, but not all of it. The real problem is not that the average population has become "dumber" (which it may have - I have other evidence which does suggest this) - but that those now buying PC's do not have the technical inclinations of those who bought before.
So, a salesman sells a piece of complicated electronic equipment to someone, giving them the impression that it is as easy to operate as a toaster, and tech support takes all of the indignant and hostile phone calls from people who make no effort to learn how to use what they purchased, because learning something complicated was not part of their expectation. It was not part of the unspoken contract between saleman and buyer.
How are you expected to deal with someone who, almost weekly, and for three years, calls you with questions so simple and mundane that they should havwe required no explanation at all? Who doesn't know whether they are using Windows or MacOS, or, if they are using Windows, don't know whether they are using Windows 3.1 or Win2k? Who don't know whether they are using Word or Wordpad, who don't know where the Shift or Delete keys are on the keyboard, who can't tell you whether they are using Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator? These are people who use their PC's many hours of every day, who are not stupid, but who blame their own ignorance on the tech support staff.
We have always had some of these phone calls. However, recently, it has exploded. No, tech support people are not arrogant, but we are frustrated. When they same people buy a car, they don't expect the car salesman or the driving instructor to babysit them for the rest of their lives. They don't argue with the mechanic or shout at him.
Re-think your premise, Jon.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
Don't like it? Get another job. How hard is that?
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
More like: I set fire to this sweater and now it won't fit. You better fix it.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
We are pretty much in agreement that tech support sucks partly because the manufactuers don't really invest in it, and partly because so many users are so clueless that God himself on the phone couldn't talk them through the issues.
So what do we do?
I don't have the answer - and I think the problem goes far deeper into our culture than we realize.
IANAL
:)
but, since a supreme court ruling 1920's or so (in the US) corporations have been entitled to essentially the same rights as people under the law, and officers of corporations are protected even further -- this gave rise to the term "corporate citizen" which has no legal meaning, but does have some significance in proving a point. Thus: if corporations have the same rights as people doesn't it stand to reason that they should be bound by the same ethical and moral considerations as humans?
Just a question, really
From the gosh-not-ANOTHER-customer dept.
I started as a summer intern answering tech support calls for the company where I'm currently employed. Granted, tech support stunk sometimes, but this company has a very good attitude about it.
Instead of tech and software support being the sub-department of everything, it is our main business. Sure, we develop and sell software, but the support of that software is where our money is made and our company excels. Why? We have a good attitude about it. The customer is right, the customer deserves quality for their money, and the customer deserves to be treated like a human.
As a result, our clients are known to us by name. I can tell you funny stories about at least a dozen of our clients, by name and city and facility name, either in their personal lives (which we frequently hear about) or their business lives. Until you've spent an hour on the phone with a printer problem, half of the time fixing the problem, the other half discussing the client's new granddaughter, you haven't really had a good tech support experience.
Are our clients receiving more than they pay for? We like to think so. They tend to think so, also. Good biz practice? Well...that can be debated. But I know one thing: Our support staff go home happy and content. And that's worth a lot.
Blog,Twitter
I agree with this 100%. I used to work the front lines in tech support, and let me tell you it is hell. Only occasionally do you get a "good" caller, usually it's the monotonaus drone of the same thing, call after call. Then there is the pissy asshole who calls up just shouting and screaming. On occasion from that, I have left the building very upset over some of the attacks that someone has made against me or my company over the phone.
I helped a friend install his @home DSL service. I found the materials he was sent to be very uninformative. However, tech support was fast and knowledgable. Maybe we got lucky...
Pardon me for not bending down and worshipping your brain. I am one of those who was not coding in the crib, spilling coffee all over my booties. Although I do not use tech support, I often require the wisdom of others. For that, I consult the usenet community, hit Google, or rummage through a workmate's brain. The animal books come in handy. And I am not above helping someone with their Excel question: "No, no, you're not stupid-- it just takes a little experience..." Then, I slide in a little dig on Microsoft.
Good luck. With complex software, it's often possible for a newbie to delete random files, or otherwise misconfigure things all to Hell. Between driver versions, all sorts of unusual network configurations, real-time virus scanners, et al, there are often *many* possible single points of failure.
Hardware may be easier, but you still have to account for bumps, heat, humidity, vibrations, magnetic fields... Hell, my vacuum cleaner is lethal to Travan tape drives (it's probably either the vibrations through the floor or it MIGHT be drawing enough current to provide a sufficiently strong magnetic field... and I'm not going to systematically test tape drives in a quest to find out), and doesn't even need to touch the case for this to happen. I don't expect to see tape drives to be in Faraday cages with some kind of vibration-dampening mount anytime soon, and they'd probably be expensive for a home user if they DID appear.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Well we can always hope that the companies that provide the best service come out on top, but that isn't always the way things work. Just look at how many small speciality shops, that know their stuff and can offer great service, run into problems when Wal-Mart moves in and starts selling the same items they do. While the small shop may be able to sell 500 items a month Wal-Mart can sell 500,000, and therefore sell them at a much cheaper price. It would be nice if people realised that paying for the extra service at the small shop is worth it, but it has been shown time and time again people will go for cheaper.
Actually, i started as a BSAE doing tech support for a big software company, and am still doing so. There is no promotion path to doing something 'real' in this case; the job itself is its own reward or punishment. Sadly, it is usually the latter, but occasionally i do get to do something pretty damn cool, and that's what keeps some of us here, particularly those of us who know what we're doing. At the same time, with just under a year in service, i am practically a veteran.
i'm convinced there are few jobs as thankless as technical support. Nobody you talk to is glad to hear from you, even when you have a solution for them. If the company you work for has in any way wronged that customer, you will hear about it. In my particular form of technical support, it often involves cleaning up colossal messes the customers have made of their own files, due to not understanding the (admittedly complex) software. But that's my fault too. All of it.
I have been insulted, sworn at, i have had my intellect questioned, and heard every possible form of invective that doesn't involve my mom.
Maybe technical support does suck. Maybe all of it adds up to be poor service. However, just because you only talk to people that tell you to reinstall windows and reboot, doesn't mean that all tech support people are incompetent. Sometimes they're hardworking, knowledgeable people that bend over backwards and work weekends to help you. So don't pay them back with your anger.
is to buy from a small company. One you can trust to deliver the product, but when you call their local phone number, you are talking to a person. Sure, you may pay a little more for the product, but the service you get in return is well worth it. Many people expect to pay the least price for a product, and still get comparable service for the same product priced a little more. You get what you pay for.
>Standing behind a product is the seminal moral responsibility of any manufacturer, both in terms of what's smart and what's right.
:-)
You mean "the fundamental moral responsibility", right?
Standing behind a product seminally is illegal in 5 US states.
Support really varies with the product. 15k support contracts for enterprise software are very different from consumer tech support. In the area of consumer tech support, I think things have actually gotten much better. I was shocked the other day, when I had to call dell's tech support and immediately got a rep. The same thing even happened with my ISP which usually runs 1 hour hold times. With expensive software, tech support often is ok, but pricey. Also, often it is unessessary. If they would just give me the source code, I wouldnt ever have to bother Microsoft for anything. Strange, that I never find myself calling up Linus for tech support.
Someone you trust is one of us.
In Dallas, this is very true also. I have not even graduated High School, but last summer I was hired as a programmer by a local startup company. We have only one person working as a programmer who has a CS degree.
With the experience I now have as a High School senior, I would not ever consider going into Tech Support for any of the local companies. Programmers are in too high of a demand in Texas.
Boy are you off base. The Peter principle came out of the late 70's and early 80's as a method of finding and promoting rank and file workers up into management. It has nothing at all to do with sexism. The basic jist of the "Peter" principle, is a manager says "Hey, Peter, your pretty good at this do you want to be a (insert next position up here)." Peter says yes and gets promoted based on his/her talent, like one would want. The old downside to the Peter Principle was that skills for supervising and actaully doing the work are different, and that Peter would be promoted beyond his competence to do the higher level job/jobs.
In contrast Scott Adam's book the Dilbert Principle details the actual Dilbert Princlple as a replacement for the Peter Principle where companies promote the least able employees up to management where they conceivably do the least amount of damage, hence PHB's.
Here are the real reasons that tech support sucks:
1. Most companies don't have sensible infrastructures, specifically databases. Too many companies maintain multiple internal databases that can't talk to each other, such that one arm of the company doesn't know what the other arm is doing. Then the customer gets told 10 different stories by 10 different people in 10 different departments, and not one of the stories is true.
2. Most companies don't believe they have any obligation to provide support for their products, especially for products they have stopped manufacturing. They also short-sightedly believe that there is no money to be made in providing good tech support, so they don't invest in it. A company should be legally obligated to continue to support its products, even if those products are no longer being manufactured, as long as those products are still on retailer's shelves. And a truly successful company has the foresight to understand that investments in tech support do pay off. Tech support adds value to a product and can increase sales of the product beyond the cost of providing the technical support.
3. Most technical products are not designed to be easy enough for average people to use. They are ludicrously complex and problematic by nature, and so it's no small wonder that tech support departments are overloaded at companies that produce such products. If companies invested more in usability and quality assurance, then they wouldn't have to pay for it later in tech support costs.
4. Most companies rely on a pre-fabbed, one-size-fits all, choose-your-own-misadventure approach to dealing with a customer's problem. A customer who possesses masters degrees in computer science and computer engineering shouldn't have to be subjected to a ludicrously moronic line of questioning ("Are you sure it's plugged in? Have you tried turning the power switch on?" etc) before being permitted to ship back a faulty product for repair or replacement. Companies take this approach because they feel it can take the place of having to hire trained support personnel to man the phones--unfortunately, there is no replacement for having people on the other end of the line who actually know what they are doing.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
Bus drivers know how to drive, lumberjacks can operate chainsaws, but our business culture is jam-packed with office secretaries that can't even do a simple "mail merge" with MS-Office.
I noticed that you didn't put "simple" in quotes. I have never done a mail-merge in Word so I can't testify as to how easy it is. I will try and limit my comments to the general case.
Alan Cooper wrote a good book called The Inmates Are Running the Asylum and it is about how poorly most softare is designed these days. Software is designed by programmers and it is designed for how a programmer would like to use it. It has numerous powerful features that most users don't need or want but are cool to the programmer. All that Joe/Jane user wants to do is get their work done and they don't particularily like being called stupid because some programmer who was brought up on Zork thinks they are.
Quit whining, it took my isp 7 months to send out an email to it's customers advising them to manually set their network cards to full-duplex or if this was impossible, ask for the switch port to be set to half duplex, as their switches were incapable of negotiating this properly. I know it was seven months because I spent nearly 5 hours explaining this to about 5 different people. Bless em....
I used to work for a large manufacturer. I handled at various times 1st and 2nd level support. Two majors factors influenced the level of support I was able to give.
1. The quality of the information I had from our developers
2. The quality of information from the customer.
item 2 has been done to death here.
Item one however is interesting. The pace of developement of technology and the perceived need to be first to the marketplace has led to a situation where products are shipped that don't work, the people who are then supposed to support them do not have the documentation necessary and in several instances where I worked, haven't even seen the goddamned kit before.
We also had quite clearly delineated quality of service criteria. Different machines aimed at different markets had different production lines / burn in procedures, so at times, when you got a call about machine X you knew it wasn't really worth your while to try and "fix" the problem...because those machines were a pile of utter crap.
You have to ask however why the situation exists and the only answer I have been able to come up is that people vote with their wallet. Where we made products that were specifically designed and marketed towards quality / reliability, the costs usually escalated such that there was no apparently economically viable price/performance/reliabilty equation. At least, not one anyone other than government / military types were prepared to pay for (with our money of course!)
I realize that most of the readers of this site will stand behind a product they like, even when it trips up for a release. However, many people in the US can not necessarily be relied upon to stand behind a product for any extended period. As this is true, is it very surprising that companies try to reap as much as they can during the short period of time that they have a product that people like?
This said, I also realize that many companies have cornered their clients. If you have deployed a large software architecture, you really are stuck, I believe the word used was "extorted." (acknowledging that my point stems more from my experience with consumers who relgiously seek out the lowest prices with no heed for service or quaility as opposed to software.
In my experience, as soon as software/hardware support personnel talks to you face to face everything goes well. But by email or phone, who cares? It's almost anonymous. People are arrogant because you cannot punch them in the face! In their cubicle they are untouchable. But when faced with an angry customer in vivo, they react better. It might just be a psychological problem.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I propose that there should be three different kinds of tech support...
a) m$ bob
b) gnu
c) enterprise
a) This is the current type of tech support offered: multiple tiers, scripts, clueless users, even worse managers and evil salespeople. status quo
b) support for free software should proceed like this. read the faq. search the docs. search the mailing list/newsgroup. ask on the maillist/newsgroup. In emergencies, search out an irc channel. I think that is very reasonable to do for when you paid nothing. Of course, the option is available to pay someone like linuxcare to get the enterprise level support (mentioned below). The point in this is to have effective and searchable documentation and archives. Note: just b/c someones asks a question, don't automaticially assume that you're 31337 and they can't read. Sometimes, sysadmins have human like characteristics, such as making mistakes and skipping over the one sentance fragment that mentions the clue that leads to an answer. Often, the main reason clueful people turn to tech support is they don't know how to ask the right question.
c) enterprise software. This is the stuff you paid for... paid a LOT of money for. From m$ office pro to siebel. If you paid for it, there should be a certain legal obligation (perhaps under the uniform commecial code) to make sure it support it for some standard ammount of time. {egads! even a broken-record Katz is right once in a while!} If I paid for software, I want to have updated, complete and accurate documentation. During the initial install cycle, I want to call someone who's read the docs, knows the docs, and has done this before and is familiar with the known issues and knows how to troubleshoot. I am so sick and tired finding and issue with a premium (read: damn expensive) enterprise product only to talk to rahim who will kindly search the docs for me. A such a service shouldn't be a part of a seperate support package - and that's the point I think Katz was trying to make, but I think he might have gotten tried in the middle of writing this one.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
Yes, it sucks, but be realistic: call centers don't masquerade as revenue centers.
If everyone woke up one day and said "You know what? I'm deeply offended by the fact that I had to deal with a rude, offensive tech support rep and as a result, I'll never buy from Company X again." or "Their customer service was so good I'll never buy from anyone else again!" then do you know what would happen as a result? Tech support would start getting much, much better.
Fact of the matter is that most people say "The product's OK and their tech support sucks, but what am I going to do?" Does an abrasive/non-existent customer service experience translate into lost benefit? Does a positive one translate into future revenue?
But hey. Go ahead. Write a letter mentioning just how shitty your service was. It means that the next time you call there'll be a slightly smaller, slightly more overloaded call center staff to bitterly respond to your call, not the better-trained, blah blah blah staff you're hoping to find.
I don't like it either; I think that tech support is way off the fucking scale on the tech savvy:actual know-how charts, but what're you gonna do? I know that I didn't get into programming so I could deal with morons on the phone. When I'm asking why my packets are dying at the edge of the network (or something of the sort that belies _actual knowledge_), I don't expect to be asked to run ipconfig, etc., etc.
Also, praise (albeit sort of backhanded) for Microsoft? Someone forgot to CC Katz in on that memo, huh?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I used to work tech support... more often than not I liked it... My problem was the stupid users wore me down til I couldn't stand to turn my headset on because I didn't want to talk to another idiot... The callcenter I worked for & the company they did tech support for didn't make this any easier as I could be fired automatically if I didn't suck up to the idiot that should never have touched a PC... I had a admin once who used a modem for outside connections from his office (small network, maybe 1 dozen PC's) & he called to complain that he kept getting busy signals when trying to use his modem... He was billigerent to me & completely insulting, but I had to be nice & not tell him to shut up & explain what he's doing... No he's 'always right' because he's the customer... Well screw the customer, he didn't even know he'd need to not be on the phone to use his modem (his phones all went to a central phone switch & used the same number the switch would send busy signals when the line was already in use)... I think tech support would be served much better by hiring techs who while not insulting are allowed to tell the customer to stop bitching & moaning & get around to explain why they called in the first place... I liked helping people, I liked using my vast knowledge of various aspects of PC's to figure out complex problems, I hated having to kiss the custoemrs ass when all they wanted to do was bitch about how XYZ makes such a crappy product that they can't use it (even though it's not conencted to the PC because they are an idiot)...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
...because in the current cutthroat PC sales business, in order to even make the sale in the first place, the OEM builder has to operate at just 5% above cost (if that!). And since you're selling to the Lowest Common Denominator, your average customer will be, for lack of a more direct term, a moron. And so you eat it on tech support. One place I worked at only warrantied PC's if they had the original OS installation...if the customer messed with the OS beyond standard tweaks, they voided their warranty. It was essentially a hardware-only warranty. BEcause if we spent the hours and hours on the phone with these people that they wanted us to, just because they couldn't RTFM, we'd be out of business in a week. We offered cheap hardware with no support to tightwads. And they paid it, because why pay more for something if you don't have to?
--- It's THAN, not THEN, moron! Fnord.
The problem is, tech support is seen as a profit drain in many cases, so companies skimp on it by not hiring enough people, not paying enough to attract quality people, etc.
For those companies that charge for support, either pay-per-incident or support contracts, tech support is seen as a source of revenue, so the company will spend more money increasing the quality of support so that customers make use of it.
-Karl
hell, grocery store pricing is more devious than shrink wrap licenses and click through agreements (club membership only, limit 3, must purchase 2 or more, not subject to other promotions, must present advertizement --not a coupon-- before purchase, may not be available, subject to ...)
Tech support sucks because of cheap users. I worked for some of the majors in the industry and every time there was pressure from users to lower prices the support was cut to balance it out. User don't realize support isn't cheap to do. Then users don't want to read documentation it easier to call or email support. Back when I used to do support I actually had customers tell me it my job to read the manual to them. WRONG, its others like you are why you sat on hold for 30 minutes. RTFM! Users think support is there to abuse and by abusing they will get anything they want. No way, when I did support if you got abusive I gave bare minimum support. On the other hand users that were cooperative I would bend over backwards for.
I think everyone should do six months in support ( or work retail) and see what if feel like to be on the other side of a call or a counter. I know now if I call support or customer service I try cooperate and it pays off. Sure there are the occasional support slacker, but after working the other side I know how to make them regret it. No, users are their own worst enemy.
Hell, I work in a different industry (ophthalmic or eyeglass industry) and these people are licensed, and still don't know what to do. Our machines do 75% of the work they used to do and still they heap $h!t on us when we call them back to help them. Licensed or not, if people think your equipment doesn't work because they don't understand how to use it, and by god we train them, people will still be pissed off at you because the machine doesn't wipe its arse.
CTRL ALT DEL Click Shut Down... Now go outside and dance in the flowers.
If you call tech support, they act like your machine must be broken (and its out of waranty) and they've never heard of anyting like that before ... yet if you goto audioreview.com theres atleast 100 complaints with the same problem ..
So long story short, in this case tech support won't even admit theres a problem!
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Dogbert's Tech Support .o0(My average call time is improving)
Customer: Hello I...
Dogbet: Shut up and reboot.
Customer: Hey it work..
Dogbert: Shut up and hang up.
Dogbert
God Bless those Pagans!
I've never been in any service job where I didn't say "I don't need this sh!t..." on a regular basis. Dealing with the general public is a genuine pain in the ass, and takes tremendous skill (technical and personal) to do it well.
Yet the prevailing wisdom is that tech support reps are disposable. Despite the skill that many reps acquire, they're paid no more, treated no better, and therefore have no incentive to stay. If these companies changed their attitude, and devoted a little energy and money to hiring and keeping good tech support reps, I think we'd all see a huge difference.
-froggy
Except if your computer is broken then you can't research support companies on the net. -I always tell my users that they need to email me if their email is broken. ;-)
I'm not knocking college, it's fine for those who cannot succeed without it.
Not trying to be an asshole or anything, but why does everyone view college as a way of getting a career, often completely ignoring to actually learn anything whilst there?
/Mikael Jacobson
"But surely we won't be still stuck with Linux in 25 years!?"
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
As much as I hate to defend these people. The average person wouldn't open their computer and start pulling out random parts. Few will even open the case on their computer (can't say I'd blame them, either -- some cases are notoriously hard to open and close without breaking something). The problem arrises because most people don't understand that poking "under the hood" in the software area is exactly the same as poking around the physical area (hardware). This is part of the reason Microsofts products are getting more and more agressive with protecting things like the C:\WINDOWS and C:\PROGRA~1 directories, and poping up scary messages about the ills that will occur if you turn off the protection services. Design a fool-proof product that refuses all types of invalid data, and some ingenius fool will find a new way to feed it invalid data.
Incidentally, I've had one customer install things in ways deliberately contrary to the installation guide. After several weeks and numerous calls (including telephone, email and tracking system entries), they were still trying to futz around doing things that were in breach of that section, trying to do things that I suppose could, in bizzaro world, be thought of on a certain level as satisfying the request. They plainly knew they weren't satisfying my literal instructions, but instead of doing exactly what I said, getting it working and then seeing what they could get away with by increments, they were trying to see if they could take minor increments from their existing (and blatantly incorrect as pointed out to them)position, then telling me they'd done what I asked and saying the problem was still there.
I've seen people with broken CD-ROM drive trays (that had obviously been ripped out of the drive) try to claim they should get a warranty replacement, computers with dents in the sides that have obviously been kicked, connectors that have damaged by misuse and so on. The point is there's always a few losers out there that try to get something for nothing. The sad thing is, that if you try this with a small company, you can usually be singled out, and if you dare ever give them business again, they will make sure they're making back their profit on you. Back when I worked in a computer service department, I would regularily waive some of the labour fees for customers that were either very agreeable, good customers, or handled their problem very well. The customers who were cheap, pushy assholes, usually got to pay for every minute I spent even glancing at their computer.
Many people use car analogies to describe what's wrong with their computer today, so my usual response is that you bring your car in for an oil change, for tune-ups regularily, why not bring in your computer from time to time? Depending on the environment your computer is in, the physical components may been to be cleaned every six months to a year (more frequently for people who smoke at their computer). CPU and power supply fans fail a lot more often if not properly maintained, which often lead to other more dangerous problems (repeated CPU overheating, power fluxutations that can damage components, etc). Computers and cars have things in common -- they tend to be complex enough that the average person can't possibly know everything about them.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Everybody burns out in this kind of support role. Do yourself a favor - do something else for a while, and examine why you burnt out - bad support from your mgmt, too long in the trenches, built up feelings of being a target, trying to support a lousy product? The list goes on, and many times it's just a bad combination of things. Get out for a while, 'cause being as exasperated with users as you seem to be will provoke the very reaction you're complaining about in your callers.
Reminds me of when I phoned my ISP's tech support about three years ago:
Me: Hello, could you tell me the IP of your DNS servers.
Tech: You can get all that information from our website, sir.
Some things just can't be answered by an online FAQ.
--
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
I am going to be building my own computer here shortly, and one of the main things that has kept me from doing it for so long is the lack of support if I mess up. On the other side of the coin, however, I note that most of my calls to tech support have been regarding either faulty hardware or conflicts from software I didn't need in the first place. Being that I can filter a lot of that out, is there any need for me to worry?
It's a more pervasive problem in society.
:-) Yet none of them can get an order right. They go to great lengths, including the use of multi-thousand dollar machines to make sure they collect your money right. Why can't they use some technology to make sure they get your order right? What if each item they put in your bag had a bar code that had to be scanned. Then the machine would know that the sack they hand you had everything right? Why? Because they don't care!
I was a VoiceStream customer for 28 months. Until my phones (plural) quit working. Originally I had been with Aerial, which was acquired by VS. Soon after this my phones quit. I then had to deal with VS "Customer Support".
Talk about a bunch of freaking idiots! They just had no clue what was going on. I ended up calling Motorola who was extremely helpful. I knew what was going on. Motorola knew what was going on. VS did not. A bunch of utterly clueless morons. Lots of broken verbal promises. Just horrible customer support overall.
It's as if these people had a script to follow. If your problem isn't on the script, then they are totally clueless.
Changing gears... Why can't any drive through fast food place get a simple order right!?! Here, a college town, I swear we have more fast food places per-capita than anywhere else.
In fact, customer service in general, anywhere, just generally sucks. It isn't limited to over the phone. It isn't limited to drive thru fast food. It's a more general problem in society. Nobody cares anymore.
Question: Why did people care many decades ago? What was different?
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
I stopped calling technical support about a year and a half ago. Between IBM, Packard Bell, Comcast, and @Home I was about ready to lose it.
;) problems on Usenet and Google. I could not be happier. I almost always find exactly what I am looking for, from people who actually want to help you out because they have experienced the same problems, without having to provide any customer identification. It's usually faster as well.
:P).
Since then I have been looking for the answers to all my (computer-related
When evaluating software/hardware I always look at how large the support community is, it can really make the difference (even if most of them tell you to RTFM
One major problem is that whether or not there is a problem, customers tend to be unable to articulate what they're experiencing in an adequate way to the support representatives. This wastes a lot of time on the rep's part, because they need to ask a zillion little questions in order to slowly build up a picture of what's going on.
Another major problem is customers who try to diagnose the problem. Sure, you and I may be able to determine something like "the SMTP server is down" but most customers can't... but that won't stop them from saying it. I've encountered customers who describe every problem as "The printer is broken," because ultimately someday they would want to print the document they were working on so no matter where the entire computing process went awry along the way, it must be the printer's fauly. I encountered one customer who called and told me "The terminal is broken" and refused to give me any more detail. Every question I tried to ask was answer with increasingly angry responses of "The terminal is broken and I want you to fix it!" I couldn't tell what sort of machine they had, what they were seeing, what they thought was wrong, whether they were trying to get help with hardware or software, or if indeed anything was actually wrong.
As a customer support rep, one of the first things you learn is to discard anything the customer tells you about what they think is wrong (no matter how calm or logical they may sound) and diagnose entirely from specific solid facts (like what the DHCP control panel says). If you don't, you'll be able to help power user customers more quickly, but you'll spend eternities trying to make sense of what everybody else says. It's not inherently obvious to the rep whether you are a power user or not.
But all that said, I agree that tech support sucks, but for different reasons than stated here. What I have always hated about most tech support is that it seems designed not to help the customer, but rather to make the customer go away. If you call the application vendor they blame the problem on Microsoft. If you call Microsoft they blame the application vendor, or the hardware manufacturer. If you call the hardware manufacturer they blame Microsoft or the application vendor. Nobody will take responsibility. I once had a PDA from Sharp. One morning it wouldn't turn on. I called tech support, thinking they'd tell me how to get it repaired, and they told me it was a software problem and I'd have to call the OS company.
I don't call tech support any more. I keep my own computer running. (Easy enough, I use a Mac.) If I get any additional hardware or software that I can't make work with the help of the manual, I return it. My time is too valuable to waste in vague hopes that the tech support rep will be able to help me.
1. Have an 800 number and place it in a number of easily accessible places.
Nothing pisses me off more than calling HP on my own 17 cents/min (college dorm phone prices) because the scanner I bought 2 months ago breaks.
2. Offer a "We'll call you back" option.
If the wait time is over 5 minutes, ASK FOR THE NUMBER and PROMISE TO CALL BACK. If they are not there leave a message.
3. Ask for my "serial number" etc. before I get to the tech person and no who I am and what my previous problems were when you say "Hello".
4. Listen to the customer.
Hey I have a Micron computer. I called b/c my computer wouldn't turn on after moving it (no drops though etc.). We ended up replacing the mother board, processor, memory, etc. My suggestion that maybe the power button was broken (I've experience that the early auto off buttons were a bit sketchy) was ignored. Not only was it that (a wire from the button to the mother board had slipped off), but when I called and suggested that they said "Oh I had never heard of that" I'm SURE they didn't tell someone to deceminate such information to other people.
5. DON'T BLAME THESE PROBLEMS ON THE CUSTOMER.
Most of the time THEY ARE NOT DUMB. They are ignorant in incredibly complex technology and software that they are expected to maintain and have been using for probably 5-10 years. But they get angry because THEY HEAR IT IN YOUR VOICE.
6. Be willing to say "I don't know" let me get someone else.
Why? Because I know that the only way I get my stuff fixed is that I call back. Some are clueless some are good. It's pot luck.
7. Don't treat WOMEN as IDIOTS.
I always have to take the phone when female friends have tech problems. They are not taken seriously. It sucks.
8. ASK. How familar are you with computers/software/etc. Tailor your instructions to that level.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
he didn't give me much to go on. he said the computer would lock up after leaving it alone for a half an hour. so during one of my sunday visits, i sat down tested his system. i tried to recreate the lock up. i rebooted the system, connected the dsl, waited for the screen saver, tried to wake the system (nothing), waited for the screen saver, waited for energy star, tried to wake the system... no matter what i did i could not recreate the problem. i knew there was a problem because i had experienced once or twice before, but i couldn't recreate it.
this went on for an hour or so, and my dad asked me how it was going. i told him about my inability to recreate the problem and he said, "just call tech support." i told him that i would not call tech support unless i had something to tell them. we got in a huge argument about calling tech support.
i never really had an official tech support position, but i'm sure everybody on /. has been in a position either at home or at work that they've been put into some type of ad hoc tech support role.
i've worked closely with tech support in the past and felt bad about calling them without a clear definition of the problem was. my father didn't really care and was ready to call with, "the dsl broke my computer, now fix it." after having him yell at me while continuing my testing, i was finally able to recreate the problem. i called tech support and explained what was happening. although it took some time, we worked through the problem.
i'm not sure if my father does this with the real tech support, but when he comes to me with a problem, he gives me a very vague description of what the problem is. when i ask him for more details like "when did it this problem first occur?", he says he doesn't know or doesn't reply. when i figure it out for myself, he says, "oh." then, before i even solve his first problem, he'll ask me to solve another problem. that sucks, except when it reveals some additional information about the first problem...
okay, okay, i'll stop ranting. i know that we've all been through the same kind of stuff before...
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
This is not the Peter principle. That's assuming that those who get promoted, get put into a position that they can't handle, assuming that they could handle the previous position.
Believe it or not, tech support is my chosen profession. I *like* helping people fix their problems. Fortunately for my sanity, I've gone from taking calls about why a cheap PC that someone bought for their kid to have for Christmas doesn't work out of the box, to managing a small group that supports extremely high-end storage on *nix servers. The difference is profound, both in the type of support offered, the business model behind the support, and the level of expertise exhibited by the end users. All of these things are important when you talk about tech support's deficiencies, or lack thereof.
The business model for the world I live in is that you pay to play. Yes, the product comes with a one year warranty, and we will cheerfully help (on the phone) anyone who's ever bought our product if they call during business hours. But that's where the good part ends, unless you've purchased a support contract. The company I work for has set up my group as a profit center. They pay us very well, and we work as hard as it takes to keep all of our customers happy. But good support (from the vendor's point of view) can't be overhead costs. Having former *nix admins man your support center is really expensive, and that's what it takes to do the type of support we provide. This cost is passed on to the customer. But in turn, the customer expects (and receives) a very high level of response.
Since the stuff we sell is fantastically expensive, and gets attached to very high-end big iron, the people who call us are never without a clue. We're pretty confident that any time the support hotline phone rings, we won't be walking someone through how to move a file off a CD and into their file system. Yes, they can still be irate, but that's a reality of the support world. But the frustration of trying to help people who really need an education, rather than tech support, doesn't come into it.
All of these things add up to a great support group, for our customers, the company I work for, and the people who actually provide the voice on the other end of the phone. Take away just one part of it, and tech support goes back to being the nightmare job that NO AMOUNT of money will make worth doing.
"Suppose you were an idiot..... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeate myself."
Well, you [insert expletives here], if I wasn't have a problem with your [expletive] service, or had wanted to send you a [expletive] email, do you think I would have tried to call the tech support line?
So, @home users, this is your warning. If you ever have a problem with the service, there is no one on the other end to talk to. Or, if there is, I'd certainly like to know why you're getting service and I'm not. (Perhaps it's just that the local service sucks.) Either way, all I wanted was a gateway address, a subnet address, and a few other small bits of similar information to install a router, and I couldn't even get in touch with a human voice.
So, slashdot, I'll ask my question here. My father bought a Linksys router thinking that he could use it to network his three computers so that each could be online at any time without having to pay @home for extra cable lines for each machine for an additional montly fee. I'm not familiar with routers, but I have gotten so far as to get everything hooked up right. So anyone want to help? Feel free to send me an email me if you have any good suggestions or witty comments to make. :)
Without wanting to jump on the "I agree" bandwagon, I will. :-)
Having worked in a tech support environment, certain truths come to light.
1) Nobody usually lasts more than 18 months.
2) The "chuck 'em in a room with a phone" philosophy seems to be on the increase.
3) Training for tech support people is on the decrease.
4) Stress and depression amongst tech support people is on the increase.
5) Tech support work is viewed as a career dead-end. I've actually seen a new trend, of which I became a victim.
I did a sandwich degree, which means you have to do 1 yrs professional work somewhere. It's supposed to add value to the degree (sorry for the PHB buzz-word).
The reality was that I was given a tech support role, in an area of computing that demands good quality support. (Real time EDI processing)
If this had been a normal position, I would have quit in the first few weeks, but because I couldn't risk dropping out of my degree, I had to keep going.
The company in question now puts most of their "nearly graduated" placement students in tech support, which is really lousy for the users, because they don't actually get someone with any product experience, just a starter training course in their first week.
Arrogance it most certainly is. If customers were to realise that their mission critical support was being run by people who had zero experience, they'd refused to pay their maintenance contracts.
M.
P.S. I ended up lasting three years. When I left, my tension levels immediate rose just on the sound of the home phone ringing....
...but, since a supreme court ruling 1920's or so (in the US) corporations have been entitled to essentially the same rights as people under the law...
Wow. That's a fascinating point.
Doesn't this seem abusrd -- the notion that a "corporate" entity has the same rights (and obligations) as a "human" entity?
I guess the question, then, hinges on what are the requirements for a "moral code?" I'd always assumed "morality" and "ethics" were human creations. They were a fundamental part of any social-contract humans agree to live by and abide. (In other words, there's nothing "a priori" about morality or ethics. Morality was born out of our "humaness" and not something that exists outside of our "humaness".)
So to think that corporations have "moral" responsibilities and (and if that wasn't enough) those responsibilities are the same as the rights and responsibilities as humans -- that's really whacked. (Or seems to be whacked. Maybe I'm thinking too literally here.)
The basic flaw in Katz's piece is his notion of "moral responsiblity" and "rightness."
My question is this: Is Katz correct when he asserts in the first paragraph that standing behind a product is the "seminal moral responsibility of any manufacturer, both in terms of what's smart and what's right"?
Is it possible (and I know this sounds bizarre, but it's the argument that Katz is making, I think) to make a moral argument for tech support? My initial response is no, it can't be done.
His is essentially a "meta-ethical" argument: an attempt to apply ethics and morality to entities other than humans. I'm no expert on meta-ethics but I'm curious about it. And I'm curious about whether or not Katz is right and, if he's right, where "corporate ethics" are derived from.
What does it mean, for example, when you say a "person is responsible for his actions?" Or when you say: "A person ought to do this?"
And how is this different when you replace the "person" with the corporation: a corporation ought to do this? Or "a corporation is responsible for its actions?" (Is the corporation responsible for its actions only when those actions conflict with or harm the larger social matrix in which corporations play distinct roles?)
I'm not vexed by the genesis of morality when we're talking about humans. Morality is derived from structure of human relations. It strives for goodness, or virtue, or whatever you want to call it. This makes sense to me.
But when you're talking about corporations -- and especially critiquing a corporation when it fails to do what it "ought" to do -- then here, at this point, I find the genesis of "rightness" to be murky.
Corporation are created by humans but their very nature makes them into a quite different entity. They're a collection of humans, yes, but legally (and here's another problem, I guess) they're defined as a "thing".
Where is the "ought" located when we talk about a thing that's not human? A corporation "ought" to do this or that -- but based on what?
Its relation to other corporations?
Its relationship to law?
Its relationships to captialism and democracy?
It relationships to its customers? ("It makes good business sense. Ergo, that's the way the moral compass should point.")
It's possible to define morality -- or at least narrow its scope -- when we talk about non-human species that are very close to humans in their genetic makeup. Chimps, for example. Or apes.
But how in the world do we define the "morality" of something far, far different than human beings? And who in the world can say that a corporation has a "moral obligation" to do something.
I guess you could argue that lack of tech support harms the public; therefore, corporations must provide tech support. But this seems a narrow argument: it depends on how you define "harm" and it depends (I assume) on whether or not the corporation made a good faith effort to create a usable product. Is it the corporation's fault that you (specifically) can't get their product working? Have they fulfilled their "obligation" by simply making a good faith effort to design a competent product? (And how do you prove incompetency? "Smoking gun" memos?)
It's important to make the distinction, I guess, between two kinds of tech support:
(1) fixing a faulty product and
(2) explaining the complexities of a working product.
Case (1) is problematic because it's not always the case that the product is at fault when a fault occurs. (The OS, for example, can cause a working product not to work.)
Case (2) is problematic because a complexity -- or subtlety, however you want to spin it -- is sometimes misdiagnosed as (1).
One could (and while I do, I don't like it) make the logical leap that what Microsoft is doing with their attempts at a "closed" computer -- by, among other things, not allowing user installable cards and by forcing MS approved drivers -- is to make sure that case (1) no longer exists.
This is (in one -- and really only one -- sense) laudable. MS is acknowledging case (1) and is attempting to fix it. Of course it goes without saying that their fixes cause all kinds of problems not directly related to technical support. (Privacy problems, I suppose, top the list -- not to mention monopolistic concerns.)
The problem with this sort of approach -- apart from privacy and monopolistic business practices is that by fixed case (1), they'll cause case (2) problems to sky-rocket which will (I assume) cause a new case to be created -- case (3) customer ill-will which could obviate concerns for case (1) and case (2) since some pissed-off customers will ditch your product entirely.
Ya know...in a service based industry like we are (arguably) moving into, this is a non-problem. In the end the people with the best overall service (from tech support to consulting and everything in between) will get the work. So, you can say that it sucks...but I am of the belief that it can and will just get better.
What you seem to forget in your blatantly one-sided and biased post, Jon, is that Tech Support Reps are people too. They are intelligent in most cases, people who have little training but have taken the time or effort to learn. They are not necessarily trained to support whatever product or service they are using. The, in most cases, are just smart and can figure things out. That is often a big difference between people calling for Tech Support and people answering the phone... trying to solve the problem yourself, whether it be thinking about it logically, reading the fsking manual, or trying some basic troubleshooting. It doesn't take much more to solve 80% of problems.
There is something to be said for making the effort to solve one's own problems, research a bit to learn on your own, and trying to be independant. People who refuse or are too lazy to help themselves should be despised. People who have tried to help themselves are wonderful, and Tech Support people love them.
One more comment before this gets written off as a "you've obviously worked at a small operation" or "you've obviously forgotten that Profession X doesn't treat their customer like shit" comment, remember that being a Comp Sci grad (or any other graduate for that matter) is overqualified for Tech Support. Someone with a PEng does not have the right to treat a non-engineering like shit for not knowing how much load a structure they've built can hold. That is why the Engineer has a parchment on their wall. You don't get a parchment for knowing how to use a computer, a TV, a VCR, or a toaster. You just have to read the directions and use your brain, and when that fails, call Tech Support and ask, not demand help.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
1. Savvis has by far the greatest tech support I have ever dealt with. Their techs are intelligent. Their sales people are educated and they have a 24x7 live helpdesk. You call their line you get a live person. That person can escalate it to one of the many Technical account managers who are paid to carry pagers or cell phones around. Everyone gets the same tech support whether they're paying $100/month for business SDSL or $8,000 for DS-3. Even when I have general(yet advanced) questions about networking hardware or setup that isn't directly related to the product I'm buying from them, they are willing to answer my questions or find out answers for me.
2. Surprisingly HP. Their website is surprisingly helpful to find answers to oddball hardware problems. I was trying to switch a printer from parallel to USB and everything was recognized but it kept having some strange error. I followed the exact steps that the website described but had no luck, so I decided to call tech support and the tech carefully guided me through the exact same steps I had taken and the second time it worked. I felt dumb for looking like such a clueless customer, but regardless, he was able to fix the problem and it didn't take "too" long to get in touch with him.
Now here's some negative feedback... Southwestern Bell... You really have to make them think you're someone really important to get them to treat you like an intelligent human being. I've found that I have the best luck starting with business sales and acting interested in a product and have them find out about current issues that I'm dealing with. Starting on the tech support end and they immediately point fingers and don't want to find the answers to your tough questions.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I've seen a lot from the customer's point of view. I've been yelled at by people who could barely speak english because I couldn't understand them, or been berated by people who know next to nothing about the product their trying to support. Corporate Business practices, like those outlined in the article, are normal. Profit uber alles (over everything). This includes customer service, product support, useful/long-lasting products themselves (remember, the US is a 'disposable culture' - we use it and then throw it away for the next release).
I am actually lucky. As a Support Engineer, I actually work for (maybe the only) a company who actually tries. The company is still relatively small, but we actually use customer concerns / questions to better our product. We love beta-testing, they provide useful feedback, which, again, we use to make a better product.
I think a lot of it is because the company is small. I can pick up the phone and have a conversation with the CTO, or VP of R&D. The most important person in the company (one of the founders) is a decent friend of mine. When you get to such a large scale, there is no real way to actually use a customer complaint to implement a new feature, or fix a bug. It has to go through too many loops, and by the time, if ever, it gets to the people who need it, it's too late: the company is either too big to care, or you've already lost the customer.
Now in truth, many people who buy the product won't need tech support at all, but still, take a look at the price of computer hardware and ask yourself how many minutes of time you've paid for of that technician's time.
The fact of the matter is that the computer market is very competitive, and most consumers (home end-users) shop almost exclusively based on price, or at least getting a "good deal" is among the top concerns. Businesses are usually a bit wiser, taking into account the fact that it's expensive if things don't work, but again, price is still a major concern. Time and time again, better but more expensive has lost the battle against cheaper and "good enough"... at least in computers.
Just like everything else, you get what you pay for, and indeed in the computer business, very little is paid for tech support.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
...and condemning those who offer it for free, but don't charge is ignorant...
errr, you know what I meant here...
But that's exactly my point.
The cost of DSL should be raised to include paying for competent tech support.
"But the very phrase "tech support" has become an oxymoron, an indictment of an arrogant and elitist industry. "
How does it follow that the lack of tech support is due to arrogance or elitist? I think it basically comes down to the fact that the cost of tech support is not factored into the cost of most products.
To praise microsoft for their level of support while paying for it, and condemning those who offer it for free, but don't charge is ignorant.
The userfriendly side of computers has not gotten out of hand, its the consumers understanding of user friendly. Most people view UF as meaning everything works exactly the way you think it should, b/c your the user and the computer should be friendly to the way you work. If someone come to a block or can't automaticly figure out something they assume that its a problem with the software, its not intutive enough, and they call tech support, it isnt' automaticly assumed that it's their knowledge or expertise that is lacking. Or that they should have to put forth any effort. I talk to people all the time who can't for the life of them bother to go the help page to print off the email setup instructions, even though they have had to call tech support 5 times to setup their hosting package email accounts on different computers. Why because at that exact moment its more convient for them to waste our time and expertise on trival none issues. Thus making us feel bitter and unfullfilled in our job. To make things worst more call seem to come from supposed computer consultants that have been hired by companies to setup connection. These people are really just your UF user with a devry course under his belt, so he thinks he knows how things should work, but there is no experience so he doesn't actually have any really idea on how to approach problems. Unlike average consumers they dont' listen, they continually jump ahead beyond where they need to be, and talk down to you because they figure since they've taken a course they have that right.
If you can't fix it ask the 3 year old down the street.
Interesting that there's a new story on tech support right after this one. Anyway, if someone missed this link that someone posted in that thread, I think they should have a look. Apart from being hilarious, it may shed some light on why tech support people sometimes may have a hard time being as friendly and supportive as expected of them.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
However, the conclusion that people who do tech-support don't really want to be there and therefore may not always do their job very well is probably correct.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
"I know not to randomly delete dll's, or bad things are likely to happen. (I don't recall where I learned this, though.) On the other hand, I don't really comprehend what dll's do. But here's what gets me about this situation: how was this woman supposed to know not to delete dll's? Did the various manuals which came with her computer say, anywhere in them, not to delete dll's? I bet not!" Yes, and did your car come with specific instructions not to remove the tires, or to pull loose some of the wires under the hood? No. Analogies are inherently difficult to pull off, I know, because invariably you are talking apples and oranges.
Waiting for a time when I can finally say, this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way -Phish
Points 1 through 5 are all valid. But there is another point that I think needs to be stated:
6 (or perhaps 1b): The company most likely doesn't care about the consumer. They only see their financial obligation to their shareholders, and don't consider providing quality products and support to be a necessity.
I work technical support for one of the major companies producing SOHO-level networking products. When the top management only cares about shareholders and stock prices, concern for the customer goes out the windows. This particular company only cares about the total percentage of how many calls are answered at the call center, rather than how many customers are satisfied. In an effort to get the techs to answer more calls, the management makes us conform to strict policies, namely Quotas. We have quotas on how manu calls we have to answer in a given day, and how many e-mails we have to answer. We also only have eight minutes to spend on any given call. How many computer problems can you solve in eight minutes? (Especially given the average intelligence of an end user, as noted in point 5).
What is to be done about this? Possibly convince the upper-management PHB types that long-term reputations are more important than short-term profit. I don't know how this can be accomplished. Wealth addiction makes people do crazy things, and I'm pretty sure that most of the PHBs think that if they don't succeed with this company, they can simply start another, selling even lower quality products, and offering less support. Anyway, I wasn't intending this post to become a dissertation, so I will wander off now.
Nerdy deeds, done dirt cheap
You could say that users have an unreasonable expectation of support, and that is a direct result of the industry's marketing and promotion. They were sold an experience that was supposed to be fun and easy. Understandable from a marketing point of view because who else but geeks would buy computers if they weren't fun and easy.
To run with your car analogy. Technologically, computers today are about as mature as cars in the 1920s. Back then if you owned a car you had to be a good mechanic (or hire a chauffuer who was a good mechanic). You had to be an expert driver to attempt a long distance road trip because the roads were so primitive.
And the test for the license covers day-to-day safe and legal operation of a car, and not maintenance of that car.
[The] fact [that maintenance is needed] is spelled out clearly in the owner's manual... The knowledge cannot be assumed.
True, but the manual for a car doesn't spell out "Don't pull random parts out of the engine just because you don't know what they're for." I'm pretty certain that voids your warranty on the car, and there's no reason it shouldn't void free tech support for a computer either. Repairing such a diversion from responsible use ought to be a full time and materials fee for service activity.
Reasonable people know not to interfere with things in their daily lives that they don't understand, but suddenly when it comes to computers we're expected to forgive them for screwing around with things in irresponsible ways? I don't think so.
Incidentally, I've had one customer install things in ways deliberately contrary to the installation guide. After several weeks and numerous calls (including telephone, email and tracking system entries), they were still trying to futz around doing things that were in breach of that section, trying to do things that I suppose could, in bizzaro world, be thought of on a certain level as satisfying the request. They plainly knew they weren't satisfying my literal instructions, but instead of doing exactly what I said, getting it working and then seeing what they could get away with by increments, they were trying to see if they could take minor increments from their existing (and blatantly incorrect as pointed out to them)position, then telling me they'd done what I asked and saying the problem was still there.
Naturally, the customers blamed the product.
There is a standard reply to the assault on intelligence by a tech support user - "You're calling me because you couldn't do this - if I'm stupid, where does that leave you?".
Many companies in atempts to save money have been not only cutting staff but to cut support. At the company (a big OEM, moo moo) that I worked for the scope of support got smaller and smaller.... when I left they would not support ANY Viri, just say vires and you get sent away, asking anthing with the words "how do I...." and the is a toturial, you are the dumbest link, goodbye. Classic case of marketing say one thing and the company doing another.
________
Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
"
:)
Not that that happens often with me. Within a year of working there, I've had 2 job offers, one invite to a woman's house boat, and 3 gifts mailed to me. But, hey, I guess I'm the exception.
"
This is why there is noone good in tech support. If someone actually gives a series of helpful answers sooner or later one of the clients will offer them a job since competent people are so hard to find.
My advice would be take the other job.
I would like to say that your description squares with my Dell tech support experience - to get a monitor replaced we ended up using mutliple phones in rotation and always asking for the same person who quickly got pissed off that every call was about the same query. Monitor arrived early the next day though
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
UCITA is another example. It's no surprise Microsoft fields lobbyists to tout the virtues of UCITA - a law that permits software publishers to sidestep fundamental warranties (like the implied warranty of merchantability, which simply means that a purchased product should act as it is supposed to) and disclaim liability for damages caused by software sold containing known defects.
Sincerely,
Vergil
Vergil Bushnell
Insects and Grafitti Photos
It seems that the less you pay for something, the better the support these days. I've always had excellent experiences with all shareware authors (that charge a pittance), and even better experiences with Linux developers (that charge nothing). Just this weekend, the amazing folks in the LinuxVideo Gatos project resolved a problem for me Saturday night into Sunday. That's not an isolated incident, either. It's that level of support (and the corresponding poor commercial support) that has convinced folks here to move to Linux as a viable platform, not the hype and PR wars. By the time commercial vendors realize the error of their ways, it may be too late to recover their markets.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
When I first started the SID in my .sig, I asked why Slashdot never seemed to bring up the unglamorous underbelly of tech support. Well, finally someone thought of the dirty, unrewarding, bizarre world of tech support, and of course it was Jon Katz, who is always looking out for the little guy.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
On 2nd thought, this post leaves out one of the key casualties of the entire tech support world: The Workers (and on May Day, too).
A lot of people who have contact with tech support workers will say that tech support workers don't deserve mention, since they are weasally liars who don't care about one caller to the next. And in some, cases, that would be correct.
But before you look down on someone who is answering the phone for ripping through a script, lying, and then hanging up on you, keep these things in mind:
So, there is a May Day lesson on what tech support workers go through, and why they are the way they are.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Too bad Home Depot doesn't let you know that there is a different grade of goods made for their store. When you buy a water heater for example, it IS NOT the same quality as an identical-looking one in a plumber's supply house. Companies like Kohler, Milwaukee, Dewalt get paid to produce cheaper models for Home Depot. The friendly service is just foreplay while you get screwed.
Great minds think alike,but,fools seldom differ.
I too work tech support at an ISP. The funny thing is, we have to support products that aren't really our problem. In fact, I'd say 90% of my calls are to support Netscape or IE. I have to get yelled at because Eudora blows goats or their Mac Performa isn't as internet ready as their brother-in-law swore it was. At least a half dozen times a week I'll take a call with a user demanding to know how to use whatever program they just bought and they get pissed when I explain I don't support the Corel Suite on a Mac or PC. Most of the time, I do get to help someone's Grandmother get onto e-bay or her email, which is always good. Get this, we even allow customers to bring in their machines for FREE if it's an internet related problem to be fixed. And guess what, people don't understand why we charge more for our service. In fact, they bitch because we're $2 a month more than the other provider in the area whose first line when you call for support is "call your reseller, you're not my problem" Providing tech support is an expensive pain in the ass, and while I hate it when I can't get it when I need it sometimes. I understand why some companies seem to blow it off.
Great minds think alike,but,fools seldom differ.
A large part of the problems people call computer tech support for prevent them from getting on the web and searching USENET. If you're trying to find out why you can't seem to connect to your ISP, and they've determined that it's a problem with your computer and not their end, you're stuck with either calling the OEM's tech support or asking that geeky friend of yours.
Just because you're capable of trouble-shooting issues doesn't mean Suzy Secretary who's trying to do work at home can troubleshoot her modem and then go online to ask for help on USENET for this annoying problem with Word crashing two seconds after it loads. In order to get help on USENET, you're going to need to have an idea as to what the problem is - yeah, I've always been able to solve stuff by looking around the web a little or just playing with the broken software/hardware. It's unfair to expect your Average User to know enough to troubleshoot their own computer though. In theory, that's what tech support is there for.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Dell may not be as bad as the others but they're not winning any prizes in my book. I've had the usual treatment from them - long hold times, bounced calls, and lies.
Shall we indulge in a few anecdotes?
Transferred through three different departments just to get a copy of a bill of sale. Had to call back a second time and get transferred through two of the same departments to get the paperwork.
Spent two hours on hold after a transfer. (It was a toll free call and i had a second line available so i left it to see how long the hold time would last.)
Told the tech i was a sysadmin, and that the problem had to be internal to the hardware. (Seemingly random and instantaneous power loss.) He made me install a bunch of useless software updates and call back twice before letting me ship it back for repair. (Turns out it was a bad motherboard.)
When a tech offered to transfer me to another person i asked if i would get stuck on hold again. The tech said, "No, this is a direct line." Half an hour later i got to speak to someone.
I try to be courteous and patient. I know these people didn't cause my problem, but they don't usually solve it either.
My advice: Call a sales line and pretend like you got there by accident. The wait times are much shorter (usually nonexistant), the people are friendlier, and they can frequently transfer you directly to a tech support person.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Yes, technical support often does suck - but it's usually the general "customer service" that sucks the most. Many /. readers will know this from experience with Covad and other DSL providers. Once you got a technical person on the phone, you'd probably get your problem solved (or if not, you'd at least find out what it was and what to do about it). The runaround usually seem to come from the incopenence of people in billing, accouts, or some other such nonsense.
The same seems to be true everywhere I go. When my bank screws things up, it's much worse to try to get them to remove the chages than it is to get Dell or Gateway to fix something under warentee.
The only difference, I think, between the screwups and hastle that result from "hi tech" stuff is that people love to point out the irony of a sophisticated peice of hardware that inexplicably doesn't work. There's nothing new or interesting about how much paperwork you have to go through to buy a house, and there's nothing surprising about the how nasty banks are. But it is a surprise when a company otherwise eager to please fails to do so.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Lets see a few other reasons... Main one being "scope of support." From management in almost any tech support job you are limited to what was shipped with the system as to what you can fix. So yea, there are a lot of different questions that when asked we gotta say "sorry, I can't help you there."
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
"The average consumer, according to a Jupiter analysts, expects a resolution of HER complaint or query within six hours. THEY're not likely to get it. At a minimum, consumers are entitled to e-mail response within a business day, instand and equal access to customer service reps if THEY need it, and prompt resolution of their problems. "
He has to use the PC ass-kissing (in this context) pronoun to start with, but then decides to switch to (as the only gender-neutral pronoun available here, apart from "it") "they" later on. Can't decide which kind of gutless to be, huh?
and his wife, who return *everything*.
.... for when he returns it in the future.
* 3 yo baby stroller (pram) stained, wobbly and smelly? returned for a full refund.
*Couches which loose there apeal and bounciness after a few years - returned.
* [top award] around xmass, friends got a new (bigger) house (no, they didn't return the old one). He had a 24" wooden model sailboat over the fireplace mantel; but it looked tiny in the new house. So he finds a store with a nice 48" wooden model sailboat, takes the 24" in and says its too small, he'd like to exchange for the larger one. He said he paid half the price of the larger, for the smaller. The salesgirl tried to write it up but could not find where they ever sold the smaller boat, he convinced her it was probably a christmas special and walked out with the larger boat, and a receipt
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
Reading through, many people are absolutely correct. As the area of computing continues to 'innovate', those innovation are just more complex answers to the questions at hand. So what you begin to need is someone who has an extremely low-level understanding of the application. Such as, the person or persons that created the application or hardware. Now, we could put these people into tech support to help those that are having problems, but they make more money for the company developing. So, as many have pointed out, the newbies (per say) are given the jobs in tech support with little to no actual knowledge of the workings of the product, just a computer attached to a knowledge base of problems already solved. If that doesn't work, the monkey just yelps and says he'll call you back.
This is one reason I love working with open source software. Have a problem? Get on the mailing list. If you have an actual problem that isn't documented somewhere, there are masses of developers containing vast knowledge itching to help you. Now, this obviously doesn't help the guy that can't figure out why his computer doesn't like his illegal operation (flash to computer illiterate drug smugglers thinking the feds are on to them), but it is a start.
Revelations 0:0 - The beginning of the end
We were a reseller for a number of products. As well as selling the main OS we also sold many third-party add-ons, many as the exclusive dealer in the UK.
We'd typically take hundreds of calls a week, but hardly any of them were the RTFM type of call. Resolving problems was a challenge.
My reputation in resolving problems correctly and quickly gained us a lot of business, including some major-named customers. Co-workers were generally not as good, so much so that I dreaded leaving the office as they tended to jump to the wrong conclusions when investigating problems. The pay was good, the hours were not that bad, and the working atmosphere generally pleasant. (There were a couple of ignorant PHBs to put up with, but they eventually moved on).
Then things went wrong. We merged with another company. The other company didn't understand the workings of my team. Their customer base were of a much lower standard than ours, and support calls generally tended towards trivialities. The last straw was when we became a call centre for one of the other-companies customers, spending 5 or more hours a day logging calls and chasing on-site contacts with software we'd never seen.
The new PHB was a complete fool with almost no technical knowledge. He lost a lot of my hard-won customers due to cock-ups on his behalf - such as sending his un-trained cousin to a high-profile customer site to do critical maintenance work.
These problems, together with customers migrating to the dark-side and the general down-turn in the quality of the software of our supplier made me quit in early 1999.
I don't know if the company still exists. The web-site hasn't changed in almost 2 years.
Typical tech support response -- evade the question and pass the buck to the customer. You, sire, are part of the problem.
This is an interesting comment. Nine times out of ten, you are the company that sold a piece of hardware/software to my mother/friend/relative and promised it was plug and play and 100% compatible (and inevitably leads to me trying to bail everything out).
Hey, I am sorry your life is tough dealing with people that aren't computer-savvy, but you chose that line of work.
Now, from the perspective of someone who _can_ use a computer with a high degree of cometancy - tech support is getting worse. Everytime I deal with a help desk, it is a nightmare. My cable internet service will have problems - I'll tell the guy, "You're smtp server isn't responding." He asks me to check whether I have File and Print sharing enabled - heh - nope - not using Windows. I repeat myself, he wants to look at DHCP settings. I repeat that I can access every other host I try, but not the smtp server, he says he will put me on hold and elevate the call to a "Level 2". I mean come on! Its like pulling teeth.
I had an issue with a friend's Iomega USB drive and Win2K. Iomega brshes me off as a 'hardware conflict' - ya whatever. The other 3 USB periphs work fine.
My point is simply this: you sold the product, and you are responsible for supporting it. If you don't like it, quit. The majority of techs I deal with, however, are undertrained, underequipped, and not very willing to help. Most of the time I find better help in the newsgroups, and frankly, community based support is a large factor in my use of linux at home.
And if customers are being ill-served, this will be reflected in how people rate Compaq on support. Why don't you do your fellow computer users a favor and put this story on epinions.com? If you have first-hand knowledge of lousy customer service and don't let others know about it, it's like not voting and then bitching about who gets elected.
People ought to understand that the reason a near-identical computer costs significantly more from one dealer than another is at least partly due to additional support. If you opt for a bargain-basement price, you're not going to get much (or perhaps any) support. That's your choice as a consumer. If you buy a cheap computer and then find out you need help with it, you can always find someone who will do it for a fee. And if you get shafted by an "arrogant and greedy" company that promises but doesn't deliver, you have only yourself to blame; with the net, there's no excuse not to research the reputation of the vendor you're considering.
I'd say thats way over the qualification of most people working at
i.e. stream hires people off the street - no qualifications needed.
I know that dell doesn't require a university degree either.
But I suppose that you are right in small to midsize companies - I have no personal experience there
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
There are companies out there that go the extra mile in delivering a quality solution. The two most recent examples that come to my mind are Vividata and Sangoma. Vividata assisted with tuning PostShop to crank out TIFFs an impressive speed that was well beyond it's marketing promises. Sangoma brought out early a very interesting way to run PPP over HDLC using using Linux (this was a year and half ago). Support was stellar and immediate. Not to mention fun being the lunatic fringe.
There are so-so companies out there as well. Pixel translations, Install Shield, and Sun come to mind as OK support. All of them seem to push out support issues on the technicalities.
The worst of the breed are the vendors that won't give you the time of day. The worst of the worst is Kofax. Find a salesman, buy bulk units, purchase support, and they will tell you that you have to buy X toolkit to ask that question. Arrgggghhh! I get angry just thinking about them. Too bad they are almost a monopoly!
A lot of the time I don't think it has much to do with cost. Some of the worst vendors for support have been the most costly.
I think part of the problem is some people expect support to solve all their problems including integration and deployment issues. I cannot stand it when people sit idle waiting for tech support from some vendor to solve their problems for them. It ain't gonna happen if you don't work with them actively. If you haven't read the docs, applied the patches, and RTFM'd get off the freakin' phone lines.
I cannot resist comment on this as well.
Extortionate service contracts are now routinely offered -- special arrangements by which people who spend thousands of dollars on hardware and software spend hundreds more just for "priority access" to get the kind of minimal support that's standard in other businesses, and that ought to be included free with their purchases.
I am sure the vendors offering such contracts would be willing to roll the costs into the product itself. I for one am glad that I don't have to pay for support for all of the clueless "technicians" of the world.
Lastly check out this website, it has nothing to do with the topic but I could use more visitors.
~~ What's stopping you?
After working for a technologically-oriented grad school at a major university, I can empathize with you... I worked with a small team that mainly gave support to a few hundred students and a couple dozen professors, so it was more personalized support. However, we'd always have certain students, or visitors who would come to us 10 minutes before they had to deliver a major presentation and something wasn't working correctly of course. Even after reminding them to test the equipment an hour or two ahead of time to make sure everything is working, it happens over and over.. *sigh* Techs just don't get much respect anywhere, you're there to fix their problems, and fix them fast.
Which is we use scripts:
"I can't connect, I've uninstalled and reinstalled all the software... and it still doesn't work!"
"Is the xdsl modem plugged in?"
"Um no...."
Well, speaking as someone with BA CS who did tech support as my first job out of college, I'll tell you it was a wonderfully enlightening experience.
No, I don't like being yelled at by someone who finally got angry and frustrated enough to actually call Tech Support. You've really got to want help before you'll go through the hell of the voice menu system. Just let'em vent, and get on with their question.
What I did learn was what the users really want. What the problems they are having are. This information is very useful in software development and user interface design.
Maybe I've read too many RTFM/(l)user comments in this thread. The customer is always wrong. But could it be, just possibly, that the products *we* are putting out there suck? Could it be that if you have to RTFM then that means that there might be something wrong with the design?
Sure, computers are complex. Not everything can be done without some training or reading a manual. But if people are buying computers as commodities, or people are trying to use software out of the box without reading the manual, then let's design hardware and software that allows them do that.
I can't begin to count the number of times when faced with a user's problem, I had to say, "Well, it's because Windows was designed like that." A little empathy about the problem. Explain that it could have been, and probably should have been better designed.
We can't put all of blame on (l)users. Sure, some didn't do their homework, aren't safe on the roads, much less with a computer. But at least part of the fault rests with us as software and hardware developers. We're supposed to know better. And we're in the best position to fix the stupid design problems. A little user testing goes a long way to finding problems, folks.
Oh yeah, did I mention that good design is a hard, challenging problem. We can do that. Fix all the most basic design problems. That'll leave the complicated, interesting problems for the Tech Support people, and make their lives more fun.
I think that maybe we ought to look at who is on the front line? Would you work in a customer support situation for $6.95 an hour? How about $7.95? All too often people complain about the lack of support, but fail to realize that there are tons of factors that drive human-beings out of customer support jobs. I hated taking calls from people who never thought of me as a human and started screaming at me for something that wasn't even my personal fault. Consumers need to realize that people work these desks, so that at the end of the day, the last thought that a customer support rep doesn't have is, "I don't need this..."
"Thoughts are more powerful than any weapon, and I don't even let my people own guns." --Joseph Stalin
First of all, in order to train all those people, you would need a lot of techies with people skills to run the classes.
Also, while companies would be able to slightly scale down their helpdesk staff, the people could be kept in place and add value in other ways (such as bug tracking).
A sales person spending an hour with a helpdesk person on a problem that should have been covered in initial training is a Bad Thing. Not only does it tie up a techie who could be doing more valuable work for the company, but it ties up a sales person who could be generating revenue.
If you avoid that kind of down-time by training your people right (and not hiring people who are afraid of the Magic Box on their desks), the benifits will far outweigh the costs. Smart companies have figured that out.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Too many people don't know how to use the tools required to do their jobs.
Bus drivers know how to drive, lumberjacks can operate chainsaws, but our business culture is jam-packed with office secretaries that can't even do a simple "mail merge" with MS-Office.
The companies that think they have the best helpdesks are the ones who invest in proper training for their employees. They sit their new hires down in a class room, and make sure they know the OS and all their common applications.
Companies that don't do this end up with helpdesks that spend 90% of their days training people while they are on the job (usually, when they are 10 minutes from some crucial deadline or another, too). The help desk gets all the heat, but it was short-sighted management that created the problem.
The very best companies put support much higher on the foodchain (and the org chart), and pay their support people accordingly, while insisting that RTFM is not only a valid answer in some situations, but demand that their support people give it when appropriate, so they are not wasting time that could be applied to real problems. Alas, such companies are very rare.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
That's becuase you probably wanted to get the car registered, for which you do need to provide that information. No license tag makes driving a legally dicey endeavor.
My neighbor's kid just bought an old Mustang with money he saved up from mowing yards. He plans on fixing it up over the next year so that when he does get his license, he can have a decent ride. He's 14 years old and he does not even have a learner's permit. He paid the salesman $50 to drive it to his house with the dealer plates on it. Granted, this was from a used lot, but I doubt the law differentiates between used and new dealers.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
owning a car requires a drivers license
Um...no. To buy a car (at least here in the states) you do not need a driver's license. You do not even need insurance. All you need is the money and a birthday at least 18 years ago (less if you have a co-signer). You do need a license and insurance to register your car so you can get a license tag and drive it on the road (legally), but you can legally own a car without a driver's license.
But I agree that the customer has to take some responsibility. But there are (in my opinion) many more cases where the product I buy is not working correctly and I am folloing the instructions. The root cause of this is generally the fact that customer service rep training is usually done after the product is released instead of as the final stages of development. They know all the stupid stuff that people do and also know some not-so-stupid oddball configurations that their customers may use that the development team is not aware of. A company I used to work for could have saved quite a bit, if they had only had their CS people play with it before releasing it.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I totally agree. I heard alot of "You're trouble can be fixed by the so-and-so dept. I'll put a ticket into... huh? Oh, we're not allowed to call them directly... No, sorry. We can't give you thier number either."
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
_that's_ why tech support sucks. because people are too fucking lazy to tell a company to go screw and hurt the bottom line - they'd rather bitch about it on slashdot.
Not entirely true. I tried to deal with Verizon DSL a few months ago. It took them a month and a half to figure out that I am not in thier service area (that was two weeks past my activation date. When asked about the free modem and NIC they sent, I told them that I would be keeping that and I was NOT going to be charged for them because of all the time I wasted with tech support (about 24 hours of my life that I want back, dammit. haha). They agreed to this and credited my account. I also called customer service to at least make a record of my complaint that because of Verizon's poor service that I would never do buisness with Verizon for any other services ever again. And I will send a letter to the joint CEO's of Verizon explaining why I no longer have faith in this company.
The funny thing is that when this company was just known a Bell Atlantic (before they merged with GTE) I never had a problem.
Ok... I'm done complaining...
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Sometimes it helps to look behind the scenes to find out what makes Tech Support suck...
l
r _120100.html
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/12/05/165241.shtm
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/archive/120100/cove
I found it an insightfull read way back when...
YMMv
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
As a former technical support department manager for a certain company in the peripheral business, I can tell you there are certainly two sides to every story. First of all, when you buy a couch, what are you going to call and ask for help on? The correct sitting position? Seriously...
The problem with tech support is that customers abuse it. Yes, thats right, they abuse it. I can't tell you how many calls we took from customers who were simply too lazy to read the manual. They didn't even bother to try and read the instructions. A lot of these people get the product, open the manual to the page with the support phone number, and immediately call for installation guidance. If these people would only make an ATTEMPT at installing it by themself, our company wouldn't have been wasting so much of our time and money helping these people. If we spend more than 30-60 minutes with a customer, then we've just eaten up the profit we've made on the sale to the distributor. Its simply not cost effective to support these people. I routinely instructed my support reps that if a call was going over 30-45 minutes and you weren't getting anywhere, you were to recommend the customer return the product and purchase something else. Maybe thats a bad attitude, but otherwise we were losing money. Its just not worth it. Consumers need to take some responsibility for themselves. Attempt to figure it out yourself first. Don't buy a product that you obviously haven't the faintest clue about. If you're not sure what it does, you don't need it.
So... there are two sides to every story, and you have to understand the great expense that tech support brings to an organization.
Going back to the car analogy, knowing not to delete dlls is like knowing not to pour sugar in the gas tank. these people have been taught that using a piece of equipment with far more nuances and details than a car, should somehow be magic because its "new" and work perfectly. this is patently false and tech support takes the force of this failed assumption. Imagine the tech support at a car company if this were assumed for cars.
<tech> Hello
<user> My car dosen't work
<tech> Did you do anything?
<user> Nothing
<tech> are you sure?
<user> I filled the gas tank, and now it won't work
<tech> With what?
<user> it said it was empty, so i filled it with a hose.
<tech> **stunned silence**
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The coffee god lives!
There's a very good reason why tech support for most companies sucks. Again, speaking as a Greymatta Flambe tech guy, helpdesk and tech support is INCREDIBLY painful. You sit at a desk all day, a little headphone thing digging into your temple, and when the phone rings you get some arrogant person on the other end who thinks it's YOUR fault for:
Not everyone who calls up Tech Support is like that, of course. Just the ones that make you wish you could go postal on them over the phone. And they aren't solitary cases, if you get only one of these "problem users" a week you're lucky.
Another problem is that many computer users have been fooled into thinking that computers can be as easy to understand as their toaster oven, when in reality it's MUCH more complex than their VCR which still has "12:00" flashing on and off. They are indignant when things go wrong -- it's all supposed to be so simple!! Why isn't it working?! Windows is supposed to be easy to use!! -- and they vent it on the poor sod who answers the phone.
After a while, it gets to you.
I am not making an excuse for all the people who are in the trenches and on the phones. If you take a job, you've a responsibility to see it through to the end and do your damndest. But it's hard to do; and after a while of being blamed for everything from bluescreens and thinkly-disguised GPFs, to smoking video cards and buzzing power supplies, you get worn down. You feel beat. You feel like crap because everyone in every tech support call has told you that you are crap.* You want to take an axe to your computer.
You start getting burned out.
Your company isn't any help. "Take more cases!" they shout. "We need to maximize our customer productivity synergy!" (Translation, or at least what jaded IT workers hear: "Work, you scalawags! Kowtow to the customers, they're always right, you scurvy dogs!") You try and try your best, but the smile in your voice sounds a little forced, and you start to loose your patience, and putting a customer on hold is as much to give you a moment to calm down as it is to consult with another helpdesk staffer.
Of course technical support people are falling in droves, and of course tech support statistics show a plummeting quality rate. Tech support people have one of the lousiest service industry jobs on Earth: trying to fix computers which computers designed, with merely human might.
It is the rare person who has the patience of a saint and the optimism of an angel. They're incredibly rare in tech support. Those who are neither do their time until they fry, then they flee, far away; in some cases, they start to make plans to flee as far away from the computer industry as possible. And so the industry looses skilled (but emotionally exhausted) tech workers in droves. It's no wonder tech suport quality is dropping.
A solution? There is none, except to reverse the trend that "Money" Gates and Stevie Jobs Wonder have started. Educate your users in the fact that a computer is insanely complex. Let them know that, these days, computers are designing computers, making the job even harder. If you both have a moment, crack open the case in front of them (preferably a hideously complex case with very delicate-looking and complex circuitry. Dell boards are good for this.) Emphasize that you are not just "the computer guy," and you are not the "local computer expert." You are a support technician, or a helpdesk footslogger. You do not know everything there is to know about computers. Nobody can know everything there is about computers.** In other words... you're just like them: you know your job, you're always trying to learn more, but there's only so much you can do when the component parts of what you work with can only be seen with an electron microscope.
Will it work? For some users. For others, hopefully not the majority, you have to take deep breaths, count to ten, and repeat, over and over again to yourself, I will not be the BOFH, I will not be the BOFH, I will not be... screw it! "What's your user name again, sir, and how much disk space did you need...?"
* Nevermind that these are the only calls which stand out in your mind, much more readilly than the cute-sounding / who thanked you warmly for all your help with sunshine and smiles.
** If you do, it took you a lifetime to learn it all, and you must be dead by now. If you are dead, congraulations! You're the first IT liche!
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Chief Technician, Helpdesk at the End of the World
"I am an Adept of Tantric VAX."
Small claims court. It's easy and cheap. Make that really easy and really cheap... especially if you are in the right. You need the name of a person to make the judgement against, though.
Also, if possible, always pay by credit card. I emailed and emailed MegaPath about a billing problem with no response. Phones had tremendous hold times, so I just called Discover and told them I'm not paying. Discover sends them a letter and they can either a) forget about it and lose the money, pay a $10 fee or b) justify the charges. In any case, I'm not dealing with Discover who always seems happy to talk to me.
Also, once PacBell wasn't sending me money they owed me... must have called them 6 times. Then I got smart and wrote them a letter (address on back of bill). I threatened to contact CPUC if they didn't send my money... got a check in three weeks.
I do the same with complicated customers problems. I work in a helpdesk, I would say 98% of the problems we get are easy to solve but for the remaining 2% I look for the answers in the newsgroups and always find an answer. Customers think I'm a genius, but I simply use the newsgroups :)
Please, this isn't even a good excuse
Tech Support: Ma'am you'll have to re-install Windows
xxx Lady: How do I reinstall Windows ?
Tech Support: You need to use the Windows CD
xxx Lady: Oh I don't have it, some friend installed it for me.
Tech Support: No problem, we'll FedEx you a Win CD asap.
See, Tech Support really isn't that hard.
In my particular circle of friends, I am tech support. The reason is 9 out of 10 times is that those I associate with are just too lazy to empower themselves with the knowledge to solve their own problems. I don't get paid to do this, but they certainly expect me to have the answer. Most of the time, I have to RTFM or go look it up myself. If we apply this same behavior to your average computer company, tech support is inundated with stupid questions ... I'd say the average /. reader can't imagine not reading an FAQ or newsgroup postings pertaining to a particular piece of software before asking a question. I don't think, however, that most people are your average /. reader and I don't think they'll go through such a methodical troubleshooting method before bothering tech support.
The whole thing just makes me tired. The people I work with can't even put their dishes in the dishwasher (it's right next to the sink) how would I ever expect them to solve their own computer/software problems. It seems human behavior dictates that it's just easier to get someone else to do it.
*sigh*
Same here. Except that they often forget, or loose critical information.
For example:
Did it ever work?
When was the last time it worked correctly?
When was the last time you used that product?
What have you installed since it last worked correctly?
What have you changed since the last time it worked correctly?
-- side issue -- funny..
Sent an email to tech support, of a major UPS manufacturer.
It detailed that after brief power outages, units were getting stuck for hours,
in a high voltage charging mode. (bad news, produces explosive gases.. )
I noticed that email message, sat in my outgoing mail box, retrying every few minutes.
... all weekend long!! Monday, it finally got delivered..
They shut email server off, on weekends!!!
Side note: they still haven't responded.
"Gurus of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. And, um, most of your friends. :-) "
Agreed; I work at a few places, an electronics store included. The store I work at does not do any instalations or repairs but we get customers every day that "just don't get it." For example, I had one in-duh-vidual come in and complain that her $15 printing calculator that was purchased nearly a decade ago at a completely different store (and the person knew this...) wouldn't work! If you or I got a car, drove it for 200K+ miles and the trans fell out (I have no clue how it would, but still), it's not like we can go back to the dealor or even the dealor's competitor and demand it be fixed. *sigh* why are too many of the consumers idiots? I also agree on that point of other corps "downsizing and or outsourcing;" the afformentioned corp I work for contracts out to GE for any issues about the product (but they do a good job w/ it)-I still end up doing too much tech support and not enough of my real job.
Macx
Well, I'm probably less computer-saavy than the average /.er, but at least more so than this woman. I know not to randomly delete dll's, or bad things are likely to happen. (I don't recall where I learned this, though.) On the other hand, I don't really comprehend what dll's do. But here's what gets me about this situation: how was this woman supposed to know not to delete dll's? Did the various manuals which came with her computer say, anywhere in them, not to delete dll's? I bet not!
I don't think theres anything in a persons daily life that works correctly without you having knowledge of how to use it.
To a point, yes. But I believe the level of knowledge you are demanding is too high--not only in computers, but also in your car analogy.
In another context, owning a car requires a drivers license.
And the test for the license covers day-to-day safe and legal operation of a car, and not maintenance of that car.
You also have to be aware that regular maintainence is also needed.
Yes, and that fact is spelled out clearly in the owner's manual! So even if you didn't know it before you bought the car, you would know it if you read the owner's manual. No one expects people to innately know that cars require regular maintenance; they have to learn it, at some point. The knowledge cannot be assumed.
Pretty much every guy that is fairly handy can chagnge his own oil/battery/tires or what have you.
Yes, but it's not a prerequisite to owning a car, receiving a driver's license, or even properly maintaining a car.
The use of an automobile has a prerequisite of at least basic automotive knowledge.
Again, to some point, yes, but not to the level you describe. It is not only possible but even common for a person who does not know how to change his own oil or tires to be a good car owner.
I do believe that we can't keep pushing boxes as consumer friendly.
With that, at least, I can agree. So don't blame the poor woman in your story, who was probably told the computer was amazingly easy to use, but the company and/or salesperson who gave her that impression.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
The large majority of adults--wherever they learned it--know not to remove the tires of cars and then try to drive the, or to pull out wires under the hood.
The majority of adults do not know not to delete dll's, but computer manufacturers assume that they do.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
That's a fair point. However, my point is that when the consumer has been deliberately given that impression by the computer company and/or salesperson who sold them the computer, the frustrated tech support person should blame the company and/or salesperson, not the hapless consumer.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Thought I'd share with the community a harrowing tale of Comcast @Home's tech support. I'll try to be brief, like my internet connection. :
:
I've probably made upwards of 40 calls over the past 6 months - it's not that I have any faith in them solving a problem, I just needed to know if there was a service outage in my area. Recent calls go something like this
Me: Can you check if there's a service outage in my area ?
Tech: Yes||No
Phone: <click>
Calls to tech support are invariably useless other than to find out which states are out of service today. Upon one of my calls I was greeted by an automated message that went something like this
Comcast @home customers in Delaware, Maryland, Virgina, West Virgina, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Maine, Rhode Island, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Massachussetts, Vermont, Ohio, Nebraska, New Jersey, and New Hampshire may be experiencing slow to no connection.
Gee, why not just list the few states that DO have service ?
The initial problem I had was eventually narrowed down to the local area wiring being faulty, although tech support insisted (and still does every time I call to bitch) that it's my computer name which causes an intermittent connection. Yes, the netbios name, which although the same for 8 months is apparently the root of all internet connectivity problems. Some of my more memorable quotes from @H Tech support...
It's like a cd, or a cassette tape. After a while the parts just get worn out.
-- Some chick, on why my connection is intermittent
I would suggest manually rebuilding your Tee-Cee-Pee-eye-Pee(said very slowly) stack.
Ehhhh... Lemme get my hammer.
I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
spend hundreds more just for "priority access" to get the kind of minimal support that's standard in other businesses,
what other businesses? when you buy a car, do you call up ford and expect them to teach you how to drive a car? you buy a vcr, do you call the manufacturer and expect them to set the clock for you, and then explain how to install your sattelite dish, and repair your dishwasher? name one company outside of IT and computers, that responds to email or snail mail in 6 to 24 hours? as always you talk from ignorance.
a great deal of the problem, of course, is the fault of the retailer. they happily sell products to consumers, without even a cursory explination as to what it is, much less how to use it, or hook it up. but it really comes down to money and ignorance on the part of the consumer. the bulk of tech support calls are operational questions, or failures due to abuse, missuse, installation of incompatible software, and a complete missunderstanding as to what the product does, and was meant to do.
and if you haven't noticed, most tech and IT companies aren't turning a profit. why, because most consumers aren't willing to pay the real costs of the goods and services they recieve. tech support is expensive, the average tech support agent makes between $10 and $20 per hour, and is expected to have the expertise of a computer service person or computer consultant who makes $50 to $100 per hour, so to achieve this, the company spends another $10 to $20 per hour per tech in support systems to make the techs job possible. the average tech support call is 30 minutes to an hour. the average consumer who requires tech support, makes 10 to 15 calls over the life time of their product or service, over $500 worth of tech support. This is why Dell, who figures support costs into their product, can afford to offer top noch tech support. it is also why a Dell computer cost twice what other competeing products do. as i said before, you get what you pay for.
Have you always used your (favorite app/device) in the intended (designed) fashion? I didn't THINK so...
Not the Beatles (TM)
Jump to Tech Tales
I have done support for a while (a long time ago, in a place far, far away). It doesn't matter how good your product is. People WILL go 'stupid' on you.
No software is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious
-----------
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
I'm sure that's part of it, but I think the real issue is that it's just not a priority for the companies involved. You're absolutely right, who wants to work in customer service for a living? But there are plenty of industries where they are able to staff support services with helpful, cheerful people, and there are some companies in this industry that do it--Dell comes to mind as a place I've called and never gotten a grumpy or flat-out dis-interested rep. It's not just the staff--it's the people who ought to be motivating them.
I think it's more symptomatic of the software life cycle than anything; in my experience, hardware manufacturers tend to provide better support (Dell, IBM) than software makers. My take on this would be that it is because hardware (especially big ticket items) last longer and are more likely to be replaced by a similar model from the same company. People tend to stick with what they like. Software, OTOH, is probably up for replacement in a year or two, and the publisher would rather sink money into marketing the new product than supporting the old.
No relation to Happy Monkey
If everyone *did* know how to properly use their PCs, you and I probably would be out of a job.
1)Some people that are the worst offenders of getting pissed off at tech support are the people that have no business owning a computer. There are lots of people that buy a computer not knowing what they even need one for.
2)If there were someway to convince PC owners to dig deeper into solving problems before calling their manufacturer for help then there would be better support (not as many people clogging the lines.)
-JJS
I used to find myself in the position of being a guru to friends, family, and neighbours. I'm very reluctant to do so now.
The big problem is complexity, as a lot of other posters have pointed out. Hardware is sourced from all over the place; the system manufacturers go for the bits that give them the biggest margins, and damn the quality of the accompanying documentation and drivers. Then there's the software. A lot of modern software is unforgivably arrogant, sending its tentacles into parts of the system that it has no business going near and demanding the lion's share of the computer's resources. The result is machines that are constantly teetering on the brink of meltdown.
Now, I'm in this business because I like messing about with computers, but I got sick to the back teeth of sitting in friends' and neighbours' bedrooms, interminably rebooting their balky machines, hunting for drivers, and re-installing Windows, while the person I'm supposedly doing the favour for hovers over my shoulder, sending out vibes that this is all somehow my fault. Eventually, I had to stop. It wasn't worth the heartache.
What pisses me off about the whole thing is that people like me are in a way responsible for this whole cock-up. We're the early adopters who played with the first personal computers in the '80s and told anyone who would listen that computers were The Next Big Thing. It was our evangelism that made the fortunes of companies like Microsoft and IBM. And it is our unpaid tech support, in our roles as gurus, that sustains their fortunes. Think about it: each time you unwedge your next-door neighbour's Windows box, that's one less irate customer onto Microsoft or Corel or IBM, flaming them for the fragile, barely-usable crud they have been inflicting on customers for years. Of course, the execs of these companies have built themselves a nice thick insulating layer of minimum-wage phone jockeys between themselves and their customers so they never have to listen to the anguish.
So, if any friends, neighbours, or relatives ask me to look at their computers anymore, I decline politely. If they persist, I ask to be paid. People do get snotty at that, but I'm fucked if I'm going to let the assholes in Microsoft or Compaq off the hook by providing free technical support for their customers.
Gurus of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. And, um, most of your friends. :-)
Hi. I do phone support for the RCN Corporation's cable modem and dial-up customers. RCN bought out Erol's Internet a few years ago, split some of it's market with Pepco's Starpower, and now offers service from Maine to North Carolina, and in California.
Phone tech support jobs are rough because you're the only outlet for customers to vent about corporate policies and decisions that you have no control over. Besides that, most of the people who call are ignorant about computers. Though this Jupiter report says tech support is getting worse, they don't mention the fact that PC sales are exploding and newbies join the Internet each day. And, believe me, many of these people are IG-NANT! They don't know the difference between a banner ad that looks like a Window's pop-up and a Window's pop-up. Some don't even realize that you have to turn on a cable modem for it to work. Others lie through the entire call in an effort to get you to help them with something we don't support. Most customers are great, but it's the bad ones that make the job tough.
Another phenomena of tech support is callers who are insane. I'm not kidding. We get calls from about a dozen individuals who are certifiable. I think they are so lonely that they use the tech support 800 number as a lifeline to another human being.
The Jupiter report really bashes tech support, but at RCN I can honestly say it's good. We're open 24/7, give full refunds for documented outages, and have a large, competent staff. The only thing that's aggravating about working there is a weird policy that requires techs to use a program called 'Primus solutions explorer' during EVERY call. This is supposedly to 'ensure' that the tech is using the right solution. Well, if you've taken over 81,000 tech calls like I have, you have every possible solution stored in your brain, or you know how to find it. The Primus requirement came about because the former manager's boyfriend was the head Primus developer. Since no one used his product his job was in jeopardy, until it became a pointless requirement.
(Sigh) Does this type of stupidity happen in all corporations?
-- Taibunsuu
No, this is why tech support people suck -
.dll is, this makes them smarter than everyone else. They aren't. The customers just haven't invested the time and money into knowing what the tech support people know. And many times, it is a waste of their time. Hire someone to do the work for them.
The fact is, computer users aren't retarded. When I go to a doctor, lawyer, engineer, plumber, whatever, they don't expect me to know what they do. But they know their fields. Computers are not their field. Do you think after you get a cavity filled and leave the dentists office the dentist says "What a retard, he couldn't fix his own problem, and is completely dental illiterate." No, of course not. But most tech support people I have met do just that. They equate intelligence with computer knowledge. While they can't perform surgery, or fix a simple pipe leak, somehow, because they know what a
The customers aren't retarted, the tech support and their elitist attitudes, they are the real retards.
In the case of Home Depot, I find you get both low prices and good service. Home Depot is one of those companies that go out of their way to hire good people. They direct their advertising towards them and pay enough to make it an option. Sure they hire plenty kids to stock shelves and ring the registers, but the odds are also very good that if you have a question there's someone in the store with real, working experience in the area you're asking about.
This. This is why tech support sucks.
Nearly all the argumets have been thrashed at this point ut it appears these something missing. I've been in tech support (as one part of my job) for almost 5 years. A huge part of the problem could be removed if the salesman had a different attitude. I've worked with one guy who you could ask if the PC will make the tea for you and he would say yes. Why? Because A. they want/need the sale for their commission and B. they wont be the poor bastard installing it, taking the flak because it wont make the tea and then supporting thereafter a guy who aint happy with you. Salepeople need to explain fully to a customer what a computer will and wont do (preferably after finding out what the customer wants to do with it) and going into detail with the inevitable "yes you can do this but youll need to buy xyz before hand". They also need to explain what is covered under support and what isnt (once you've helped with something you dont support youll always have to do it, especially if the other companys support it pants). The reason they dont is that this takes too much time (in their eyes) and can potentially lose the sale. I believe resellers get shit on the worst because we are caught between the customer and the supplier/manufacturer. First you get the vague "it doesnt work" story (worse with corporates because they cant make money if they cant work and they really dont want to be speaking to you, they WANT you to drop everything right there and go fix it immediately, let alone you talking them through stuff) but then you get shafted by the manufacturer/supplier. "That'll be a problem with " The number of times our biggest client has reported email problems, we check the systems and its fine, so we ring Demon Internet. Demon say "No problems on our system" we scratch heads for days, get more flak from the client, pull random bits of the system apart looking for problems, then a few days later, miraculacly it all works, and then you see a little note on the status page of Demons web site saying they have now finished their upgrade. WHAT BLOODY UPGRADE! The other one I like is the "We dont have any problems reported"!!!! So, err, then what am I doing if not reporting one? Makes you wonder how they ever acept that there is a problem. The other thing I cant get round is how he thinks Dell are good. I have NEVER had a good support experience with Dell (UK). Once I called on behalf of a client (the Dell guy didnt know I was an engineer) the support guy asked me (when diagnosing a memory problem, that I had already run the diags on and found a memory fault, AND told him this) to take SIMMS out of another users PC. If this isnt bad enough, no mention was made about grounding myself or handling the chips by the edges! In 5 years I have no faith in Demon of Dell. This was before we got to the Dell "download the latest diags from the web site" Me: "Err the client doesnt have internet access" Dell"cant you donwload them from somewhere else?" Me: "No my office is 80 miles away, whats wrong with the diagnostics the unit shipped with?" Dell: "They might be out of date now" Me: "Why would they be, the PC hasnt changed!!!!!" repeat ad nausium
....but all they found there was a man who repeatedly said that nothing was true, but was later found to be lying.
When I called Dell's "hardware" division for help, I spoke to someone who was (obviously) reading directly from their webpage. He blatantly refused to listen to anything I had to say (I'd already ruled several potential causes of the problem out) and wasn't able to answer several of my moderately-technical questions. He eventually told me I was in the wrong place (because "networking involved Windows"), and transfered me to "software". When I mentioned (as nicely as I could) to the tech that I was connected with there that the person I had just been speaking with didn't seem to be very competent in his field, he got insulted and became very tight-lipped about trying to solve my problem. When I asked to speak to his supervisor, he hung up on me.
The whole experience reminded me of when I called to apply for my first credit card. I asked for a more detailed explanation of the APR from the service rep. and she said "We don't have that information. We can only read the sheet that we're given.". While this was mildly amusing to hear from Visa (I, of course, took my business elsewhere), I think Dell and IT companies in general need to excercise a little more selectivity in hiring their support people. If they have to train a candidate for the job, then they'd be better off finding someone else to fill the spot.
There is nothing like talking to someone with a salary twice your own, who can't follow directions knowing that you could do their job.
Seriously, I've solved a lot more problems in my career by searching the 'Net than by calling any phone numbers. And I bet most /. readers have similar experiences. The geek community already supports itself better than any helpdesk could hope to achieve.
Of course, we don't represent the typical case here, either. The ordinary home user wants real, live, effective human support. I'm just not sure how they're going to get it. I don't see the industry changing its tech support ways any time soon.
where there's fish, there's cats
I think the blame here is mislaid.
Manufacturers' support is usually very, very good. It's the resellers that provide the bad support. Lots of OEMs are required to provide support for Windows because they preinstall it. This is where the support goes to hell. Think Best Buy. Think Office Max. Have you ever known anyone who's had a pleasant experience with Best Buy's customer service? If you buy a system from them, you have to go to them for support. If you buy a system, say, direct from Dell, guess what? Dell's support is phenomenal!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
The ordinary home user wants real, live, effective human support. I'm just not sure how they're going to get it.
by not screaming incoherently at the tech support for the wrong product?
--saint----
It's a rather arrogant, elitist attitude, wouldn't you agree?
i would characterize it more as "heartless" than elitist. but i think jon was implying that this is on the part of tech support. it's not. for one thing, you've probably never actually talked to someone who worked for the company whose product they support - outsourcing is the norm. for another, techs on the phones tend to _like_ the customer and want to fix their problems. its the parent company whose product we have to support that is so "arrogant."
nothing used to make me happier than actually fixing a customer - but it was so goddamned difficult most of the time to get the parent company to admit anything was wrong that it was almost impossible. i lay any charge or arrogance squarely at their feet.
--saint----
The funny thing is that when this company was just known a Bell Atlantic (before they merged with GTE) I never had a problem.
and if the slightest nod toward planning the future corporation's organization had been in the works last year, you'd still never have a problem.
unfortunately, the needs of the customer have taken a back seat (if not put in the next car back) while the directors and managers fight for their jobs. real pretty.
--saint----
The cost of DSL should be raised to include paying for competent tech support.
yeah. i hear northpoint's support was great.
so was covad's, before they pulled completely out of buffalo due to lack of customers.
i recognize that there was more going on there, but you get my point. as so many others have already pointed out in this thread, people are cheap and dumb and won't pay extra for something intangible and that they might not need. quality tech support as a surcharge is up there with "extended warranties" that the twit at best buy keeps trying to sell me every time i buy a mouse to most people.
--saint----
That's because we're arrogant enough to assume our products are usable without support, and elitist enough to not care whether the people who need support get it or not.
no, it's because companies are cheap, and don't see customers as people. rather, they are simply a number at the bottom of an excel spreadsheet somewhere. the quality of the service doesn't matter, it's how low you can bring the end user price to sucker them in.
case in point...
i used to do Verizon DSL tech support. It was a miserable, thankless job. the day after our 500,000th customer signed up, the entire call center i worked in was laid off. why? because we had the highest-priced, best trained techs in their support hierarchy. but now that there's half a million customers, the service doesn't count any more. no matter how many cancel the service, they've achieved a critical mass that keeps them from losing money as long as they can keep suckering people in with the low monthly price.
and as long as they can pay undertrained phone monkeys half what they paid us, the monthly price stays low.
_that's_ why tech support sucks. because people are too fucking lazy to tell a company to go screw and hurt the bottom line - they'd rather bitch about it on slashdot.
--saint----
That worked fine when the people doing it were tech-savvy or capable of getting that way, you saved money by doing your own tech support (reading FAQ's, running diagnostics, actually picking up a screwdriver or fiddling with your DIN switches). You were either computer literate, got that way in a hurry, or at least knew somebody that was. Now we're getting "ordinary consumers", who expect rock-bottom prices *and* somebody to hold their hand.
You can't have it both ways. We're going to wind up splitting the industry down the middle, one market for the digerati and one for the hoi polloi. The split may not be formal, but it's already there: Show of hands, whose computer contains mostly OEM parts? I've "upgraded" my current system to the point that the only original parts are the frame and the reset button.
You want service, be prepared to pay for it.
--Dave Rickey
I work in support at an embedded technology company and have worked in a number of support positions over the last few years. I'd just like to point out the huge difference between tech support for Joe user and tech support for other techies.
;-)
For a while I was working at a major east coast university supporting their Human Resources Database. This software was used by several thousand users across campus, most of whom were barely computer literate, and it didn't help matters that the management at the University forced the programmers to relase the software before it was ready.
I spent most of my time answering the same 10-12 questions over and over again to the same 15% of the users. Needless to say, I didn't stay there long.
I now work with engineers on various projects involving embedded computers. I get to chat with folks from NASA to Joe hobbyist about everything from embedded color frame grabbers to the latest in car MP3 players. The main difference is now I have creative people who have creative problems. I enjoy dealing with challenges that require more brain power than the crap I was dealing with before.
Certainly as more people get involved in technology tech support is going to get harder (esp. if companies refuse to invest the money and effort involved to train people correctly). But to lump all tech support into one cubbyhole is a mistake-- Some of us are good at it and enjoy it
"I guess I just have this incredible urge to chronicle human folly."-- Hughie from Still Crazy
> So you finally admit that Japanese cars are better?
Sir (or madam), what the hell are you talking about? Sheldon said nothing about Japanese cars. The VW Beetle was built by Volkswagen, a German company, and he didn't specify who made his new car, which could very well be a Ford.
Looks like you're going back to rec.autos.driving after all.
Virg
Oh, come now, you don't think it's a stretch trolling me because I didn't go to this guy's home page in the hopes of finding out what kind of car he drives? It's not like many people put this kind of info on their home page, he didn't make any mention in his post as to what car he drove, and if I stepped into an inside joke, there wasn't any easy way for me to know.
Virg
> Where I come from, dotcoms are desperate for programmers
> and would never even consider throwing someone that actually
> has a degree into the tech-support pit.
Maybe the reason why tech support really sucks is because companies consider it "throwing someone into the tech-support pit". It never seems to cross anyone's mind that it's possible to find people who like to do tech support (I've been doing it for seven years, I have no desire to get out of it, and I'm paid more than the programmers because my longevity is valuable). If you take the time to find people who like the environment, then work to make the environment likeable as well (good management and decent pay and such), it's easy to get and keep good tech support reps. The problem stems from companies that seem to go out of their way to make tech support departments suck, and then they wonder why they can't get good help. It's not easy to build a good attitude on your help desk, but it's possible (our company lives and dies by its tech support so it's a big priority here), and the difference it makes in the service level our customers get is phenomenal.
Virg
While we are on the subject.... I have had excellent support from AOL-Time Warner's Road Runner service. The wait times for a knowledgeable and polite rep are negligible and they are willing to spend money in the form of free service to earn a customer's good will and make up for a genuine error on their own part. Although, I have heard that this wasn't always true for them, but I am only recently subscribed and can only speak for my experiences.
The customer service numbers are 1-800-821-7250 and 1-800-595-9003. Both of these numbers will have a menu option that leads to Road Runner tech support in an expedient fashion.
A couple of years ago I worked as a phone support rep for an outsourcing phone support company. Their whole attitude was about getting the call done as fast as possible; usually in under four minutes for questiions related to a certain SCSI card they supported, for example. The managers also tried to shift cost and blame onto customers who were often in the right. Such as telling someone who didn't even order the card to just ship it back. Well, I usually advocated for the customer in instances like this. If a company told me to ship a product back at my expense that I didn't even order, I'd tell them to get bent, and then I would keep it. Also, my managers loved to say "no", it didn't matter how reasonable a customers request, because our "real" customer was the card manufacturer or whom ever elses product we were handling. They didn't give the least bit of a crap about the end user. Because of the pressure to get calls done quick, most of the phone reps with whom I worked would pass complicated calls that they could otherwise handle to keep their call time down. Often, I would get a customer who had been told to hang up and call back a half dozen times. They would usually not be happy, and rightfully so.
Of course, let's not forget money, after all that's what drives these companies. From the cheap underhanded customer service policy I described above to the low pay and wretched working conditions for the phone reps, they have taken care of their financial interests.
StoneWolf
I use to work in Tech Support. A possible reason why the sharp incline in the companies that never responded to their email is probably because the email they sent was ignored completely. Why? Lemme tell ya, if the email queue had more than 2 or 3 (which it always was of course) in it, then seeing the words "survey" or "take a minute and...", etc, were deleted like most other spam messages that are usually triggered by such keywords. I was usually, and actually, too busy to respond to such things anyways--even if I had read the entire thing. If it wasn't a legit question or concern from a client or potential client, then out it went.
You've got to be kidding. SCHEMATICS?!? I don't know of a single person who can read a schematic, never mind know what to do with it. No, source code is NOT the answer. People buy products like software to make their lives easier. You should NOT have to be a developer to use basic Office products. That's defeating the purpose of buying software. You should buy the product, and it should work, period. So, I assume that you also think that every car sold should come with the schematics and the source code for the computer, so if something goes wrong by the side of the road, you can just plug in your car engine analyzer and go to town? Come on now. Think for just a minute. Please.
Hint: It ain't the guys with the good support or the best price. It's the guys with the big ad budget.
mod this guy up
And this is why we have shitty software, OS's, hardware and tech support. MS pushed themselves all over the place-- just look at those adds of those servers running "24 hours a day, 7 days a week with no downtime". They don't run that way, but hey, tell a few lies, and people will buy your shit hook line and sinker.
Society in America is about 'keeping up with the jones's'. I hear of success of other OS's in other countries, probably because they are more concerned about getting the most for the best price.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
"...both in terms of what's smart and what's right.."
I would agree that good tech support is the moral thing to do, but the way our markets work, it's not necessarily the smart thing to do.
If you can get consumers to buy something that has no warranty that it will work and that you don't really have to fix if it doesn't work, you've spent less money to get your product to market and stand to make more profit.
The market doesn't care too much about quality. If it did, do you think Word would have won the word-processing wars against WordPerfect? (Remember, when the WordPerfect Corporation owned it, you had unlimited free tech support?)
For example: while working for a computer products distributor, we rarely had the actual specs sheets of new products available to us to answer customers' questions. Licensing issues were also hell for me (especially MS's licensing crap)
As tech support for a laptop company, we only had a handful of the actual machines on the floor, so we mostly had to resort to pretty pictures and technotes from the tech database to resolve problems, and the old workstations only running OS/2 weren't very helpful!
AC comments get piped to
Nowadays documentation is written to be user friendly which means:
1: Don't offend your customers by telling them they need to know how to turn on their system befire they start. and
2: Don't discuss advanced topics that might confuse them.
Computers have become very patronizing to their user friends....
I am the first to say that interfaces need to be understandable, but I also think that by treating our users as intelligent human beings, we encourage them to learn more and feel like they can learn more. Also learning the patterns helps people understand what is going on-- knowing why is more important than knowing how.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Problems actually concerning the product can be solved with comparitive ease.
Ever listen to a group of females talking about lipstick? They have a million questions, comments, suggestions, criticisms, all as much about them as the product, and this is all treated as vitally important stuff.
Computers and cosmetics have this in common, only over centuries more time, women have evolved a socially-complex method of finding solutions from their mothers, close friends, co-workers or whatever. With computing though, calling techsupport has begun to take on it's own form of cultural roleplay.
I don't know if support will remain this way always or what to do about it, but I suspect a long time, as long as customers are prompted to telephone motivated by things like: "I want to do a spreadsheet that beats the one the guy across the hall is doing" or "I want a LAN because I'm too dumb to do tape backups" (which information they never volunteer either)
The fact that the product is working is immaterial with this type of call, and the caller may not even be paying attention, or may get annoyed when you try to discuss it. They want personal triumph by proxy.
Then compound the problem by metering technicians by how many "repairs" they resolve per hour/day/week, response time, queue count and all that.
My first prize goes to an email i recieved from a user complaining they couldn't send email. I've been scratching my head about that one (and telling the story) for years.
give me a
The answer to all of this is to use sharp objects to get managers' eyes off of the "metrics" they're using and get their minds wrapped around the idea that the people answering the phone must first sound knowledgable, and second be knowledgable, and be capable of fixing the problem. That is all someone calling tech support wants. They do not want to hear that industry standard metrics are being applied to their problem, they want to hear that it's quick and easy to fix.
How would they do this? Well maybe they could start by training the help desk personnel to be an IQ point smarter than a bucket of mud. Then they could try giving them an encouraging environment to work in, where they are mentored by 3rd level techs who already know how it works. Then they could try paying them more than slave's wages. Then they could try giving them a path for advancement if they do well. All of this would require effort and investment on the corporations' and managments' parts, and until they're willing to do that help desks will always suck.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
ahhh .. I see you used to work for @home too.
.. says they will fire you if you are either 1 min early or late logging into your phone.
gotta love when the company who used to give you unlimited overtime
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
I have to say, I've seen both ends of this. I deal on a daily basis with people with an incredibly diverse range of experience as well as problems. Sometimes, I get the impression that the person on the other end of the line actually knows a hell of a lot more about their computer than I do (one can only hope), while other times my job is to patiently explain to someone where the start menu on their winbox is, and what they can do with it.
Of course I have occasion to deal with people who really have complaining and abuse as their goal for calling. But that's the way it is. You either get off the phone, or forward the call to your boss, whether or not your boss wants to deal with it. Fact is, it beats the hell out of flipping burgers, which is sole income for a startling number of CS grads these days.
I've also been on the other side of the phone line. I remember once spending (I timed this) one hour and fifteen minutes on the clock listening to the hold music at a certain company which makes little NAT routers for your desktop box. When I finally did reach a rep, he sounded seriously ready to go postal. Although I did my best to remain courteous while not letting him blow me off, which is what he wanted to do, he finally ended up saying, "Here's how you fix the problem," and hung up the phone. Wow. I guess that's why some people become lumberjacks, truck drivers, and server admins: so they don't have to deal with human beings with all our annoying humanity.
At any rate, my personal take on the issue of tech support is that it really does come from the top down: when I had to wait for all that time on hold, you can guess that's because the (Unmentionable, but their products can Network Everywhere) company didn't put enough priority into tech support, despite the fact that the box ballyhooed the "24/7" tech support I was entitled to by buying the product. That guy probably was at his wits end. Maybe if he actually had time to deal with one call completely without having to watch all those lights blink on his phone, maybe if he actually knew what he was talking about (he didn't), maybe then he would have been able to actually answer what turned out to be a really simple question.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Jon, it's nice to see that you're so up in arms about the poor state of customer service in the computer industry, but you shouldn't blame the industry. Blame yourself, and all other consumers? Why? Because Americans buy whatever is cheapest. You might say, "Not that's not me! I care about quality! I'd pay twice as much for something if I got good tech support!" But even if you would, you're not MOST Americans. We're concerned about the bottom line, period. Since whoevert is cheapest "wins" in the computer industry, naturally companies like to minimize or even eliminate their tech support costs. Look at how much software is essentually totally unsupported nowadays. All of this is done to keep costs, and by extension, prices down. This isn't just a "problem" in the computer industry. It's everywhere. Remember when you had cheerful attendants at the gas station who would pump your gas? Cost. Remember when you had people who would take your grocries to the car? Cost. Some time ago, American companies realized that Americans wanted low prices more that they wanted good customer service. YOu want giod customer service? You have to pay for it. You might notice that I keep mentioning "American". That's because it isn't the same in Europe. Customer service all around is better for products you buy there. Of course, everything is more expensive too. And it's beginning to change as European consumers become more globalized and cost-conscious. So in short: Things are cheap because customer support is bad. YOu want good customer support, pay for it.
In short, the computer industry needs to think about what it wants. Does it want very powerful programs? If so, then these cannot, by their very nature, be used without some form of training (either training in computers in general, training on the product, or both). Is the computer industry friendly to the computer illiterate (and thus, plans on spending a lot more on tech support), or does it assume a certain degree of competency.
Maybe the computer industry just needs marketing to talk to the software engineers and vice versa....
Did you really need to tie up a tech support line for that? Did you do anything to your computer? Did your modem work before? Is it broadband (which is unreliable at best)? Well then, guess what, I'm quite sure there's a problem with their network. Wait till tomorrow and try again. See, that's one reason why tech support lines are always busy...you know the answer, so why call (and then bitch about it)?
..., in my opinion is this: the tech support people really don't want to be there. The average tech support worker is a geek starting at the lowest rung of the organization. He really wants to be up there coding or designing hardware, but he's stuck dealing with idiots (from his perspective). With that factor in place, it is almost a given that tech support will suck.
Although the tech support employees may be the immediate cause of the complaints, I think the fault should rest on the shoulders of the company itself.
Unless the company is in the business of selling service (instead of software), tech support is just a waste of money for the company. The company has your money, so why should it waste time solving your problem? Especially if the company has a large share of a specific niche and has locked the user in with its proprietary formats. (Btw, this is why windows sucks. It doesn't have any *real* competition in the consumer OS market. No, Apple isn't competition, it doesn't have enough games for Joe Consumer.)
Now I've never worked tech support, but I did a year in the computer services department of my college, where I was expected to help students and staff, and most of the problems that were brought to me were easily fixed. I'm guessing that most technical support questions, especially for software aimed at the average user, are as easily solved, especially when you consider that a company might be supporting a few products, and will probably have a large enough staff to train specific people in specific products. Of course, this assumes the company wants to spend extra money to support its products...
Speaking to non-consumer tech support (home-user tech support is another story) I think the paradigm is fundamentally flawed. In a typical model the end users have scads of technology foisted on them, "Here these are TOOLS!" and the only bridge they're given between themselves and the people who buy, install, support and maintain the technology is a phone number. This is ludicrous. 2000 odd people all with different business needs, different software, different technology skill levels, all given the phone number of 10 poor sods in another city is never going to work. What our entire industry needs IMHO is a class of IT professional who works closely with the business group. For the sake of biz-speak let's give it the moniker 'Technologist'. (I'm currently in a very similar position so yes I'm biased and will inadvertently toot my own horn here - no apologies). The technologist knows his people - maybe up to 100 of them. Knows that no matter how much the Help Desk complains, an accountant, sales rep, HR, MBA person has enough manuals to 'RTFM' much less the one for configuring IE JavaScript security.. ad nauseum. So the technologist is a BRIDGE between the sysadmins, the help desk, and the end users. The 'Technologist' reports to a NON-Technical manager who is primarily the manager of the department at hand - e.g. Sales. Not only does the 'Technologist' function as a facilitator, but the technologist is also responsible for getting the most out of all the tools for each end-user and business process. "Can this be done more easily?" "With cheaper tools?" "Where do my users need training?" While I'm certainly biased I probably have the happiest group of end-users our Fortune 100 parent company has ever seen. Our 65 or so people generate about 1 help desk call per month, and its from me because I consolidate and facilitate calls. Also, I know that 'Joe' should be burning stuff to CD instead of printing it out in reams, that 'Bob' could get a lot of use out of 2 simple tricks in Excel, that our salespeople are being "one-upped" in the field by spiffy new Viaos, that 3 unstable client apps can be replaced by a VPN and a browser, etc. The 'Technologist' may also train users on specific skills that help them with their job at hand - "Share your calendar, use a public email folder - here's how, let me SHOW YOU, not only how but why you'd want to"
In short, on a good day I give them all that end-users, and thus a business, could reasonably expect from technology. In return we have wonderfully proficient end-users eagerly improving themselves every day, we do more business with less and less people, have higher moral, have almost no need of a help desk, pay only for technology that provides ROI, AND I trained them to hate chain mail. woohoo! (hint:use reverse psych.) There is nothing miraculous in this other than mgmt actually seeing the need for "competitive use of technology" and creating a position that gives an ex help desk guy ACTUAL power.
I wonder how many other businesses/ departments etc. would benefit from a technology generalist w/ decision making power who works for the [GASP!] end-user? Tech support won't get much better until it gets much different.
That's funny--looks to me like almost every business survives this way. Take some examples:
A well-known automaker (rhymes with "gourd") refuses to redesign an ignition module found on nearly every fuel injected vehicle they've ever made, even though it has left hundreds of thousands of customers stranded by the roadside at one time or another.
California Department of Motor Vehicles has a website with common forms in PDF format, but you still have to print them out, fill them in and mail them. If you take them to the local DMV for faster processing (har!), they just stuff them in an envelope and send them to Sacramento anyway. In my area, the wait on hold for the DMV is never less than 15 minutes, and the line for registration at the two local offices is never less than 90 minutes.
A well-known airline continues to overbook flights into and out of Ontario CA, well aware that the flight is going to be late or possibly cancelled. When you complain, they will look you square in the eye and blame it on weather in Phoenix.
A very well-known electronics store in SoCal (rhymes with "dries") will send you through two long lines to turn in a warranted monitor and pick up a loaner. Your credit card number will be recorded on a menacing piece of paper threatening to charge you four figures if you don't return it. When your monitor is ready (+1 week), you will be sent back through two more lines to turn in the loaner and get your monitor back. The whole process will be over an hour each way. Oh, and your original problem won't be fixed, but you'll be too discouraged to go back through that line again.
You don't have to buy a "Wingtek" motherboard that has no phone numbers or addresses on the box or manual (other than just "Taiwan, ROC".) There _are_ companies that offer quality goods and support--you just have to be willing to pay more.
I don't think the article is saying that all you tech support cronies better start changing your ways and fly straight. It's complaining about a system that thinks it is acceptable to treat tech support guys this way. Obviously if the job paid substantially more there would be a higher quality of product; both because the employees would be happier and the company would be able to hire a higher quality of employee. No offence intended.
I've had to deal with micronpc, Dell, HP, several software companies (Cadence, Mentor AND Valor) in the past month or two, and they *all* responded quickly and, more to the point, their advice was always spot-on. I've had nearly 0 wait time on hold, the longest was maybe 5 minutes.
Display some adaptability.
Being in the Tech Support area at a major software company I thought I'd share my 2 cents. Our company consists of 32 total employees. The largest single department in our company is the Tech Support/QA department (Every TS Rep also does QA). By integrating the two departments we guarantee that any and all Tech Support rep needs to have a very good working knowledge of the product, since it's on our shoulders to test every aspect of the product. I'm in charge of answering all incoming phone support for our Windows platform (our product sells in both Mac and Windows versions), and we generally deal with developers. When I answer the phone I don't even ask for serial number to verify that the person on the other end is in fact a paying customer. I don't have to because I'm knowledgable enough to be able to answer any question with a minimal amount of effort, and that means that I can easily manage the call volume and still leave room for 'Non-paying' customers. This equals out to superior technical support, more appreciative customers, and over all more business for the company. So lets review what we've learned here: Combining the QA department with the TS department guarantees knowledgable staff, higher pay and a more cost effective solution for the company. Higher pay equates to happier workers. Knowledgable workers equal out to more work done in a day. Add to this situation that we mostly deal with intelligent customers (developers), and we VERY seldom have upset customers, and if a customer is upset, it's not because of Tech Support. Maybe more small software companies should think about this model...
Hell, I work at the local Mom and Pop computer store. Some of the questions I get make me want to vomit.
Phone Transcript:
Caller: "I need a new tower."
Me: "OK, with or without a power supply?"
C: "I don't know. One that can get on the Internet."
M: "You'll need a new computer to do that, or at least a modem."
C: "I don't need a new computer, I just need a tower that can get on the Internet."
He actually hung up after I told him that you need an entire computer to get on the internet, not just an empty tower.
And another (brief synopsis):
A guy called needing to change the diplay settings in Windows. Everything was "really large"(i.e. 640x480). Well, I walked him through the menus to where you change the settings, and he was zipping right along. Once he got there, I told him to just slide the bar over, hit Apply, andd he'd be good. Ten minutes later: "I've been tilting my monitor to the side for about ten minutes, and the bar just won't slide!"
Somedays.... *sigh*
Whatever floats your boat. In my case, that would be a sea full of Mercury.
OK, let's sum it up in several ways:
1. Margins on hardware are extremely thin. So thin, in fact, that a single 1-hour tech support call to a vendor can often wipe out all of the profit in a given sale. Add up the cost of having to have a knowledgable person on the other end of the phone for that hour, the cost of the phone for that hour, that desk and cubicle, the software that tracks trouble tickets, etc. It's really quite expensive to offer tech support.
2. In order to save money, less scrupulous vendors will hire less knowledgable (and therefore cheaper) support staff. Or they'll hire fewer of them, causing long wait times in the queues.
3. Because of item number 2, knowledgable and skilled support workers are more scarce. Those who are good get promoted out of it or they are only using it to get some experience in the industry and quickly move on to better jobs. This causes even more headaches.
4. Customers (consumers) are always looking for something for nothing, or the best deal they can possibly get. So they tend to favor vendors with the lowest prices over vendors with equivalent products but higher prices (and usually better support). Then they complain because they don't feel that they're getting proper support. But they still continue to feed situations 1, 2, and 3.
5. Consumers are stupid. Period. 95% of them can't tell you what they've done or what's wrong or what's not working. All they can say is, "It doesn't work." Even in a business environment I get people who tell me, "I plugged that one cable into the thing on the side of the computer where it looks like it fits but it won't sync." OK...could you possibly be any more vague? Do you really expect that I can help you when that's all that you give me to go on? Why would you possibly consider calling for support without a serial number or a product model number? How can someone be expected to diagnose a problem with a unit when they don't even know what the unit is?
Consumers buy complex systems and components without even stopping to think if there might be compatibility issues, let alone support for those issues. Yet the same people wouldn't think of buying a car without doing some research on the car or dealer first. And we all know that a computer is many times more complicated than a car, don't we?
People expect the same level of customer service when buying a PC as they do when buying a couch. But even though they may be the same price, the couch offers several times the profits of a PC for a MUCH simpler product. That makes support pretty darn simple to provide.
I'm not normally a Katz-basher, but geez...think about it for a minute. If you want support, pay a little more and go with a vendor that has a reputation for good support. Don't buy from Bubba's House of Cheap-o and skip the support contract just because it makes it as costly as buying from Sterling Reputation Inc.
Businesses have figured this out long ago. That's why we buy PC's from Compaq and Dell. We know that we can call in a problem and be on the phone with an agent within 5 minutes and have the problem fixed or a replacement on the way. Businesses know that you can't get something for nothing, and they know that support is a major something. Once consumers get their head out of their asses, they'll realize the same thing.
And yes, it is their fault for supporting vendors and markets that don't support them when there are reasonably priced alternatives that would support them.
Not bad Katz
I have never had a good experience with any sort of tech support, which led me to learn how to fix the problems on my own. Unfortunately, the general public isn't capable of this sort of thing. I had a previous job at RadioShack, and even as an employee it was almost impossible to get any support for Compaq, and we had our own employee-only line. Even after I would explain to them in great detail the problem and the fact that I knew what I was doing, they would still insist on trying stupid things. One time I just needed to know the buttons to hit to access the BIOS. It took calling, asking, and hanging up on 4 people before they would answer a simple question.
My group of friends have all bought multiple pieces of hardware online, and we've never had good luck returning faulty things. We've had to start using ResellerRatings.com before we buy to save from getting burned.
Katz seems to believe there's some corporate code of ethics other than, "build what sells." It's kind of cute in its naivete, but not terribly insightful.
When you get down to it, tech support sucks because the market won't pay for it. Tech support is expensive: it's usually the largest division of any hardware manufacturer both in terms of employees and operating expenses. And that's at the level that, "sucks." To provide service to the level Katz thinks companies are obligated to would conservatively double the finished goods price of most low-end devices. And price is what the market cares about.
I've worked for companies that have tried to use technical support as a selling point. Sure we'll charge a little more, we thought, but the sales we attract because of superior service will more than make up for the sales we lose.
Wrong.
Why is it so expensive? Because computers are not sofas, or toasters, or chainsaws, or any other single purpose device. Computers are multi-function devices, that interact intimately with a whole slough of other multi-function devices. We're talking a near-infinity of possible sources of trouble requiring support. Every person you add can take a fixed number of calls, no matter how efficient you make them, so to handle the calls you need huge numbers of people. And people are expensive, even when you're paying them seven bucks an hour, like most outsource vendors pay.
Unless and until Katz and everyone else who buys computers is willing to accept something other than direct one-to-one support (be it telephone or e-mail); or pay significantly more money for their products, tech support will suck.
If Firestone puts out bad tires, there is a recall. The same standards should apply for hardware and software. If hardware makers would make their products with better quality we would not need as much tech support. This is one place that Apple has a huge advantage. They do the hardware and the software, so we don't have a Ford mustang engine running in a Yugo on diesel gas and electric wiring from a tinker toy set. Of course Apple could do even a better job at making their own stuff work too though. blade
http://www.ohlssonvox.com
Having worked as a customer service rep for Philips for 3 months, I know exactly how horrible their service is. They don't take their own calls, a company called Sitel does the dirty work for them ;) I think the main reason it sucked so bad was the stifling atmosphere at the call center. The only resources we had were the manuals that came with the products, and we didn't have most of those! The pay was only $6.50 an hour, with a max of 30 hours a week. Nearly every call was monitored, so we were hammered from upset customers and quality control. I'd teach high school before I'd do that again...
As an electronics/avionics technician, let me give you a serious high-five. This is SO right. If I had access to schematics, I could fairly easily happily fix my gear on my own. I'm looking at my whammy pedal, which works for about ten minutes without freaking out. It's most likely a voltage requlator heating up. I should be able to fix it quite easily with a $2 part, but schematics are not available, there's no local service shop. I don't feel like paying insured twoway shipping and $50-75, plus parts cost for a $2 and ten minute fix! I'm not a CS major, so source code itself won't help me too much, but it's quite a good analogy: proper docs > proper training > things magically work w/o having to return it or spend 8 hours on the phone with tech support.
This sig may be reproduced by anyone for any reason.
I've had my problems with tech support. But I have to admit that I've also had about the same number of good experiences with tech support. It all depends on the company and more likely on the tech you get.
Even better than tech support is your own personal guru. It seems everyone knows that one person who is "really good with computers." I know that I rely on these type people. But you do have to remember, guru's have lives too. Don't call them expecting them to drop everything to fix your problem. My experience is that they are more than willing to help, but their own lives come first. Remember they are helping, you cant dictate to them. Use them only when there are no other options.I try to make sure that I am not interupting their lives with all my questions. And ALWAYS remember to say thank you and maybe back it up with something (beer is the currency of choice with my guru's). Treat your guru right and they will keep you out of trouble.
-Life is a Journey, --Not a Guided Tour! ---Trust me, I've already looked for the guide book.
Sadly, the state of affairs in the PC world (and non-PC world) have become starkly polarized) we have users (read Admins) who have little or no skills responsible for as many as 250,000 client machines (read Needy).
For every great Admin out there (someone who can RTFM, and perhaps even visit an online support option) there are at least 10 crackerjack MCSE's who have fallen into thier position because someone who could do that job figured out that they were not paid enough to meet the insane requirements their superiors put upon them.
It may be a fact of the world that as technology becomes easier, users become dumber and dumber, take for Gospel the fact that in the "Good old Days" tech support was often so great because only "Smart folks" were calling so supporting reasonably intelligent end users was not a hard prospect (often you would find support was performed by developers).
> This isn't Wendys, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT YOUR WAY
Now many of the callers, or customers of a support organization are so baiive as to "how things work" that they treat their computers as magical entertainment and information boxes, that will work without fail with little or no prodding. (HA HA)
More insulting still is the fact that the more unskilled a person is, the more vocal they become, perhaps they believe that being loud equates importance, something left over form their days in the nest no doubt (Read Chicken Reference)
Yes, I am aware, dealing with slope-browed, square toothed, cromagnons on a daily basis is no excuse to be rude, but there is no reason, when speaking to hundreds of of people a day to treat them like an individual, tech support reps aren't paid enough to do that (heck, Doctors don't even do that.) As a customer, I treat each support rep I speak to with respect and humor, I save any yelling or abuse for supervisors, that is THEIR job, if something is broken, and I have waited too long I speak to the 'boss' not the employee. I expect in return information, simply that, something to tell me to help with my issue (incidently, I only seem to ever have to call my ISP for support, odd huh?)
As I was saying, often times the loudest callers are the dumest, and vice versa.
Why the heck should I suffer fools gladly?
Of course, you could always use the immortal "You need support?!?! Get a Cup!"
Hello Kettle,
You, my friend are as black as pitch.
With love, Pot.
I couldn't agree more about their tech support. Of the dozens of times I've called their support lines in the three or so years I've been a customer, I can count on one had the number of times I've actually spoken to someone who knew what they were doing. They almost always assume that problems lie with you or your computer...never with their network. When they do admit to problems they never give you an ETA on when it might be fixed. One of the saddest (or funniest) stories is when a Service Rep. once told me that the EXE they put on their site would run just fine...on my Macintosh.
The price we pay and the service we get in return definitely do not equate.
"War makes me sad." - Me
I think while everyone keeps making analogies between computers and cars, or toasters, or even sofas, don't forget where a computer is in it's evolution. Mass usage of computers is in it's infancy and with innovation that is continually taking place, tech support will continue to be a problem. Constant innovation and trying new things means constantly having new bugs and new problems. Using the car analogy, anyone can step into a car (in the US at least, but standardization is similar in other countries) and the gas is on the right, brakes on left, key goes into the right side of the steering wheel. Turn the key and step on the gas. You can even go from driving an old Ford Festiva to driving a Ford Dually and everything operates roughly the same. Computers are nowhere near that. The computer a business person uses is nothing like the computer a college student uses. Every computer has different problems and solutions. If every Dell computer were exactly the same with exactly the same software, support calls would be much less and much easier to deal with. But not all computers are Dell's and we definitely would not want the same software as everyone else. Until computers reach a point of standardization we will continue to struggle with this challenge. The difficult part of this problem is that this type of standardization is not even on the horizon yet. Another thing with the car analogy. If you make a modification to your car, you had better know what you are doing or have your own mechanic, because the dealer will CHARGE you to fix your mistakes. Anyone can do anything to their computers and expect Dell to service it for nothing as a cost of selling you the computer. I can't think of another product that does not void the warranty when you make modifications to it. The fact that computer companies are even providing support in these cases is commendable. I think that eventually we will have "toaster" pc's for consumers that do everything that a consumer wants in one non-configurable box. The problem is that we a. can't cram everything that a consumer would want to do into a box easily and b. we don't know what they want to do tomorrow.
One significant point which you don't mention, is that part of the problem is that marketing (Spawn of Satan) and especially M$ marketing have tried to convince the world that anyone can use a computer with no training, no knowledge and no idea of what it can do.
The reason that people think they can use a computer without ever having any training or knowledge, is that they have been told they can!
I constantly speak to people whose first comment is "I am computer illiterate" expecting that this will change what I have to say to them. I don't blame them, I blame the marketing turds who have told them that they are OK to fly blind.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a new phenomenon. Back in 197mumble, a friend of mine sold BBC computers in kit form and had a customer complain that it wouldn't work. I mean, how could it when he had glued all of the components in place? What is new is that computers are now being actively marketed as tools which do not require training.
Tech support in general sucks, both for people who need it and people who work it. Part of the reason is that half of your day is taken up by people who either haven't taken the time to find out something about the tool they use or refuse to do so.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
...it's all over. They'll walk all over you and eat you alive. They got me a few times when I started last year.
The last female entry level phone support tech we had was reduced to tears her first day by some very abusive and very STUPID customer.
She wasn't the brightest tech, but she was very nice, I felt really bad for her.
That call was, fortunately, recorded, and when he called back for "a smart tech" he was transferred to the manager and told that he was no longer entitled to support.
He "threatened" to cancel his piddly dialup account, the manager said "I'll have it done in 30 seconds, we don't need or want customers like you"
Spearkerphone can be fun in the office.
http://pebkac.net
http://ubergoth.net/tech/
That's why tech support people tend to hate their jobs and the customer. We put up with people like those listed from my own experience on a daily & hourly basis.
After awhile you can't help but become bitter and resentful of end users.
If you've never done phone support, some of those sound far fetched, but if you HAVE been subjected to phone support, you'll probably recognize a lot of what's there.
http://pebkac.net
You're not alone. @home is my only choice for high speed Internet access here in rural Tennessee (near Nashville), and their Tech Support is AWFUL. They screwed up some DNS maintenance back in February and knocked me off for a few days. When I called Tech Support, they assumed it HAD to be a problem on my end. :( Of course, no amount of twiddling my PC did any good. My service just suddenly started working the next day - no phone call or email from them to explain or apologize. Networking is not my gig, but discussions with co-workers after the fact confirmed the problem was @home. And I've had other problems with @home. This is just the most recent one. Their main problem seems to be they are so big and disorganized and bureaucratic.
What, me worry? - Alfred E. Neuman
It depends on the person. Any tech support supervisor worth his/her weight should make it their job to either promote or "separate" every single agent on their team.
Then you get a new team, rinse wash and repeat.
We're not talking about the same thing. I'm talking about guy A working for MegaHuge Corp B making $8 an hour. Someone working at Dell or Compaq or Gateway.
You, on the other hand, sound like someone who works for tiny software company C with less than 100 employees, and you can down the hall and talk to the guy who made the product. That's a totally different enviroment, you might actually feel like an individual there.
Take one guess.... I used to be a technical support supervisor for one of these huge corporations that Katz is talking about. The boss of the same guys and girls that everyone is complaining about, or posting on here about how much their job sucks.
I'm naturally of the opinion that I was worth my weight, and probably 2 or 3 of the other 8 supervisors I worked with I considered worth their weight as well.
Haha.. that's ironic you should go on that little rant. Every single person I've ever known that has worked in tech support has suggested at one point or another (either in jest or totally serious) that people should be licensed to use computers.
In all fairness though, Katz is right. You just have to keep in mind it goes both ways: Tech support agents may be rude, apathetic, and overall uncaring, but they got that way by talking to retarded customers day in and day out for month after month. A new tech support agent on the phone who hasn't been "broken in" yet isn't like that. He/she might be an idiot, but at least they're customer service friendly...
Now that I think about it, in addition to taking into account the low pay, terrible working conditions, and unbareable monotomy - I think the equation you need to keep in mind with tech support is that Competance is inversely proportaional to Customer service. The reason behind this is because as the agent gets more experienced and knows more and more about the product, he or she starts to hate the "stupid customers" more and more. When they start on the phone it's the opposite, new agents are sort of scared and intimidated by the customers.
Ah well. And to what someone said earlier about promoting the talent out of tech support, that's the way it worked at the place I was at too. Instead, it wasn't into design jobs.. it was into management or IT. It's all about getting off of the phones.
I find this amusing because I feel this from the people I support - the entire user base of the UK for this company. So in my mind this reads:
On the whole users aren't a problem but those who log highest priority calls with us claiming they can't send email when they are spelling the recipients name incorrectly must have some bizarre superiority complex (this honestly happened to me).
Another example of how arrogant my users can be: This guy was complaining that his computer was not patched into the network. It was. I told him this. He said it wasn't. I checked the machine. The error messages made it perfectly clear to me that the NIC was screwed. I replaced the machine and things worked fine - then (users are invited to give feedback) he complains that "[support] obviously don't know anything about business-critical departments" and how they were the most important people on the fucking planet. Well, he needs to learn the difference between a link being down and a major hardware fault error message.
A bit off-topic, but I hope it amused people.
Claric
--
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
Not living in the US I have to rely on e-mail support and I've noticed over the last couple of years the gradual disappearance of direct contact e-mail support. Sometimes it is there, but extremely well hidden and other companies have eliminated it completely leaving people like me with no support option.
Another aspect of the support problem is some companies trying to charge for what amount to fixes and updates.
Companies like Handspring, Amazon and HP stand out when it comes to actually replying to e-mail queries.
It's the best thing I've seen on Slashdot in a while.
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As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. Do people really expect teir 1 support with their $299.99 Windows box from the local mega-warehouse-electronics store?
The way I see it, you have two options with tech support. Pay for it or shut the hell up.
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Your car metaphor is just as flawed as the 'couch' metaphor in the original article. Customers expect to be able to get the 'most' out of their product. Just about every office or buisiness application I've ever seen on the shelves has 'Easy to Use' or some such claim on the box. Perhaps what it should say is that it's easy to use if you have even a rudimentary aquaintance with the o/s. Some customers don't.
The computer software industry is different from the furniture industry, the car industry, or the garmet making industry. There's the good, the bad, and the ugly. Customer support for your product is something the industry and your customer base demands. On the other hand, you don't have to worry about sizing your product, fabric choices, or deaths caused by roll over accidents.
I think that high quality tech support is very possible. I've seen it.
1.) Good pay - Yep. You're right on the money. Makes me think of a quote from R. Heinlien "Money is the sincerest form of flattery. Women love to be flattered, so do men." You should pay people what it's worth and good people are expensive. But having a highly trained, happy staff which you retain is much less expensive than having a turn over rate of 2-5% every month! Believe it or not, that is the standard turnover rate in call center (at least as of about a year ago).
2.) Well, it's true that some 'real hard' technical problems can take a long time to solve. But sometimes what may seem like an incredibly difficult problem for a user is a known issue that has been documented. One benefit of tech support is that it can be a huge clearing house of knowledge and repository of solutions. So, unless your problem is completely unheard of or the business does not keep documentation, you can expect to benefit from that repository.
3.) Well, yes. Customers don't always ask questions that in ways that make it immediately obvious how to solve the problem or even what the problem is. But, if your workers have even basic communication and troubleshooting skills, they can usually figure out how to ask the right quesitons. But maybe not in 10 minutes.
4.) Lots of people are willing to pay for technical support. And lots of people are willing to pay for 'reliable' name brands. What people resent is paying for tech support when it does not solve their problems or if it is a problem in the software (something out of their control).
5.) Yes, well. The old adage about any code more complicated than 'Hello World' being suspect for bugs. But, tech support can be a huge boon in your Product Development/QA department as they are on the front lines. In fact, I'm not sure how you would ever really improve a product without some input from your customers. What questions the customers have about the product just might be the most valuable information you can gather.
So, I don't think that good tech support is futile at all. I think it's a matter of a corporation having the will to find a way. That's how startups and new companies get market share. Problem is, once they have it they seem to loose the will to find the way to sustain it.
And, when I left I was no longer doing technical support. I was managing the new hire training department. I'm not sure which was more depressing, either.
;) which focused on Customer Service, Communication Skills and Troubleshooting. My theory was, we needed people who could communicate with customers and think and adapt to new situations rather than people who could memorize 'steps' and recite menus by rote. The real trick in good tech support is being able to translate what the customer is asking into what is feasible/possible/wrong with the product, right?
We would get the these new employees (most of which were glad to be there, believe it or not) Put them through a fairly comprehensive, fast-paced curriculum (ok, I might be biased about the curriculum
So after 6 weeks of training them that they should take their time, concentrate on customer service, and provide thoughtful solutions. They would go out on the floor and be told that they had to have 10 minute average call times, no time in between calls to research, no call backs.. the litany goes on. So, I left. *shrug* I was doing a disservice to all the new employees of the company by training them in the way our company Mission statement said our corporatation wished to treat customers.
Anyhow, I suspect that this situation is repeated more often than not. And, again, I can trace the downfall back to the decision to seperate technical support from the cost of doing business. The problem stems from trying to make technical support like a production line. There is very little profit margin in it and the more money a business makes from Technical Support the more the quality of the product tends to decrease. Think about it.
One other thing. It's well known what makes good tech support. The same things that make for good customer service agents everywhere. People who are paid to do a job that is recognized as valuable and a contribution to the organization. People who are empowered to perform all of the activities their job requires and trusted to perform them to the best of their ability. People who are given the appropriate tools to to their job - including (and in this case especially) on-going training and updating of their skills. It's not feasible/possible/practical to suggest that anyone can know everything about anything. The best training in the world becomes obsolete much too quickly and, people can only learn so much before they need to practice their new skills. Tech support workers in my former company have been hamstrung to the point where it is almost impossible to provide good support.
And that is a shame. In fact, it's a damn shame. For the company, for the workers, and for the customers.
I used to work at a major company (which shall remain nameless) in their tech support call center. When I was initially hired, they were still a very young company with rapidly growning market share. The attitutde towards tech support at the time was "We want the customers who invested in our product to be simply delighted with their experience. Of COURSE we'll support and stand behind what we've designed." Besides, tech suport calls provide valuable information to our Q/A department for future releases. That attitude lasted for a couple of years but then.... market share started growing.. and growing.. and growing. And keepint pace with all of that was tech support costs. So, the management stepped back and took a good, hard look at the bottom line. Ok, here we have major market share - but there's this huge sink hole in our profits called tech support.. what to do? Well, the logic went something like this: We can either 1.) raise the price of our product to cover tech support costs or 2.) Charge for tech support. Well, if after examining the options, it was decided that since only a fraction of the customers use tech support - let's just charge those that use it for the service. Rather than impact the entire customer base with a higher product cost. Not to mention, keeping our price down will keep us more competitive in the market place, right? But, let's still recognize that tech support is a valuable part of our Q/A process and a data gathering tool for our future product development so let's still expect to loose money, just not as fast. So, you transition to seperating your customers into those who are willing to wait for free support (cause we're still not willing to turn people away .. at least for now) to those that are 'in a hurry' and want 'priority' service.
Well, then after a while you realize that you have to charge all of your customers. Hrm. No big deal. We still have support available after all.
Then... what if we could break even on tech support? What if we could turn tech support into a revenue generating operation for the company. All thought of tech support as a valuable resource and information gathering tool gets tossed out the window. Now, we bring out all of the call center managing techniques and seminars and send managment to them. Tether the techs to their desks and fire them for being out of compliance (being one minute late more than three times in a month) Curtail training to cut down on staff - disregard any requests for career paths.... And then look surprised that the workers and the customers are miserable.
Most call centers use an algorithm that can predict call arrival patterns and answer times to the half hour based on previous data. It only takes 5 people out of schedule compliance to dramtically increase your queue times. So, most call centers staff and manage to those numbers.
From one who has been there, let me tell you that tech support is a tough job. Anyone who still believes there is no such thing as a stupid question has never worked Tech Support! You are given a 4-6 week crash course in the product (many of them have had little prior experience) then thrown to the customers who have managed to get themselves in situations you can't even concieve of getting into. All this and you have no time to stay current with product upgrades and updates because you are held to draconian time schedules and compliance from call center monitoring software. You probably do not have time to research or keep up with the product you are supporting. Most customers understand that you might not have ALL the answers to everything but are you even given time to find them if you get stuck?
All this said, it's not that I am offering good excuses for support to be awful. Frankly, I think the crucial decision was made way back when it was decided not to keep the support bundled with the software. From there it's been a slippery downward spiral. Tech support should have been kept as part of the Product Development/Enhancement/Improvement cycle. Customers and Tech Support were all much happier when it was there. And, I think that customers would be willing to pay more up front for the product if it was well designed and fully and adequately supported. There is a huge difference between the two mindsets in a company, in my opinion.
Just my 2 cents worth.
No other business would survive a month operating this way.
Don't bet on it. Customer service, over the last 10 to 20 years, has taken a nose dive in nearly every type of business I've come in contact with. I'm trying to refinance a second mortgage and keep having problems. 30-45 minute hold times only to be connected to truly clueless people. One woman heard my question and simply bounced me back into the hold queue. One person told me the underwriter wanted more info and that I needed to be transfered to another person. The person to whom I was transfer promptly informed me that the loan was declined. A call a couple days later revealed that my loan was still alive and well. The type of loan was wrong as was the duration. And the person I was talking to couldn't handle 3rd grade math without a calculator. No one will call me either. I have to chase them. Do they really want my business?
I'd say at least 30% of the bills we receive have errors in them serious enough for us to track them down. Especially health care-related bills where the health insurance company has lost it's mind. Our insurance company swears our perscription card works, but tell that to the pharmacist who says it doesn't. And they dropped my wife for no reason, without warning, and with no explanation. When we called and asked, they simply said they didn't know why and couldn't fix it.
Did you know that I have twelve aliases accoring to the credit reporting agencies? I do! They're all various misspellings of my name. (I have a very english name with an obvious spelling). And there's wrong/old information on my credit reports. Luckily, I've fixed 95% of it now. Have you ever tried calling a credit reporting agency?
Even the state of Indiana tried to claim that we hadn't paid our taxes last year. We sent them a copy of our return and a copy of the canceled check, return receipt of course. Then they claimed we never sent it. We faxed them the return receipt. They quit complaining.
I can't even get a person who speaks english at a fast food drive-thru anymore. Tomato != Mayo.
I want ketchup. Que? Ketchup. Que? Ketchup!
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
What dot.coms? I thought they all went bankrupt....
heh...
seriosuly though I think this is still (motsly) true for programmers as they're relatively in demand. Its the CIS guys that wanna do some network architecture or what have you that usually end up as reinstall jockeys.
Chris
IANAL but to walk away from the dealer with the truck I bought this last spring, not only did I have to bring in my license and insurance info, they called both the state (MN) and insurance company before finalizing the deal. I can only speak to what i've been put through :-)
Chris
I'm reading this at work. Been on this call for going on two hours now! Why? This lady decided to go on a spring cleaning binge and delete all those pesky dll's she was sure she would never need. The best part is she's pissed at ME. Been complaining the whole time about how she's always having to call tech support. Seriously though, I believe some of the blame relies on the customers shoulders. I don't think theres anything in a persons daily life that works correctly without you having knowledge of how to use it. In another context, owning a car requires a drivers license. You also have to be aware that regular maintainence is also needed. You can't just show up at the dealer, take the keys and be good to go. Pretty much every guy that is fairly handy can chagnge his own oil/battery/tires or what have you. The use of an automobile has a prerequisite of at least basic automotive knowledge. I always pay to have my oil changed, but I could do it if I needed to. While I'm not suggesting requiring a license to use a computer (but man would my life be easier if this was true), I do believe that we can't keep pushing boxes as consumer friendly. There's still a geek factor to them. Even I call tech support from time to time (who knew acrobat won't install correctly if win98 user profiles are enabled). I think I'm talking in circles again, but it pisses me off that customers continue to blame tech support for thier lack of knowledge. The consumer continues to get dumber and dumber while demanding more support/service/hand holding. This is true in all industries. All you need to do is work for a department store at the christmas returns desk. "Yeah this sweater doesn't fit and I don't like the color. Even though I stained it with coffee and have been wearing it the past 3 weeks, I DEMAND a refund!". and you know what? the store manager will come out and do exactly that? why? to provide good customer service. Management is trained to "do what it takes and go that extra mile" to absurdity and the consumer knows if they complain enough, they get thier way. Chris
I'm not at all convinced that educating the masses is the proper route to solving the problem. Quite frankly, how many times in history has this approach worked- and don't say the car. People are licenced to not hit eachother with the car, not to be able to fix a starter with a piece of aluminum foil when it does its weekly breakdown on the freeway.
Computers don't have to be complex, nasty monsters. I used to bring big files between computers by unplugging my trusty scsi drive, dragging it across town, and plugging it into the machine that I wanted it to work with. Thanks to some well-thought-out drivers, there were no settings, no adding hda6 to an ini list and restarting, no need to determine a master and a slave and changing dipswitches. All of this functionality came from a 1992 computer. We need to demand better, and pay for it when it comes around.
While sitting here in this lab, writing this post, someone has come up to me trying to run Netscape. Apparently the shortcuts have inexplicably broken on her machine.
How does this relate to tech support? People get frustrated with Tech support when they can't get an unnecessarily complex product to work. (And it is unnecessarily complex. What, we can't integrate SMTP server information as a standard handshake on log-in? Give me a #&*%ing break.) Sometimes it doesn't work because it was quickly made and rushed out the door. Sometimes it doesn't work because it is interfacing strangely with something else, one or both of whom decided functionality was more important than interoperatability. Sometimes it doesn't work because it is a nasty mess requiring too much specialized knowledge for people who just want to use it to do something else.
There is no evidence that we have matured computers to the point that the people calling tech support are all idiots. Sure, my tech support friends spend their days telling people how to configure Outlook, but that in and of itself doesn't make them idiots. Likewise, when they can't help the people any more than telling them that something must be conflicting: restart and try again, that doesn't make tech support idiots. Of course, the end user feels that the tech support *should* know and therefore blames tham, when in fact nobody in that particular chain really can know. Why companies haven't realized that they can save millions on tech support with well-designed software standards is beyond me.
Of course I shouldn't defend tech support too highly. I did have to try for three weeks to get a second IP from Roadrunner, and the bureaucracy around the process sure did make them seem like idiots.
The ______ Agenda
I would like the Slashdot readership to see this complain I am filing to Simple Technology.
The refused to send me an advanced replacement on a hard drive that was broken out of the box:
==== BEGIN ====
To: support@simpletech.com
Subject: Bad Support.
Dear Simple Technology;
I purchased and expensive re-labeled hard drive from Simple at CDW.com.
Part no:
STI-HD2.5/12.0SL
I am very very upset that I could not obtain an advanced replacement, the drive shipped new out of the box with bad sectors.
I THIS MY FAULT? NO.
So now I have to suffer more downtime no a laptop because of a broken drive by Simple.
This is the worst business practice. Simple takes a standard IBM/Hitachi drive, re-labels it, charges more, and screws me on advanced replacement.
I am posting this information to all of my friends and on several high traffic web sites, in fact, Slashdot.org is featuring an article about this - bad customer support. I'm posting this incident there.
There was also no "customer service" person or manager to speak to.
I paid almost $300 for this. I thank you for NO value added.
I am also reporting this to CDW.COM, my vendor, with whom we have a very large account.
xxxxxxx xxxxx
xxxx xxxxxxx, Inc.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Redwood City, CA 94xxx
(650) xxx xxxx xxxx
==== END ====
I like this forum where people who engage in dishonest business can be cited for their poor performance.
They said it would be shipped out FedEX two day AFTER a "processing period" of 3-5 days.
1 day to Start + 1 day to ship + 3 to 5 days to Fester + 2 Days to come back = 7-9 buiness days because they screwed up.
THANKS SIMPLE.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Guess I've been too busy helping clueless people to spot the difference between a webpage and their desktop ( yes you can use your computer without being connected to the 'net sir) and responding to support mail.
what I know is worth 8.50/hr CDN to these people. Fucking stockbrokers need their quotes and I get the jam.
The Peter principle is named after the guy who first espoused it - not for some generic guy named "Peter".
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Freshly minted BSEE grads from universities are normally stuck into either tech support or sales as their first, entry-level position.
Naturally, nobody does four years of engineering with visions of answering phone calls from people who can't figure out how to plug in their mouse, so these people try their darnedest to move out of support and into design-level jobs.
The talented people in tech support generally get noticed - and promoted out. The less talented generally get stuck in tech support. The Peter principle at work.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Disclaimer:This is from a tech support rep. So take this with a whole can of salt, and you might want to use the umbrella too.
I work for a technical support group at a game company, and I can tell you what is wrong with Technical Support in general from our end. It has a lot to do with things like this survy. Companies like Jupiter like to make a big deal about how industries are out to screw the public, not realizing that the public causes most of these things ourselves. Our biggest complaint, hands-down, is why our company will not issue refunds for a title. In spite of the EULA(which no one reads anyway), the retailers' refund policy, and the listed minimum requirements, people want their money back when a game does not work on their P66 w/ 16MB of RAM. I did a little research into this policy, and I found out that we got fleeced by a guy for some free games by abusing our refund policy. It had nothing to do with being cheap, or arrogant.
This is typical of my day. I would say that %90 of our calls and emails fall into one of two catagories, the MCSE who thinks he owns the world because he paid his way through a test, or the 80 year old vet that has never used a computer before. Both of these two groups get very frustrated when the hear our answers, because they both expect everything to work perfectly out of the box. Very rarely do we get a question from a nice, well informed person that is willing to work with us to resolve their problem.
I used to read survey results like this one, and say "tsk, tsk. 'Pop will eat itself.'" Now I understand a little better what goes on behind the Technical Support doors. -Jason
A) if you buy a 'branded PC' they only bundle a recovery CD- so most real problems result in being told to reinstall everything- what a joke- at least 'warrantee tape' is almost extinct B) PDF "help" is not user friendly, and manuals are usually outdated, or cursory in nature C) challenge/response copyprotection... remembering those serial numbers (I usually write them on the discs... but I still have to find the disc).... hardware keys (dongles- yuck)... or HD keys (don't forget to remove them before switching boxes)- reinstalling to a new box is an enormous chore D) I had to change ISPs to get DSL a few yrs ago, then the company changed their name, thereby changing my email address... do you know how difficult it is to prove I am a registered user when I suddenly have a new email address? Don't people ever change their physical addresses? Is this any different? E) website knowledge base search engines generall suck, and if anyone has ever found what they need from a FAQ, let me know!
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
I worked for 2 years in tech support, both answering phones, making house-calls and untimately as a supervisor. This situation is not as simple as the post makes it sound.
A major problem in tech support is everyone that calls is unhappy. Few are understanding that you are doing your best to fix their problem. It is not my job "to be yelled at because you are frustrated." It is not the support staff's fault the user messed something up, the programmers did something wrong or the testing staff wasn't thorough. That being said... it is not the job of tech support to teach users how to "right-click," copy files or even "double-click." I tend to believe the humorous tech support horror stories, mainly because the solution to one of our user's problems was "turn the computer on."
Overwhelmingly, many of the calls we handled involved items the user could have gotten step by step instructions for fixing if they had looked at our web pages. We asked each caller if they had checked out FAQ. Many said no, some lied and said yes. A few had honestly tried those solutions and they hadn't worked. The bottom line is many users want the solution spoon fed to them instead of typing the error into a search engine or checking the FAQ of the software or hardware vendor first.
Why is tech support "lacking?" User expectations do not match what it costs the company to provide that level of service. Between training, man-hours (*the biggie*), technical resources, tracking and auditing, etc., tech support is extremely expensive. There has been a dramatic push in recent years to move toward web based support, but as I said above, that leads to unhappy users who feel abandonded because they don't want, or are afraid, to look into the problem themselves.
Companies that charge for tech support are doing it right. They put the burden on the users that don't look up problems themselves to pay for their own "in-person" support. Of course, there are plenty of companies that Make crappy $oftware and charge for tech support. They suck.
RC
RC
This touches on one of my overriding pet peeves. Most companies, and many people, forget that money-making is the reward for doing good business. Companies that strive to provide good customer service, and produce quality products, will make more money as a consequence than those who provide poor customer service and poor quality products (exception: Monpolies. A monopoly, by definition, can provide either high or low quality in either case, because there are no options for consumers).
Providing top-quality customer support will create more business for a company, and, therefore, they will make more money. Good support is not a money-losing proposition, and there isn't any reason why it shouldn't be free, for that reason.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
but this is so true, especialy in the ISP market.
True, the mom and pop places have ok support for their customers, but that is a result of the fact that they are "mom and pop" ISPs. whn you get into the realm of national and international ISPs that is whn tech support gets flakey. thus far, earthlink is the only ISP that I have been with that is any good at support, and that is only because they have 24-7 tech support, the waits are still long and somtimes I would just hang up and call later. now that I have moved on to broadband, I have discovered a new meaning for crap....the tech support of the local cable company for the internet SUCKS!!! it is only open between the hours of 9 and 5 m-f and 9-4 sat, don't even think about sunday. pluse the long waits and when you do get somone, they don't know what is going on. for example, I called one night because the cable link light on the modem was out, I said "hi I am having a problem with My internet connection, the cable light is out and I can't get online, are you having a server problem right now?" the persons respons was "I don't know sir." I said "can you find out?" then she replied "no I can't, but I can leave the tech support guys a measage about your problem and when they get in tomorrow they will try and fix it." at that pointI just threw up my arms and told the person "no thanks I will call tomorrow." and I hung up.
I can't wait until earthlink will offer cable internet access in my area so atleast I will get people who can answer my questions when I call.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
In fact, tech support personnel are simutaneously manipulated by corporate power (i.e. lack of budget, tons of cases put on their lap), and are autonomous individuals whose bad service results from having to deal with customers whose utter lack of common sense are legendary. So they become jerks in the process, making it work both ways.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
I worked for a company as tech support for a leading company in internet-by-satellite (name withheld, etc). After that summer I would not work there again...
Its not that the customers were a problem. In most cases (emphasis on most), customers were very nice. My problem was with the guidelines the company we were tech support for gave us. We were told to LIE about the "Fair Access Policy"... this was the policy that automatically throttled people back from 400kbps to about 28.8 modem speed. Our tech support center answered the calls for Sales, Marketing, and Tech support: we even told customers to hang up and call back if they pressed the wrong button (even though we knew they would call back and get us again).
Finally I got tired of putting customers through as much as we did. Not to mention that you got a new agent each time you called, and EVERY agent wants to trouble shoot it "their" way... which involved making people who had been given authorization for an RMA on products subject to another 3-4 hour call as that tech support agent wanted to "do it their way."
Wanna know why tech support is as bad as it is? Sometimes its the agents not knowing the difference between a banana and a mouse, but most of the time it is the regulations and the guidelines that the companies impose on the tech support.
----------- You look at life differently while suspended upside down and gagged.
My personal experience with support from several major manufacturers has lead me to boycott their prodcuts. I will never purchase anything from them again unless they develop a cure for the plague and I happen to be a victim.
Considering that I am in infrastructure and I have a lot of final say in what is purchased, I have millions to spend during the course of my career. You can bet that those folks won't see a dime of it. I will ALWAYS choose their competitor's products because, if nothing else, because I won't have to deal with them.
Every other line of business has to support and service its customer base lest they leave. Why people accept this sort of treatment from techonology companies is beyone me. I choose to vote with my dollars, and with my employers dollars. I recommend that the rest of us do the same. This way we can drive the loosers out of business.
HDGary secures my bank
The real problem isn't that the end user needs source code, the platforms developers are the ones who need it. Could you imagine if tire manufacturers didn't know the size/weight specs for the car (ok so Bridgestone/Firestone just disregard it anyway)?
Developers for non "open" platforms develop mysterious black boxes that are supposed to flawlessly integrate with thousands of other mysterious black boxes (closed hardware and software) automagically. As the model becomes sufficiently complicated this really becomes absurd.
Psychic knowledge is (slightly) too much to expect from a good developer, and way too much to expect from poorly trained tech support people (who you have to admire, if just for the futility of their job).
At my last job, I ended up designing the server structure WHILE on the phone with customers who complained that they never got their e-mail because they could never remember the password. :op (I'm in Canada, where a few compaq call centres for the US are locatated) I don't think there is a way to stop recycling though; you can only take so much.
It's so frustrating to have 'better things to do' and run into the common person who desires your utmost attention for BULL.
Many people share my pet peeve: I hate people who won't TRY to piece things out. Stupidity is one thing; these people don't even TRY.
I am jaded about Tech Support. I left the tech world partially because of it, and am going into another field entirely. I have another friend, working at Compaq, who would JUMP on an opportunity out of there, and out of tech. This is a problem.
On the other hand, they do treat tech support very well here. But maybe that's because we're supporting the US
i do tech support for a computer store and i am constantly being harrased by companies for issues that are not our problem. As these corporations have little or no in house techs, due to downsizing and or outsourcing, i become the guy who has to answer questions liek why cant i print. also, i am expected to do this for free as our store sold them the pc. This takes away from my valuable time surfing for pr0n and other things. what i think is the problem here is that not enough companies want to hire their own techsupport people. dont blame us techs... you wouldnt want to talk to end users all day eather.
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Tech Support = Bad
should be "Tech Support == Bad"
Thus, Tech Support is Bad. Now we know why.
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
How about making a product so well that no one needs to call tech support to get help? (just a thought.)
The real reason tech support sucks so badly, is that consumers really don't want good tech support. Oh sure, they complain about bad tech support, but when it comes down to purchasing a computer or Internet service or web hosting or any number of things that generally need good tech support available, the consumer goes with the lowest price item/service available. How many of us have seen CUB Foods come to town, and shut down the local grocery, or Wal-Mart come in and close down the local clothing store, shoe store, pharmacy, etc... All because the consumer dosn't want good, they want cheap! When the consumer starts demanding good service, and starts demanding good service with their check books, then you will see a return to good service and support.
OK L's & G's, let's have another perspective. While I too have been a victim of tech support, I also worked at IBM for two years as a first and second level support tech. Firstly, customers think when they buy a computer, they get free tech support also known as "How do I do this?" You can buy a $250,000 car, and do you get driving lessons with it? No! Second, the warranty support provided with just about any computer is based on ensuring that the HW is working to spec. Software warranty is typically 30-90 days, and does not ensure that Windows XX will work with the 15 games, 20 Sharewares and WAREZ that you've d/loaded and installed. On average I would receive about 25-45 calls a day at tech support, and of those, maybe 5 were customers with actual problems covered by the warranty. Every other question/problem was not covered and while we could offer assistance, it takes time. Time and money. Someone is paying my wages, someone is renting the building space, heating and lighting the building, paying for the phones and computer systems etc. Someone once calc'd that the average warranty support call cost about $35-50.00. Most warranty calls can be resolved in 45 min or less. The typical software question could take as much if not more time! Now we could help, but it costs money, and the way we're paid is by the money initially generated through the sale of systems. So if you want all sorts of free help, those systems will cost alot more!