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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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?
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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.
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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
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.
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)
If GM Provided Tech Support.
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.
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...
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.
:) Also You can easily get situations where information vital to system adminstrators is missing, but all the support is based around end users...
Subsitute "frequently" for "sometimes"
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.
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"
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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
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.
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!
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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!)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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
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."
...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.
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
"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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
_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)
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.
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
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.
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. :-)
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 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----
> 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
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.
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.
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
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
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)?
Simple enough explanation. You're a large corporate account, and with Dell servers. That gets noticed, and Dell assumes you have your own techs to diagnose problems. Besides, they don't wnat to piss you off.
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...
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.
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.
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"
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.
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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kaaaameeeeeeehaaaaaameeeeeha!
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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.
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
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
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
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).
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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How about making a product so well that no one needs to call tech support to get help? (just a thought.)
H-dog, I be on them tech support bitches, and I seen what them wack accounts receviable ho's be up to! Without us manly tech support reps, you "Accountz Reeceevable" mutha fucka's be useless without us to tell you how to use yo damn spreadsheets and shit.