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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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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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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.
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
Not only can it be used by any idiot, but it's a nice piece of furnishing too, just like your comfy sofa!
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.
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."
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.
People ought to understand that the reason a near-identical computer costs significantly more from one dealer than another is at least partly due to additional support. If you opt for a bargain-basement price, you're not going to get much (or perhaps any) support. That's your choice as a consumer. If you buy a cheap computer and then find out you need help with it, you can always find someone who will do it for a fee. And if you get shafted by an "arrogant and greedy" company that promises but doesn't deliver, you have only yourself to blame; with the net, there's no excuse not to research the reputation of the vendor you're considering.
I 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
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.
Wrong. Aside from doorstop and paperweight manufacuturers, no industry makes a product that does everything out of the box without any consumer knowledge.
Using a computer for basic tasks like word processing, email, connecting to the Internet, etc. requires some basic skills. Consider that people spend months or years to learn skills like driving and reading, but expect computers to magically do everything right away. If consumers took responsibility for learning basic computer use, I bet it would eliminate more than half of all tech support calls. Either that or realize that companies will need to charge more to cover the costs of all this hand-holding that Katz demands.
I do want manufacturers to post good documentation on their web sites, write good user manuals, and create good interfaces. I don't want them charging me more money to subsidize the personal tech support required to teach other people skills that they should be learning on their own. I don't know much about cars (I'm not "part of the industry"), but I don't call Ford every time I need to fill up the gas tank.
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. :-)
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----
Haha.. that's ironic you should go on that little rant. Every single person I've ever known that has worked in tech support has suggested at one point or another (either in jest or totally serious) that people should be licensed to use computers.
In all fairness though, Katz is right. You just have to keep in mind it goes both ways: Tech support agents may be rude, apathetic, and overall uncaring, but they got that way by talking to retarded customers day in and day out for month after month. A new tech support agent on the phone who hasn't been "broken in" yet isn't like that. He/she might be an idiot, but at least they're customer service friendly...
Now that I think about it, in addition to taking into account the low pay, terrible working conditions, and unbareable monotomy - I think the equation you need to keep in mind with tech support is that Competance is inversely proportaional to Customer service. The reason behind this is because as the agent gets more experienced and knows more and more about the product, he or she starts to hate the "stupid customers" more and more. When they start on the phone it's the opposite, new agents are sort of scared and intimidated by the customers.
Ah well. And to what someone said earlier about promoting the talent out of tech support, that's the way it worked at the place I was at too. Instead, it wasn't into design jobs.. it was into management or IT. It's all about getting off of the phones.
I'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
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.
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
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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