Consumer Reports Discovers Tech Support Sucks

fuzzykitty writes "CNN just posted an article about how commercial software is filled with bugs and customers are used as an army of unpaid testers. It also goes on about the lack of good technical support. Best quote: 'I'm unaware of any company that would shortchange the customer in their speed to get the software to market,' LOL"

Comments

and.. not only..

[joeldg]

But that report says it is getting worse every day.

This does not surprise me at all..

I have heard more clients talk of choosing a product based entirely on the service offered.

look at the Rackspace "insane support" model, they are doing well because of that.

$59.5 billion!

[BrynM]

" A 2002 study funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology estimated software errors cost the U.S. economy about $59.5 billion a year."

And politicians are worried about entertainment piracy hurting the economy. Maybe there are more important things to fix than catering to the entertainment industry...

Based on my own experiences

[jlechem]

And how is this a suprise? Based on my many many calls to ATT broadband, Microsoft, etc I know many tech support reps a) have their head up their ass or b) the company itself has it's head up it ass. Also I used to work for MSN tech support and I think often times it's a combination of both. Lack of care for the customer and a lax hiring process that entails you can talk and will show upto work get you the job.

Re:Based on my own experiences

[Matrix272]

It's not a lax hiring process either. They just have an incredibly high turnover. Either people don't come to work, come in late, or just hate their job so VERY much that they leave, they lose people FAST.

Agreed. Tech Support has one of the highest turnover rates of any position in any industry... except maybe toilet cleaners. I worked in phone tech support for an ISP for about 3 years before I took a job that didn't have 1000+ irate people when they couldn't get their e-mail. I learned to enjoy my job by having fun with it. I had fun with it by learning a couple simple rules:

1) Let the customer vent.
When someone calls tech support, they've either already tried to fix it and failed (and are then upset at their failure), or haven't yet tried to fix it and are upset because it isn't working in the first place. In both cases, just let the person sit on the phone and scream at you until they run out of breath. When they stop to think about some more curses they can scream, you can calmly say "Sir/Maam, I have a couple ideas that might fix your problem..."

2) Don't get stressed out.
It's not YOUR computer that isn't working. It's theirs. Yours is working just fine, right? Besides, what's the worst that can happen? So what if you get fired for telling someone you can't help them. With the high turnover rate of tech support, you'll have another job in a matter of hours.

Follow those two guidelines, and tech support won't seem that bad. Oh, and I almost forgot...
3) Don't be afraid to yell back if you're having a bad day.
If someone yells that you can go to hell on the same day your girlfriend left you, your house burnt down, your bank closed your account and siezed your assets, and the FBI is hunting for you, don't be afraid to yell "Well slap my ass and call me Shirley you dumb shit. I thought the whole time I was trying to help YOU. Maybe I should just shove your computer up my ass, think that would fix it, you ignorant fuck." That always puts them in their place.

Being friendly and humble goes a long way.

[NetDanzr]

Funny; I never had a problem with tech support, even though I'm calling various companies at least once per week. My secret - I'm friendly and humble. People on the other side of the line are just that, people. They appreciate if you don't yell at them, but joke with them instead. They are also not the brightest employees of the said company. They follow a certain routine, and don't appreciate if you try to interrupt them. So what, if I know how to change my network settings? It's much easier to follow their advice step by step ("Click on start." "Okay, now click on Settings.") than to interrupt them and tell them that you are already ten steps ahead. It yields real results. Back in the days when UUNet was still independent, I managed to keep a tech support person on-line from 4PM to 2AM, making her miss her wedding aniversary, just because I was friendly all the time (naturally, she wasn't one of the minimum-wage workers, but a tech support manager). Just yesterday, I spent 15 minutes on the phone with MCI, only to get a follow-up call ten minutes later. A coworker who tends to yell at them has never gotten a follow-up call. Same with Bloomberg tech support, Dell, HP, Earthlink and Verizon, all of whom I called in the past month.

i would dispute this

[circletimessquare]

tech support will always be a source of disappointment for anyone who seeks it

it's psychology, not technology

if you are dweeb, like me and most of us here, you pretty much figure it out on your own, and don't even go to tech support, unless you are in some fortune 500 company that mandates it's usage for ridiculous policy reasons and doesn't let you tinker, which is what is in line with most of our instincts to figure out problems with software

for the technically uninclined, you go to tech support expecting them to answer question like "what is the purpose of my life?"

i'm not joking

the psychology of someone who buys technology that is beyond their understanding, and then expects some poor guy on the other end of a phone conversation to download technological insight into their cranium via a 15 minute phone call is what we are talking about

you can't meet those expectations

and thus, tech support will always be a source of disappointment, since it is the source of solace for people who don't understand that if you want answers to technical questions, you need to seek them out yourself, in order to develop your own technological proficiency

unfortunately true for the technophobes

the problem is psychology, not technology, and the problem will always exist as long as there are people who wade into the deep end of the pool not knowing how to swim and expecting to be taught how to swim in the short amout of time before they drown, rather than learn how to swim first, and to have enough technological common sense to recognize the deep end of the pool and that they are in over their head in the first place

Why does tech support suck?

[ihummel]

Because companies either hire people who don't know what they're doing for peanuts or techies who do know what they're doing who hate their job and are again paid peanuts. On the customer end, the customer often doesn't know how to ask good questions even when the tech support guy knows how to listen to good questions. I once had a tech support guy for compuserve in '95 or '96 who didn't know what a directory was. He only knew them as "folders".

Re:Dear god I had no idea that the world isnt perf

[fiftyLou]

s20451: I'm having trouble getting my ATI card to work under Linux. Can anyone help?

See, thats part of your problem right there.
- ATI card: which one?
- Linux: any particular distro?
- Trouble: Is the card out of its cardboard box yet?

You do have a point but even the most helpful 'guru' gets sick and tired of "its broken, please fix" pleas!

Whose fault?

[siskbc]

Companies spend millions on advertising, but pay minimum wage to those who will be the first point of contact with the customer. Ain't economics great?

I don't want to defend this practice - I really don't - but we have to accept that companies are out to make money. And if people (on average) aren't willing to pay more to get better customer service, it won't exist. People say they want better service, but typically their wallets vote otherwise. And I readily admit I fall into this category, although that's only because I have learned to have absolutely no expectation of service at all.

But bottom line, it's exactly like you said: Ain't economics great?. Sucks that such an approach works, but it does. Also blame the idiots that provide free help/tech support on company support forums. You're just enabling them, people.

Re:Special Tech Support

[PurpleFloyd]

While Cisco's support contracts are expensive as hell, I've never once had a problem that they weren't able to handle. In fact, I'd say they have some of the best support in the industry: their techs are well-trained and willing to do whatever it takes to get dead equipment working again.

While I would be seriously pissed if I couldn't use the support my company had paid massive amounts of money for, that's never happened to me. As for the quality of the support techs, though, I just wish that other companies would take Cisco's lead and train their damn techs, rather than have them read off a computer screen, fail to solve the problem, and bump you up to Tier 2, where the whole thing starts over again.

Re:And this is different from OSS?

[Avihson]

Yes, But the OSS comunity is both willing to participate in FREE testing, and intelligent enough to know that OSS is a process, not a product.

Commercial Software users are mostly sheep being lead to the slaughter.

Or did you really think that WindowsME was the greatest thing for your personal productivity?

Re:And the point is?

[4of12]

Sure, there's forums and there's newsgroups, and of course there's mailing lists...but none of them *have* to help you resolve your problem.

The fact that, in practice, such tenuous support turns out to look pretty darn in good in comparison with the existing commercial software support ought to give commercial providers some pause.

Either improve your support, or make it easier for the open forums to provide even better support for your product.

Reward your internal experts for trolling the usenet groups, for offering advice, making FAQs, fixing bugs, writing documentation, tutorials, quick start guides, searchable answers on web databases, etc.

Seems logical to me...

[Ztream]

Copyright violation: Caused by nearly everyone, one industry sector hurt.
Software bugs: Caused by one industry sector, nearly everyone hurt.

Re:I'd go even further

[killmenow]

3) Saavy people, who know what is going on and can describe the problem completely.

Let me just say, I fit into this category. My experience with tech support is that I know *more* than the person on the other end of the phone.

I don't call for support on easy problems. If I am up against something so gruesome that it requires a call to tech support, it will not be answered by Level I techs. I generally need to talk to the programmers who actually developed the software, the engineers who actually designed the hardware, or at the very least someone in a third or fourth level of escalation position.

What drives me nuts is calling support and being FORCED through the F-ing script before they'll escalate.

A prime example: we recently had a T1 outage. I call support. They want me to reboot the router. I tell the person to STFU and escalate me to someone who knows WTF they're talking about because the CARD IN THE SMARTJACK IS DEAD. I can reboot the router until Microsoft GPLs Windows and the circuit will not come back...yet they insist on leading me through the script.

I hung up and called my sales rep. Nine times out of ten, that gets me the support I need.

Made in the USA

[Infonaut]

Pay reasonable prices and try to buy only things that are made in the USA. Remember that you're going to get what you pay for.

Hell yeah! That's why I buy only American. Because everyone knows that:

* At Ford, "Quality is Job One!", while those cheezy Nissans, Toyotas, and Hondas are always in the shop

* The Linux kernel, started by an effite European, is vastly inferior to the quality server OSes cranked out by innovative Microsoft

* There are no more American TV manufacturers any more, because although they were of tremendously high quality, they were done in by the shoddy workmanship and underhanded tricks of foreign manufacturers.

Protectionism serves nobody. It pampers weak companies, maintains artificially high prices, and keeps less-developed nations from gaining economic self-sufficiency. Protectionism is not patriotic. It's just a fearful reaction to economic change.

Re:I'd go even further

[GMFTatsujin]

What drives me nuts is calling support and being FORCED through the F-ing script before they'll escalate.

I know you hate this. Everyone hates this. I certainly hate it. I hate having to walk someone through it.

Unfortunately, we in the tech support biz don't have the clear, definitive, undeniable proof that you, you in particular, yes YOU, are not a dumbshit who happens to have picked up the vocabulary from somewhere. It's dumb for a tech to assume you diagnosed and applied the fixes correctly UP UNTIL NOW.

I teach a workshop on using our email client at work. One of the things I show is how to turn on the automatic spellchecker. One day, someone in class piped up complaining that she was a touch-typist for 30 years, could type a jillion words a minute, and hated the spellchecker popping up and telling her no errors were found. Fine, I said, turn the option off and be happy. She did, and we went on.

A few days later, she sent me an email thanking me for something and managed to mis-spell her OWN LAST NAME. Just a typo? Sure. Happens to everyone once in a while? You bet. Still looked like a stupid asshole? Absolutely.

That's not a tech support issue, but I hope it gets the flavor across -- sometimes even when you're sure you're doing it right, you still do the dumb thing anyway.

Most times it's best to start from square one when fixing a problem.