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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"
Another consideration is that many bad experiences are had by people who constantly cheap-out on their purchases. You don't walk into a McDonalds and bitch about the paper napkins. Similarly, I don't doubt that if you're buying low end 'home' devices that they sell at the discount store that you're going to run into a few problems -- but the solution is simple: don't buy that $30 CD burner that was made in a straw hut. There used to be a time you could buy a television set that lasted 8-10 years, for example, but the lifespan of the equipment has been cut beyond the pricing.
If you aren't constantly bargain-hunting but instead reading reviews online and buying things at the logical price point you might discover that the companies can not only afford to give you reasonable tech support but that you will also have less need of it. Additionally, buying the cheapest stuff you can find almost certainly promotes outsourcing and the hemmoraging of manufacturing jobs from our country, which hurts all of us in the end.
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.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I've been using commercial software for many years, like most other people, and I've rarely had to call anyone to do anything. Granted I'm more technical than the average user, but then that would be an argument for making software easier to use, not one against its existence. Now, there are companies out there that put out positively shitty software without hardly any testing, and that becomes plain the moment you open it up. The birthday card printers and the no-name PIMs and so on. Software from companies like Microsoft always has bugs, but these are rarely showstoppers and are normally fixed in service packs or whatnot. There's another issue - did the user check to see if there was a fix before he/she called? Microsoft (and most other big software companies) spend billions of dollars on testing. This article makes it sound like nothing is tested and software is simply unusable by the time it gets to the consumer. I don't think that's even remotely the case.
And going back to why this was posted... how is free software any better? There is, by definition, no support. There's a formal testing protocol (alphas and betas) as well as thousands of unpaid testers. It's often released too early to "get it out there". The stuff is often buggy (oh, look! The KDE segfault dialog again!), but it's also patched regularly. The big-name stuff is about as rock-solid as most big-name commercial software. Both have their unique problems and strengths.
I'm sure this will turn into the usual "hahah, m$ sux" fest, but I just don't see how all these "facts" make free/open source more attractive - at least to the consumer.
No, the software tech support and shipping of Betas is nothing like the car industry or other industries dealing with physical devices.
You talk about new cars and the Model T. Lets take a real software example, like when Adobe changed the default RGB level in Macintosh Photoshop. It was like if you put your car into drive and then the steering reversed.
So then after much yelling and really snarky Adobe reps at Software Expos and Graphics Expos they issue a patch, but you have to poke around for it and it doesn't really fix the problem.
They then fix the problem, but you have to pay to upgrade to get it.
Car makers don't do that, but software makers do.
Lets say Ford ships a vehicle with a serious problem, they fix the problem for free if enough people have the problem or if it impacts the operation of the vehicle to the point it's unusable or unsafe.
Someone ships a piece of software with a serious problem, oh like Razor's Edge corrupting databases or not printing. You complain, they blame it on you, on Microsoft, on a printer driver.
But wait, we have a fix. You need to buy a new version of Windows Server and a new version of Razor's Edge, but wait, another product of ours you are using won't work with the new one or it won't work with new Server, we change our mind every other day.
If I go down to Honda and there's a problem with a Civic's doors, they don't blame it on the gas or on the maker of the shocks.
You pay someone minimal salary or a bit above to answer mails and phone about some products...
For the sake of an example let's take someone in computer science or electronics...If you want that supportperson to have education in any of those fields so that he understands what is really going on in the system and not troubleshoot with a simple "issue-solution" sheet, such a person will be demotivated really fast unless he doesn't have minimal objectives with his career.
The problem is usually those people are really incompetent if they end up in jobs like this especially if their education could get them 2x the salary or more. They either have to be really lazy or bad at their work (or the employment market to be really in a bad shape).
So what does that give, if the person isn't good enough to work in his field on practical projects, he won't be any better in troubleshooting it, minus some exeptions. If they would want to hire competent people they would have to raise the salary grid a bit, and even give extras because, lets face it, if you're told you'll be answering tech support issues for the next 5 years of your life, most people will be depressed.
The solution?
Well look at National Instruments for example, they have one of the Best support site on the planet, you search, you find. You call, you get the information. I am not a big user of their products (labview) but I was *really* impressed with this. So the solution is a mix of putting issues in a database and have experience stored somewhere so that someone else can use it (a bit like the trouble-solution sheet but more dynamic and with good search filtering) and as for non-computer approach, well, either make a better product, or for ***'s sake, pay the price to get decent people in. Having 3 monkeys to not answer questions properly and having the people re-phoning 30 minutes later, or having 1 good professionnal person that will be doing his job correctly and effectively will not only benefit in customer satisfaction, it will require less infrastructure and while it's going to cost a bit more, if you stop being a lame manager and use some common sence, the benifits (even financial) will be higher than the costs of keeping a crappy system.
Look at how many companies are starting to outsource their support center... this might work for some buisnesses like ISPs.... but for others it just shows that their system has failed and grew out of proportion... how many times people you know that used tech support had to phone back again because the problem wasn't resolved properly? This shouldn't happen for most of those calls right? well, there's your answer... putting more underpaid monkey won't solve the problem, it'll just cost more.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I worked tech support for a major canadian ISP for 3 years.
The tech support we offered sucked because the employees in general were underpaid, undertrained and overworked.
The funny part though is that OUR internal tech support sucked even worse. The software we started using had been developed in Malaysia (IIRC), it hadn't been tested at all before it was released and we had no one from the actual development team on site, or even in the country. The thing crashed, double posted billings to accounts, wasn't billing about 6000 customers for a period of 16 months and no one was there to fix it! I don't think anyone even cared.
This is partly why I deal with a smaller ISP now, that rents the network from the larger previously mentioned one (also they allow cash payments for the bill instead of auto-credit-withdraws which I hate).
I won't mention any names, but someone can probably guess which ISP I am referring too.
Of the estimated 8 million computer users who seek technical support from software manufacturers every year, about a third never get the help they need.
Disclaimer: I am not advocating software piracy.
This is an excellent argument against buying software instead of just pirating it. One of the primary benefits to buying software is the access to technical support. If a user can't even expect to get that for their money, how can these companies expect people to purchase it instead of simply downloading it off P2P?
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." -- Ambrose Bierce
Apple's technical and customer support is top-notch. Serving on the hell-desk my fair share, and placing my own fair share of calls, I can safely say with confidence that Apple has far surpassed ANY other customer service model ever before seen on the market. They have a truly no-BS, almost-no-waiting policy on dealing with problems. And for most things, you don't even have to mail your machine somewhere if you're nearby to an Apple store (we have one in our local mall - GREAT place).
This works for Apple because they actually produce QUALITY products - their level of attrition/triage isn't as high as... say... Dell. Or Gateway (God fucking forbid...)
A lot of their applications are released as betas to allow the customer audience detect bugs and shit before official 'final' release (this works because the audience mostly understands what they're getting themselves into) and freely offers to help (and because it's seemingly less damaging to have bugs in Betas than in Finals).
Informatus Technologicus
I remember back in the day, calling Creative Labs (or it could have been Hayes.. can't remember.) tech support about a Sound Blaster problem.
They did end up solving the problem (and I was one of those annoying "Im a geek and an engineering student so I know everything" types too), but what I remember about it was that there was a life DJ spinning the musak (actually it was some electro-techno stuff) and he'd tell you how big the wait queue was and the avg. wait time between songs.
That was pretty cool.
No, reelly I don't!
Given this, game companies have to be a bit more on the ball when it comes to bugs, since reviews along the lines of "this game is buggy" can really hurt sales.
On the console side, Sony, Nintendo and (yes) Microsoft have very strict standards when it comes to bugs in shipping games on their consoles. There is no such oversight in the regular user application world.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
What about the fact that tech support (call centers anyway) are being exported overseas. I think that could drastically affect how you get service for the following reasons: 1) Language barrier: Let's face it, if they can't understand what you are telling them, you'll end up paying that dorky kid upstreet sooner than if you got someone from Alabama on the phone (also hard to understand but doable at least) 2) Cultural Differnces: Taking a break in the coversations to hork up a loogy isn't common in western cultures but I'm aware of several eastern ones where this is tolerated and even acceptable (not sure about in a work place though...) This is just one example but you get the idea. 3) time Zones: Nuff said, I can't be arsed to help customers in the broad daylight not to mention 4:30 AM. 4) Education/Training: I can't say for sure but I'm guessing that the third world isn't exactly top shelf when it comes to this. 5) Pay: They aren't paying people enough to live well otherwise these jobs would stay in North Am.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
not that it really matters--how do you propose that J. Consumer find out what the design of software package X might be?
Nobody needs to have a clue what the design parameters of their toilet or their lightbulbs were; why should they have to care about the software?
I can only speak from personal experience so I can say that my company gives refunds and I have experienced refunds from amazon.com, dabs.com and insight.com.
Tech support can be awful but it's a long way from being a FACT.
For example, in my company we have a helpdesk where we answer *everything* in an average of around 26hrs. We have forums where we, and other customers, answer problems incredibly quickly. We have an online bug database (similar in function to bugzilla) where customers can track their reported problems. We also go in the newsgroups etc.
Newsgroups suck because most consumers don't know what they are. Forums seem clumsy for most people new to computers and for these people our bug reporting system is nothing short of daunting.
The helpdesk has proved to be very popular. It has a wizard type interface, asks a few questions and then responds with some common solutions...with the last step to submit a question which is then answered by someone resembling a human.
If tech support is awful then it's univserally awful regardless of whether you pay for the software or the support. But, if you pay for it then you deserve to get the very best possible - I've always found complaining loudly to be most effective.
I totally agree that large coporates have emplyees that are less than pationate about the software (or your use of it). However, I've worked alongside a few tech support people in large and small organisations and most are only too pleased to help where they can. Higer up the food chain we'll find the cynics who care only about the bottom line results.
Sure. But the engineers and the regulatory officer of the company need to check too. My remarks were in the context of medical devices (where I make my living as an engineer).
In regulated industries marketing claims have a lot more weight than in market you describe.
I do my research, make my good-faith effort to solve the issue, and then post to the mailing list or newsgroup. Drivers?--I've gotten test code and patches from developers. "Try it; if it works, it's in the next release." Apps? I've gotten many immediate and useful responses from other users, often there are several solutions to my problem.
To be fair, I do pay for this. A little of my time, a little exercise of thought. And it's stuff I like to do! Paid no dollars, though. I get excellent support, the code does what I want it to do. Time to satisfactory solution is rarely more than a day when the problem is my ignorance. Time to satisfactory solution is rarely less than a week when there's actually a problem in drivers or code.
And you can't beat the price.
Commercial tech support? Different story. I bought a MS product once. Windows 98, for my work computer. Paid real money for it, too. Wouldn't install even though the machine was listed as Win98 compliant. MS admitted it should work. "Reformat your HDD" was not a deterrent; I had a spare. I made those fsckers stay on the phone and waste their time while I wasted my time working on that turd. MS spent 12 hours on the phone with me over about a week. They had no clue. They never solved the problem. I sent the machine back to the mfr, they installed Win98, and I ghosted the HDD.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Service contracts are where they make their money, and promises of x-hour response time and qualified technicians are how a majority of the sales are made, and yet still the support often sucks, not enough techs, too many of those undertrained, overworked and undercompensated, and still it goes on- angry customers, long response times, unresolved issues... sad thing is, a lot of custromers come back to us because other companies are even worse.
I put them on hold, went downstairs, had dinner, watched some TV, and then finally moseyed back up stairs about half an hour later. To my great surprise, they were still sitting there on the line and we got my problem solved.
I worked support for Gateway (actually for Convergys on the Gateway contract) near the end of 1997. We were judged, metric-wise, on the amount of time we spent logged in vs. the amount of time we spent on the phone. I would have loved to have taken a call like that--it would have really helped my metrics!
That you proably made some tech support persons day.
Most support houses have a very strict rule of no hanging up on the customers. (And yeah, paid my dues with SBC, AT&T, and a few other smaller ones.) So when you told the person to hang on they did just that. Meanwhile they didn't have to take any other calls during your time off and were free (Hopefully if they wern't in too bad of a call-center.) to surf the web or play some freecell.
By the time you got back and had calmed down they were also well rested as well and I'm sure quite ready to help you with whatever you wanted!
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Not that they're any better. Aside from not being to understand half of what they say, they are equally, if not more useless than techies in america. I'm not being racist, I'm just saying that distance matters to some extent. Would you really give two shits about helping some guy in another country who you could barely understand?
Anyways, so I called about not being able to download the drivers/unloading software for my HP digital cam. They used to have it for download on their site, it was no longer there, and my CD was at home when I needed it immediately at work. So after reading through her script, she still couldn't answer my question....checked with someone else, said that its off the site because they are probably updating that software/driver and it would be back soon. Now, this was last updated in '01, so I am fairly confident that it will not be returning to the site for download. However, HP is oh so kind as to let you ORDER THE CD with the software/driver on it. Bloody hell, if that didn't make me feel like they were trying to milk me, I don't know what would. So basically they're stripping their existing support of my product, and making me pay for it. Thanks a lot HP, I sure won't be buying anything from you again!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Over my long and illustrious career as a support rep, I've made a few observations. Are they valid for all cases throughout the industry? Perhaps. I make some generalizations which may or may not be accurate:
Back in the OLD days, when I was working for a small startup software company, PRE dotcom, support reps who were talented generally were not programmers, but often you'd run into reps who had a wide skillset, and they were like magic. Some learned out of the position, to become field consultants, or programmers. Some were content to be the Hero - the firefighter. I was one of those.
As my career progressed, I found myself flying to customer sites to troubleshoot issues that could not be easily done remotely. This was great for building long-term relationships with customers, and would garner less adversarial incidents, more cooperation, and enhanced sales. It truly worked like that. But the more time I spent on the road, the less technical I became. Without working directly with the product, and doing more "install and configuration work" instead of troubleshooting, I became dumb. I begged to be put back on the phones. I still travelled for a while though, because it was absolutely a crucial part of the equation of support at that level.
Another thing we did right was, we shared proprietary information with the customer. We were honest and straightforward about bugs, and we fixed them.
As my company matured, and was bought, and sold, and merged, my support team went from 6 people, to over 1000. Corporate politicking meant that the officers tried to reduce the role of the Jack of All Trades type engineer. Everybody had to have a well-defined job. Support reps could not travel. Field reps travelled all the time, billed their time, and worked for the Sales department. Bugs were an embarrassment. Bugfix releases were non existant, we had to bundle bugfixes with paid upgrades. REAL information was to be kept at a minimum. So were numbers of REAL talented support reps. They were phased out or replaced with large numbers of low-paid phone monkeys.
The end result was - customers now would get thier calls answered quickly. But until they finally got to talk to that experienced backline guy, the problem would usually not get resolved. Unless it was one of the very common issues in the knowledgbase (which were the issues that got addressed in the updates) - and those were the issues the customers could have looked up on the web. Field reps, because they spent so little time focussing on any single product, and so little time in the lab, they generally had the same level of expertise that a customer who spent a half hour browsing the manual could get. Often this was the extent of their training anyway!
Then there was the increasing attempt to charge for support in order to make support a profit center, not a cost center. In order to do this, they had to strictly measure performance, and built out this huge infrastructure to do so. The problem is, they had no clue what they were doing. They established quotas for phone reps which all but ensured that the customer would get a bad experience for their money. They built a new call tracking database, which was slow, buggy, and forced users to jump through hoops to record the necessary information. It was designed not to be a tool for techs to track calls and issues, but rather a tool to measure their performance and document their work. It was a liability, not an asset. In the end, though, even if most of use percieved the decline in customer service from our organization, the management managed to produce astounding numbers. I guess they must have attended the Enron school of business process.
I found my job increasingly becoming the focus of customer criticism. They weren't criticising ME, they were criticising the whole process. I was ending up with a huge stack of other people's messes to clean up. I was the one who cleaned up the messes our incompetent field reps made. I was the one who so
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Do you want engineers who don't know neither who his customers are, nor how customers use the product, to define what features go into the design?
That is a very narrow view of engineering. Certainly people like Douglas Englebart had a very strong interest in who the customers are and how they would use their technology. The fusion of this interest in human factors and sound software engineering led to a far greater leap in software than anything ever dreamed up by marketing.
The fundamental flaw in marketing methodology is that it very rarely leads to creativity in product development. All it does is identify current market needs and trends. Marketing is fundamentally incapable of producing a new product category, be it the Post-It note or the Mother of All Demos. All it is able to do is identify popular user desires based on technologies and products that the users already are familiar with.
If marketers made all product decisions, where would Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston be?
The engineer, not the marketer, can envison the breakthrough.
Do you think that average Joe who buys cheap Linux computer from Walmart thinks "that he is helping the project by finding bugs and providing support to the authors"? I think that he wants a cheap computer to browse the Web, does not care about community, and no more agrees to be a free tester than another customer buying computer with Windows XP.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
I don't think you realize it, but you gave that poor soul a 30-minute break. Of course he stayed on the line, the call monitoring software showed him working hard with a customer. Meanwhile he was sitting back and relaxing, pretending to talk to you when the manager walked by.
John Susek