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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"
From the article: Am I going to use this software as it's been marketed?
Not as it was designed, mind you, but as it was marketed. We all know that in the "21st Century" (TM) marketing is reality.
And tech support is always marketed as a smiling blond woman with the headset on saying, "How can I help you today?"
I get a warm numb feeling just thinking about it. Problem? I don't have a problem...
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
Amazing how long they took to figure it out...
What? I'm sorry, what's your customer ID again?
No, I'm sorry, I do not find your Cisco Router support anywhere on our systems. Have a good evening! <click>.
I'll show you tech support that sucks... jerks!
---
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?
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.
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
Several have delayed their products in order to produce a higher quality game.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
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.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
"I'm unaware of any company that would shortchange the customer in their speed to get the software to market," said Jonathan Thompson, vice president of the Washington-based trade group, which has more than 650 members.
That's great. I'd put Mr. Thompson right up there with the Iraqi Information Minister, and his "deathless quotes":
"There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!"
"God will roast their stomachs in hell at the hands of Iraqis."
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Oh, um... scratch that last one, ok?
And he gets better and better!
Thompson said customers need to have realistic expectations. He urged buyers to ask themselves two questions before plunking down cash for software: "What is it that I want this software to do?" and "Am I going to use this software as it's been marketed?"
Well, if I were to use Microsoft software "as it's been marketed", I'd expect to be using it to magically draw pretty pictures around my everyday activities, transforming a burned-out building shell into a stage with a spotlight.
"Make sure that your expectations are appropriate to what a product is marketing," he said.
What the hell does that mean? Intel marketed its product -- a chunk of finely-etched silicon in a plastic box -- with a bunch of blue guys. What expectations are appropriate in that case?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
it's news because a major consumer agency has taken the time to quantify how bad it is, something corporate execs can look at.
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.
Thompson said customers need to have realistic expectations. He urged buyers to ask themselves two questions before plunking down cash for software: "What is it that I want this software to do?" and "Am I going to use this software as it's been marketed?"
I thought that bugs, marketing lies, crappy documentation, and clueless tech support were realistic expectations for most commercial software.
But shouldn't the topic be Consumer Reports Discovers Software Tech Support Sucks ? Can I mod the article -1, Offtopic?
FLR
Does it somehow imply open source is better? Yuk yuk MSFT is teh gay!
Yeah right. "Community support", that's where it's at. Have you been on any support channels?
s20451: I'm having trouble getting my ATI card to work under Linux. Can anyone help?
HellDog69: LOLOL u noob RTFM
31337h4x0r: u r gay
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Having done 6 years of tech support, I can conclusively agree with the contents of the article. We do suck.
I've seen so many coworkers come and go, and only a small fraction of them possessed true technical ability. And a small fraction of those were actually able to communicate effectively to pass that knowledge on when it was needed. And even fewer had the temperment to do it for years at a time.
Which is a real shame. There are a lot of people out there that need help, and by my calculations, maybe 0.1% of tech support personnel are truly able to provide the level of support needed in all cases. But remember, 87.375% of all statistics are made up on the spot too, so take it with a grain of salt.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
I've worked in a customer service department (for MCI, no less) and I can tell you that it's not always the case that customers don't get the help they need -- but that they don't get the help they think they need.
Example: "I want you to credit me for all my charges for the last six months, since you told me which calling plan I was on but I misunderstood! And I want a courtesy extra credit of $50!"
Customers, sometimes, want the moon and the stars and neither customer support nor tech support nor any other department have the authority to fulfill whatever request they have. In the case of tech support, I have no doubt that many of the problems stem from the customer's inability to adequate explain their difficulty to the person on the phone -- and then the situation is escalated later as a resolution was never obatined.
The coolest voice ever.
- fire is hot
- water is wet
- SCO is EVIL
- grass is green
sort of a revelation?If you're searching for a company that does customer support RIGHT, look into National Instruments. They realize that encouraging customer success is paramount to a successful business.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world > > Those who understand binary and those who don't
I think if this were posted on fark it would have the headline "obvious"
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
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.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
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".
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.
customers are used as an army of unpaid testers.
Yah sure, I don't want to generalize here - but people who have never published software for a large number of users probably ought to know that even a large number of beta testers will always oversee a significant number of bugs if the software is appropriately large. That's because with our current development tools, both free and commercial software is always prone to any number of strange bugs, some of them even only detected out in the field under strange circumstances.
Even if you test very thoroughly, there are always bugs (even obvious ones) that slip through, it's just a matter of probability. And we're going to have those problems for some time to come, until software finally moves to higher-level development for which we do have neither the technology nor the technique yet.
But the realization that tech support is bad? OMG, just thinking about tech support makes me cringe! (Allright, maybe that's because I'm from Germany, where tech support is not only *always* grossly incompetent but also employs *only* people with the most insulting manners - I believe Germany is the world's leader in that respect!)
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!
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 worked in Tech Support for a while.
I liked it... for a while.
Of course at the time I made the rules. I started at a small company as their first tech support person. Being a full fledged software engineer dealing with highly technical customers on a cutting edge product was good fun.
It involved problem solving, helping people.
Then the volume increased. We added more hands, volume increased etc...
I was fine as long as I had more time than questions. Once the number of questions coming in surpassed the time to deal with the problems then things start to not be pretty. Stress, long hours, un-fun stuff.
If you need any proof that getting developers to test their software according to real world test situations and actually fix bugs they find, look at your tech support requests. Realize that each bug multiplies into hundreds of problems. Not because the bug itself grows, but the number of people encountering it grows.
As systems become more complex, so do their interactions. What works for a startup (e.g. monthly releases) only works while your software is simple, straightforward. Once it gets more than a basic set of features and starts to interact then everything goes up exponentially in the support department.
I'm very glad that I don't do support anymore. I also think that I design better programs now as a result.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
The article says that about 1/3 of people never get the help they need. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that number isn't much, much higher, but that is beside the point. I think were you to ask the tech tech support handlers , the callers can be diveded into about 3 catagories:
1) Total beginners - the ones who need to be told to click on the start button, then on settings, then on control panel, etc.
2) People who have some experience and can navigate through the settings, but don't want to know the inner workings of their machine. They just want it to work.
3) Saavy people, who know what is going on and can describe the problem completely.
I think groups 1 and 3 are the ones that get the most out of tech support, because the problem is usually obvious for the former and easily diagnosable for the latter. The middle group often end up in over-their-heads with non-trivial problems, and that's when tech support tanks.
In January, I had my longest and most successful tech support call. I was setting up an HP wireless print server (and let me tell you, those things are a BITCH). Long story short, the manual omitted one important detail - changes to the server settings DO NOT take effect until after you power the unit down and repower it. After calmly explaining the problem to the HP handler and trying a few things, (and after he talked to someone else there), he came back with the answer to my problem. So I would just like to say - what you get out of tech support is proportional to the amount of effort you put in.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
I have been helping people in many channels for years and in the vast majority of them if you talk like that you are kicked and banned. I have helped people on #debian-kde, #zope, #python and others. That may be an interesting stereotype behavior but in most places it is not tolerated at all. I mostly am on irc.freenode.net
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Back in the day (you should be able to determine timeframe soon), I had to call Gateway 2000 tech support to get some information on our spiffy new 386/16. Now, they were pretty good when you finally got them on the phone, but until then one usually had to wait for at least 30 minutes. On one occasion, I ended up having to wait over an hour, which put me in a rather hostile mood. When the support person asked me what my problem was, I asked them to hang on for a second.
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.
Now of course I only made the situation worse, wasted other people's time, etc, and that's not something I'd do today after being in a tech support-like position myself and having friends who have had similar tech support roles.
But damn it felt good to do it once, at least.
...
b oards/g en/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=025104
Allow me to introduce you to EA Games. I'm sure you are familiar with the Sims, but let me tell you about this great RTS game: C&C Generals.
Generals was rushed to market in one year, despite using a entirely new engine. The result? Well, it was released in February, and just 2 weeks ago a patch was released that finally made the game work through firewalls. Congratulations. Unfortunately, the have redefined "direct connect" to mean "lan play" so there is no way to "direct connect" over the internet. Meanwhile, every game ends in a disconnect as disconnecting prevents the loser from getting a loss on his record, there are 115+ pending bugs found by users, a map hack has been around for weeks and EA has never even mentioned doing anything about it, and in fact EA has abandoned their own forums and plans to delete all the posts shortly. Oh, and many of the features promissed do net exist, the ladder pack still does not exist (there is no ladder right now and multiple people can use the same username) and many people who preordered to get a special CD not only did not get the CD but got the game later than people like me who bought the game in a store, for less money, with the special CD (which turned out to be their website on a disc).
In other news, an xpac for Generals will be out in a few weeks.
115 bugs:
http://messagebrd.westwood.ea.com/cgi-bin/
There's no support, but there is "Send Feedback" and "Report Bugs" in the application menus from Apple's apps, and Apple pays attention to the feedback.
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"
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.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Welcome to the real world. Hate to break it to you, but this is how software is made. Many companies can't afford to test software for lengthy periods of time, and customers expect the product to be ready immediately, so of course they are going to get buggy software. If you are not paying extra for tech support, don't expect it to be good. Want good support? Pay large amounts of money for it.
This is the way things are. Don't like it? Just try to find another source that does a better job. You probably won't.
Its the old saying:
1) Low-cost
2) Quality
3) Fast
Pick 2.
#!/
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?
"shortchange the customer in their speed to get the software to market"
:). OS X is a serious consideration now too. Funny, but the *thought* of a Windows server turns my stomach. I've got too many geek friends that are damn fine admins -- and see the crap they go through.
:). Whatever. Personally, I have not.
:)
... [didn't know how to finish it? "hole" or "in the face"?]
I thought Microsoft's motto was more like "GET THE SOFTWARE TO MARKET FAST!" written like it was done by programmers on speed. Sshh, they're not _supposed_ to know that Office has a 80% markup [suckers] and forget shortchanging them. We take bills. BIG BILLS. Many of them. Overcharge all you can, while you can [suckers].
I mean, don't get me wrong. Heck, I first rolled out WFW 3.11 [happily mind you] @ the office and was rather finally forced to the 98se migration (it was either that or NT -- 98 had more apps). Windows 2000 "Professional" was some relief, but surely not much and not worth the cost/hassle/time to do so.
Some equipment died and was mysteriously replaced with some Mac's. Productivity is amazing. I always bought custom built and fairly decent/mainstream hardware -- I've seen how long Dell's last and compared costs to performance, etc. My computers tend to _easily_ last 3-6 years. Sometimes 10 (!). Funny, but the cost of a Mac really is about the same for me (and sometimes CHEAPER)...
Of course the core office servers are Netware, BSD, and of course Linux (FU SCO
Funny, but I *STILL* remember having to pay the Microsoft tax years ago for Linux boxen that are, well, still running Linux. My only option to avoid it was to build my own PC's from the ground up for the company (?) There was a day I couldn't go through 99% of the mom & pop "Microsoft Certified" OEM's, HP, Gateway, who? They made it tough for me and my business.
Funny, but I don't feel that way with the Powerbooks, iMac's, PowerMacs, and my original & favorite test/learning box -- my now brother's Cube [yeah, the cabling on the bottom was a dumb ass idea, but it *works*]. Sure, Apple could screw me -- I realize some felt shortchanged by one of the $129 OS updates (there's ANOTHER one coming...
Nor do I feel shafted by Redhat. Autodesk is pushing it a bit though.
As for the bugs... rotflmao -- after administrating for all the various OS' -- well, Windows, by far, been the most problemactic of the group. Buy American like good 'ol Apple. Bill's got the pie
Consumer Reports: "duh"
Hellohowyoudoing. Burrito will take 2 minutes in the microwave. TWO MINUTES! CANNOT YOU UNDERSTAND TWO MINUTES? TWO FUCKING MINUTES! SorryhowcanIhelpyoutoday.
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
I've never tried IRC, never had to. Google has found a solution to *EVERY* computer-related problem I have ever had, it's much faster than dealing with any kind of professional tech support, and it's free.
I worked Road Runner tech support for two years. (cue the groans) Unless you got actually cursed out by a tech, chances are whatever they did, it was on orders. Our support boundaries were defined by what we COULD do, not what we couldn't. And we couldn't confirm an outage without it going through about three levels of high mucky-mucks, which could sometimes take more than an hour. So even if we, the techs, knew an entire city was out, we'd still be forced to drag you, the customer, through half an hour of fruitless troubleshooting. (and by forced, I do mean "or else we're risking termination") This was intentional, BTW. If the local engineers could fix the problem before RR officially announced there WAS a problem, no outage went on the record and their service performance looked better. So if a tech is being unreasonably beaurocratic or telling you he's not allowed to do something, he's almost certainly not making it up. Quit arguing with him, ask for his supervisor (POLITELY!), and hope you can complain your way up the chain of command.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
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.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Nothing is more annoying than the asshat who calls and thinks he/she knows everything.
I disagree -- I find few things more annoying that some asshat tech support droid who discounts my knowledge of my equipment and their inane 1st level scripts. I've been on their end, I know how call centers work. I also know that if you go through everything they're going to tell you to do before you even call it gets you to a higher level as L1 isn't given much leeway to get the problem corrected. 9 times out of ten they're going to transfer to L2 or put you in for a call back.
I never said I knew everything, just that I know the routine that Time Warner has L1 go over. Mostly, this involves rebooting thier cable router. Since I know this is what they're going to suggest, I do it before I ever pick up the phone.
Fortunately, I've had little need to call them (other than to tell them they have an outage and ask how long its going to be before its fixed).
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
There's no test like production!
I must say, I'm in tech support, at least a good percentage of my job, but it's more Service Provider support, as in an ISP. I can imagine this being terribly different than software tech support (see my other comment in this article), but I can imagine my job being much easier. My secret is to treat the customer very decently, as I would a friend or relative, and make them come around to helping you. The unspoken words "I'm not going to fix this, we are" go a long way. A litte encouragement, explaination and nudge in the right direction is usually all it takes. They're only people, after all.
On the other hand, there's some software I wouldn't want to support 100% all the time...
(leaving that part up to your imagination)
FLR
The customers can hardly be regarded as "an army of unpaid testers." I have called technical support for a variety of different companies wishing to report a bug in their product. Do you really think the flunkies answering the phone know or care? Their purpose, obviously, is to get you off the phone as quickly as possible while still keeping you "satisfied." I've talked to a supervisor's supervisor's supervisor, and all he would tell me is "our product has been fully tested...", blah, blah, blah. I guess I am an unpaid tester. But no one gives a shit what I have to say or what bugs I've found.
AOL kiddie speak on the frontpage? OMG... WTF is /. coming to! I mean, uhh... wait... nevermind.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Yeah right. "Community support", that's where it's at. Have you been on any support channels?
:)
s20451: I'm having trouble getting my ATI card to work under Linux. Can anyone help?
HellDog69: LOLOL u noob RTFM
31337h4x0r: u r gay
I hate to tell you this, but all of IRC is like that. I'm pretty sure most IRC clients these days come with a "u r gay" button. It's right next to the "A/S/L" button.
Anyway, here's a suggestion for you: try a newsgroup. There are some grownups on the newsgroups, and most of the conversations use English and involve complete sentences. That's a big step up from IRC.
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
The very first line of the article: "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, according to a survey in the latest issue of Consumer Reports magazine." Well, the question is, what kind of help do they think they *need* anyway? Do they "need" the Dell support guy making $7/hour to explain to them, in detail, how to make a Powerpoint presentation and use and MP3 of "Wind Beneath My Wings" as the soundtrack? Or do they "need" their local ISP's tech support to troubleshoot their broken printer, because they can't print a web page? You see, there is bad tech support, no doubt. But the real problem is that the VAST majority of users don't know what their problem is. They call the wrong people, ask the wrong questions, and flat-out lie.
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?
Copyright violation: Caused by nearly everyone, one industry sector hurt.
Software bugs: Caused by one industry sector, nearly everyone hurt.
Yes, as opposed to other (non-commercially produced I guess) software where the support is non-existent
Yet another pile of crap about there being no support for free software. Why did this drivel get modded up to 5?
There are plenty of small companies which sell support services for free software. Moreover, they're motivated to do a good job because their livelihood depends on it - they don't have monopoly rents coming in. Moreover, you have a choice - there is competition in this marketplace.
>>At least with commercial software you can get your money back.
Which retailer actually gives you money back or even accept an exchange on any software that has been opened.
Almost none.
Tech support for most software is awful, at least people in forums/email for lots of open/free software understand the product if not the authors themselves. With coprorations you get hourly wage employees that don't "want" to help you.
The point is that companies should be spending more time on testing and less on pushing out poorly tested releases every quarter.
This is called a short-sighted strategy designed to create temporary stock price raises. It works until enough users get pissed off and never want to buy from that company again.
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.
Just turn off your DSL modem for 30 seconds then turn it back on..
1) Before coming to work, make the idiotic assumption that only highly experienced power users will need help
2) Make fun of the people who call with your coworkers - after all, it isn't that YOUR COMPANIES PRODUCT sucks... it must be that the people calling for help are stupid
3) Laugh as you get the pink slip and someone in India takes your job
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I found this quote from the story amazing...
"I'm unaware of any company that would shortchange the customer in their speed to get the software to market," said Jonathan Thompson, vice president of the Washington-based trade group, which has more than 650 members.
Just out of curiosity, I hit google and searched for Jonathan Thompson software washington. I wanted to start an email dialog with him. The first link returned was it (you gotta love google?) It is the SIAA. This is the best part....
In the middle of this page it says:
As a result of aggressive sniffer and collection programs, SIIA is no longer able to list the email addresses of its employees. We apologize for this inconvenience. However, you may contact the individual directly to receive their address.
Apparently they don't want people telling them how ridiculous they sound.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Upgrades make money.
As a commercial software developer why would you ever produce a piece of software that is perfect? Once eveyone who wants a copy is happy with the copy they have then you're out of business. Just make the damn thing good enough. Then people will use it and then buy the bug fix upgrades once they've had enough of the bugs. While you're at it put in some extra features with the upgrade but make sure the new stuff has bugs too.
You'll be in business forever.
That implies that problems found by the customers and complained about to product support personnel will be reported to some programming team that will fix them. That seems to rarely be the case. I know of many organizations that have near zero communication between product support and development and many more that even disband the development team when a version of software is complete and come up with another team if and when they decide to do another version.
From a business perspective, especially in the case of small companies set up as a front to milk a single product (there are many examples of this), if people are buying your product and complaining about it, in many cases, you've already won. They bought the product. As long as you sell enough copies to recoup the development costs and your Indian product support service doesn't cost more than what you're pulling in, you're going to walk with a profit that you can use to build the next company. Some companies don't even seem to have to go that far. There are companies that seem to go on forever selling crap that makes Microsoft look mil spec for $10 a copy to uninformed consumers.
So, what incentive does a company have to make software better? If they spend more time and money on it while some crap house builds market share and name recognition, they will lose the marketing game and their investment shirts.
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.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The reason why crudy commercial software is so offensive is that it is always repersented as a finished product. OSS users (especially beta and version 1.0 users) know that they are helping the project by finding bugs and providing support to the authors. I think that the OSS developer community is just more honest than the commercial software community (or at least its management).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
One of the problems is that with open source, the user is usually motivated to solve the problem or has someone around who is motivated. Most consumer product complaints basically involve people who want to scream at you until you "fix it."
I think part of the problem is that there aren't well-known and trusted "computer mechanics."
This is partially caused by the "my son the computer whiz" syndrome, where people know some kid that seems to be good at computers, and they get him to fix their computer. Sometimes (often, in fact), the kid can fix the problem, and that's great. But it means that people are loathe to go or flat out don't know where to go to get their problem fixed.
I think open source can help with a lot of this, as it's possible for a small shop to be able to fix just about any problem that comes up with a computer that uses OS software. Not likely, but possible. But they in turn are likely to know whom to call to get the problem fixed. Or maybe this is just because most OS problems stem from misconfiguration and other simple things because the level of skill required to do basic administration on a *nix is much higher.
Anyways, back to your subject: I find the most important thing with tech support is a well-organized and accessible database of past problems and solutions. Many companies are flat-out embarassed to admit they have problems with their software, and thus will not make their bug database available. Perhaps there's a legal liability issue here that I'm not aware of, but I'd hate to think such could be truly fixed by lying to people.
Having your bug database (even if it's just the closed bugs) available makes it far easier for a semi-experienced person to fix issues as they come up. If you have a good taxonomical system in place as well, then it becomes of use to even more people.
Another aspect is the software writing itself. I'm working on a mid-sized project right now, and most of my work is going towards: prevent the problem, and produce logging and error reports that are sufficient to narrow down not just this problem, but related problems in the future.
One of the funny aspects of this is in user interface. Often times a user says "this didn't do what I expected it to do," or the even more classic "I don't know if it worked or not, and I can't really tell if anything's wrong." The latter is a sure sign of a poor interface. The former is a sign of poor documentation.
And that's another thing: most people don't read documentation because it isn't written properly. There are basically two types of documentation: tutorial and reference. I've seen some good tutoreferences, but they are few and far between (and not usually as good as the two in pair).
The best man pages I have seen have a tutorial (sometimes as simple as examples) in one section, and a reference in another section.
I have noticed that if you have a very good tutorial, a very good reference, an accessible bug database, and a good troubleshooter, you do get the "I didn't read the documentation, but that won't keep me from shouting" problems every once in a while, but most of those people, once the very good resources are shown to them, become different people entirely.
Though this may only be true for a major tool. Minor stuff may always get the shouting[1].
[1] - In this case, you need to remember that you are writing a minor tool. If what it does is simple, keep it simple. If what it does is complex, make sure people understand it's complex. Good examples: (if you understand regexps) grep is simple, cat is simple. find is complex (for a simple tool).
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.
A lot of people confuse marketing and advertising. Speaking as someone who has worked in a marketing group...
Marketing is the science of analyzing the market and investigating customer needs and desires, in order to produce requirements that can drive product design. On the output side, marketing also take the product and devise a marketing strategy based on the same analysis.
Advertising is the art of persuading people to buy stuff by describing what it will do, how it looks, how it will make people relate to you, how you should perceive the company, and so on.
So marketing is finding out what people want, and trying to frame what you have on offer in terms of what you've found people want. Whereas advertising is the communications process of telling people about your stuff and trying to get them to buy it.
So the original article probably should have said "Am I going to use this software as it has been advertised?"
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
"Oh yeah? Well, the quality of the customers isn't very good, either!"
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Tech support sucks. You know why?
Most consumers aren't willing to pay for it.
It costly to the companies.
It doesn't sell.
If I started a company with great tech support I would never be able to compete(unless I found a niche market).
Yes, here is my $250 sound card no better than the other guys $75 sound card but it comes with great tech support. Just not worth to most people.
Now once you get into businesses and expensive hardware/software the support gets much better. You should also expect to at least $1000/year and usually much more than that.
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!
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.
A friend of mine had trouble when he first installed XP. He had that problem where the start menu took a lot longer to show than it should. He contacted MS support and they helped him get it to be better, but still not what it should have been. All this was done with no added cost after buying the OS at the MS store for real cheap.
On the other hand, I don't think much software these days is released without knowing that there will be issues. Back in the day you could have a couple machines and test out your software on them to find the problem spots. However, these days there are so many combinations of software that it would cost a fortune to do this.
I'd say open source projects tend to use the method of releasing and letting the users find the problems a lot more than commercial products. Probably because they don't have the resources to have a group of testers go through it for them.
-]Phreak Out[-
So, we're all supposed to accept whatever glorious wonders open source delivers and never complain? Nice approach: open source as a playground for developers, but, sorry, no room for users.
No one says you can't sell open source software. I'd be happy to pay if it would give users more control of the product and eliminate the hypocritical notion that open source is the wave of the future, but only open source developers have a right to comment on it.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
customers are used as an army of unpaid testers.
Now, this is completely wrong. Customers pay through their noses for the privilege of becoming testers!
I don't submit patches to Microsoft. Why should I submit patches to some open source developer?
Because that will get you what you want, faster than if you don't submit patches.
Microsoft implements features because it feels that X percentage of users will like them, and those users will pony up lots of money to get them -- even if, in fact, the features aren't really what each user really wants; the users basically take what they can get.
If a particular user wants a particular feature in a microsoft product, does he have the option of implementing it himself or paying someone to do so? HA ha -- no! He's fucked.
So there you have it: if your needs are precisely aligned with those of the masses of users, and you never ever want to add your own code, or fix a small bug, or deviate in the least from the norm, well, maybe microsoft is your kind of company. Go for it, send them your money and relax.
It's supremely hypocritical to argue that open source turns out better code for people to use
Huh? I never said that. I like free software because -- get this -- it's free (as in I have the ability to change it myself).
Arguments about the technical quality of free software are interesting, but it obviously depends highly on there being a sufficient quantity of interested developers (so some FS is great, and other FS sucks), and are ultimately rather beside the point.
If open source is simply a little playground for developers, then why should anyone else care?
No one said you have to care. But -- unlike with microsoft's software -- you're allowed to care, and that's what makes all the difference.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
They just needed to get tech support from me. My support doesn't suck; I'm the tech support MASTER! True, I might've been rude to them if they couldn't grasp computer basics. And I would be writing a perl script, reading slashdot and editing an XMMS playlist while helping them out with their problem. This might make me lose track of what their problem was part of the way through the call, but I would be able to get back on track by grumpily asking them to restate the problem. But at least their experience wouldn't suck...
--- Biffster.org
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
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
Yes, as opposed to other (non-commercially produced I guess) software where the support is non-existent (you know where the source is, there's comments too, maybe).
I've had "problems" with three or four open source software products. I put scare quotes around "problems" because in most cases my "problems" amounted to feature requests.
In each case, the "problem" was resolved with an email to the programmer.
I noticed some example SQL in the postgresql online manual had some minor inaccuracies. I sent an email with corrections, the corrections were incorporated in the manual, I was credited. End of problem.
CDex, an excellent MS-Windows CD ripper, had some problems incorporating extremly long ID3 tags into ripped MP3s. I emailed the programmer, Albert Faber, and in a matter of a few days, a fixed version was available for download. End of problem.
SciTE, the best programmer's editor I've found to date, didn't respond correctly to my mouse wheel settings. I emailed the programmer, Neil Hodgson, and (since I had access to the source) indicated some lines of code I thought responsible. Mr. Hodgson went so far as to download updated versions of the MS drivers to his own machine, and got back to me in about four hours -- despite a nearly 12 hour difference in our time zones. I was able to compile a private build with a fix, and the programmer's fix was available a week or so later in the standard build. End of problem.
MP3BookHelper, a truly phenomenal ID3 tagger, had no problems, per se, but I wanted additional features. Over the course of several months, the programmer, Vlad Skarzhevskyy, incorporated all but one of several features I asked for, usually producing a beta within 24 to 48 hours of the request. (The one feature rejected involved a user interface default value; Vlad correctly decided my proposal was at odds with MP3BookHelper's user interface standards.) No problems.
In two of these cases, I was able to look at the code myself and figure out, at least in general terms, where the problem was. In the other two cases I could have done so, but didn't need to -- but felt empowered knowing that I could assist in fixing the problem myself.
In all cases, I made a point of thanking the programmers for their hard work and quality products, and of asking for, rather than demanding, a fix, while giving what I hoped were useful clues as to the origin of the problem. And in all cases I got what I wanted far faster, and with far less frustration, than any tech support line could provide.
Please let me know what closed source software gives this sort of problem resolution, and how much the support contract is.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
He's not using beta releases of the software either, he's using final releases. Final releases aren't pushed out with tons of bugs like in commerical software. I've known OSS projects to run for years before finally releasing 1.0
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