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Tech Support - To Phone or Not To Phone?
flyingember asks: "With years of experience with tech support I have yet to come to a conclusion as to which form of support to use. Phone, or not phone. For some companies their online chat is great, I used it often with HP since you were much more likely to get through fast during a peak time of the day and the support was high quality. I recently used Philip's online chat to ask about a product feature (or lack of) and they demanded a name, zip and phone number, then claimed the product wasn't supported through chat and that I had to call when I refused to give this. I've had mixed luck with phone support. From half-hour hold times and little knowledge with some companies to well-staffed techs such as with installing a DSL account or getting the Internet on my phone. I have used email chat with some companies, and it does the job as well as email does allowing lots of detail but has lag sometimes. Which do you think is better, support over the phone or support another way?"
Some places, chat will be better; some places, phone will be better. It all depends on where the company puts its resources and its best people.
In general, bear in mind that phone support is more expensive; many companies will be trying to move away from phone support and towards chat/email support. It's easier for a single support person to handle multiple concurrent incidents that way, plus you can outsource without worrying about accents and so on. You also don't have to make sure your support people have decent phone voices.
Also, phone support costs more money. You have to get the call center hardware and software in, you need a bunch of phone lines, and so on. Chat support is relatively inexpensive, infrastructure-wise.
So I'd expect that as time goes by, chat support will be better. It's just more cost-effective and it makes sense for a company to focus on the cheaper, more efficient method of supporting people. Right now, though? It still depends on the company.
RTFM
Support by google.
... what? What do you mean you can't accept my mail?"
The last thing you need when crap gets broke is some phone jockey talking you through the elementary steps you tried 3 hours before.
"Yes I restarted the service."
"I can mail you the apache config
"Monday? It's 6pm on a Thursday!"
Sure lots of companies have great service contracts that will have people on site quickly, but whose company pays for that kind of support? Certainly not too many in today's cost concious environment.
Or worse yet, the boss chooses an expensive support option at the cost of an experienced admin who would have never let the thing break to begin with.
You can find most of the fixes to common problems on a usenet usegroup or one of the tons of mailing lists in about half the time it takes you to wait for someone on the phone. Sure it's not perfect, but if all else fails you can always fall back on the phone support if need be.
Here's the thing: unless you are doing something such as groundbreaking research, almost every problem or incident has happened before and has been logged somewhere on the internet. It's actually hard for some people to accept that they are just a drone in society, doing the same thing over and over and think they have unique problems.
I personally always search google, and then go to google groups for more obscure dilemmas. Tech support has always been a last option to me and i've really only used it a few times in my life, although I use google almost daily to deduce my problems.
Which do you think is better, support over the phone or support another way?
Another way: Google.
Seriously, since Google, I haven't needed to call tech support numbers. Whatever problem I'm having generally falls into one of two categories: other people have had that problem, solved it and posted the solution to the web somewhere, or no one has ever had that problem, and in that case tech support is useless.
The only value of tech support is to the product vendor, who can then advertise that they have tech support.
Hell, I look things up on Google before I crack the manual. Google is faster, I can narrow down the search to exactly what I'm looking for, and I often come across a cool and informative website on the topic at hand.
Plus, using Google requires that you think about how to describe the problem, which can often solve it before you even need to follow a link. Tech support is kind of like "natural language" programming nonsense. Programming isn't hard because the language is hard, programming is hard because you have to specify your desires precisely. You do that without realizing it as you refine your search; the search process is educational.
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
I research every tiny freaking little thing before I buy it. This nit-picking includes cat5 cables and different types of USB cables, and especially includes software. The result? I haven't had to contact customer support for a computer part/peripheral in five or six years.
This probably doesn't help if you're in IT for a huge company where you're pretty much given the hardware and said, "Here, make this work," but it's better than nothing. For what it's worth, if I do have any problems with features, incompatibilities or whatever, I find that the most valuable place to look is in the company's user support forums. There might be a ton of people saying that this particular laptop has dead pixels, or that a certain function in a piece of software doesn't work with a certain sound card, etc. etc. Real people with real problems is better than tech support any day. YMMV.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I had the exact opposite experience with Dell. I had a problem with my CPU overheating. I contacted Dell email support with a very detailed letter of what I had tried and the results I had. Every response felt like a canned answer. I couldn't figure out if I was writing to a human or an auto-reply. We concluded that I needed to send my machine in for repair and that someone would contact me with the info. Several days later, no contact. I then called in to a tech who was very helpful, he saw no prior information about my email support. He arranged my pickup and I had the shipping box within a day.
I should also note that Dell's India support is horrible. You know when you're on it and it's like wadding through mud. The overall phone system has a lot to be desired. Sometimes I have been asked for the same information multiple times in a row.
They ended up shipping my laptop to the wrong location and it returned better but not solved.
And never do it. If we all actually read the manual, they might become respected as sources of information (which they once were) rather than welcomings to a product.
Seriously, if you want real troubleshooting, start with your brain, the manual, and google. You will probably end up back with just your brain and maybe the manual. Maybe a fellow geek too.
Good documentation is the best kind of tech support - the information is distributed to those who need it. And who says the manual is the only form of distributed support? A website with updates to the manual in electronic format, a forum, and some good FAQ's and tutorials can handle loads of support 24/7 at the customer's speed.
If companies actually sought to educate their customers with information rather than brands, product lines, buzzwords, and marketing hype, their products could reach their potential. There is no easier and fundamental step to educating users desiring to solve an issue than good documentation. This is especially true with technical, computer-oriented things. When I get a product, I want raw information in a format I can read and browse fairly quickly. And details. Hide them in the back so people feel safe if you must, but put them somewhere.
In fact, bad documentation may actually promote sub-par tech support. If the majority of questions are basic and could have been put in the first page of the manual, why waste any money on someone with a clue? Why even train the staff you have? Why not use scripts if they resolve the most common and simplest questions? From an MBA's standpoint, if the majority of callers ask the same basic questions, there is no reason to alter the very poor and all to common tech support model of scripting, basic or no training, and possibly even outsourcing.
Tech support often fails because information is unnaturally scarce. Chat, phone, and email.
I am a senior support person for BEA Weblogic products. We can take cases over the web, phone and (to some degree) via email.
:-) )
:-)
In my experience, it is better open/create the cases with email/web, send all your information and then (if the problem is urgent) call. That way everything is in writing for future analysis by the support person, senior support person (on escalation) and/or supervisor on review. You can also guarantee that the important keywords are not misheard/misentered.
The phone conversation is good when there are multiple angles of the problem to discuss or when you are working with a senior support person and he/she still not understanding what your exact problem is. Just remember, while you are talking to them, their research capacity is diminished. (e.g. 2 parallel threads of research for your case instead of 4
Of course, we are trained to make the best choice for the customer ourselves and use the best communication method. Still, you are the only one who knows whether we understand you.