Orwellian Tech Support

alteran writes "Here's a very well-written piece on what goes on inside a tech-support call center. Makes working for Initech seem good. Sorry about the forced ad-viewing - it only last about 10 seconds, and the article is worth it."

Comments

Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot

[Frymaster]

Q: how many tech support personnell does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: i have a copy of the light bulb here at my desk and it works fine for me. are you familiar with the use of light bulb? okay, can you tell me which version of light bulb you are running - it should say either 60w or 100w on the top rounded surface of the the bulb itself. so, to check the version number you will need to remove the fixture if you have one. is the light bulb installed in a ceiling-mounted fixture light or is it for a desktop style lamp? okay?

right, it appears as if you have the correct version of light bulb. there are a number of possible reasons why you are experiencing this problem. first, however, i need you to explain the nature of the darkness. is the darkness intermittent? is it partial or total? are there other light bulbs in your work environment that are displaying the same problem? are there other problems aside from the darkness?

let's start with the simplest possible solution first. if you have a desklamp or other exposed-bulb installation, could you check to see if the appliance is plugged in. to do this, locate the black power cord at the bottom of the lamp or other installation and follow it to the end. you should find a plug connected to a socket on the wall approximately ten to fifteen centimeters above the floor.

if you are using a ceiling or other permanent installation we'll have to test the switch. first, locate the switch. it should be attached to the wall and be from 1.25 to 1.75 meters above the floor. switches are usually located adjacent to doorways. now, toggle the switch up and down. is the darkness persisting?

hm. is your installation battery operated? like a flashlight? is your installation on a timer or motion detector? is this a refrigerator light bulb? have you tried opening and closing the door? is the bulb florescent rather than incandescant? has it had time to warm up?

okay, it appears as if the bulb will need to be changed. i'm going to give you an incident number. someone from physical plant will be by within ten working days to change your light bulb. please give him your incident number.

Re:You can't get parts from India...

[Anonymous Coward]

You Are Being Flamed Because

[ ] You posted a Religious Thread
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[ ] You posted a me > u thread
[ ] you posted a worthless offensive thread
[ ] You continued a long, stupid thread
[ ] You committed crimes against pork biproducts
[ ] You posted a "YOU ALL SUCK" message
[ ] You haven't read the FAQ
[x] You don't know which forum to post in
[ ] You just plain suck
[ ] You posted false information
[x] You posted something totally uninteresting
[ ] You doubleposted
[ ] YOU POSTED A MESSAGE ALL WRITTEN IN CAPS
[ ] You posted racist crap
[ ] I don't like your tone of voice
[ ] You are not civilized enough to post in these forums
[ ] Yuo mispeled evry sengle wurd.
[ ] Your parents are related
[ ] You and your wife are related
[ ] You dated my sister
[ ] You dated my brother
[ ] You made love to my dog

In Punishment, You Must:

[ ] Give up your AOL Internet account
[x] STFU & GTFO
[ ] Jump into a bathtub while holding your monitor
[ ] Actually post something relevant
[ ] Read the f****** FAQ
[ ] Call Bush and inform him he sucks
[ ] Go to your room with no supper
[x] Apologize to everybody on this forum
[ ] Go stand in the middle of a Highway
[ ] Recite the Greek alphabet backwards
[ ] Take a bath in bleach
[ ] Drink out of a spitoon
[x] Eat my ass
[ ] Grind a rail on your sack
[ ] All of the above

In Closing, I'd Like to Say:

[ ] 1 R 1337
[x] Pwned
[ ] GG no re
[x] Blow me
[ ] Get a life
[ ] Me > u
[ ] Never post again
[ ] I pity your dog
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[ ] STFU & GTFO
[ ] Learn to post or f*** off
[ ] Go jump into some industrial equipment
[ ] STFU botter
[ ] All of the above

eh????

[freerecords]

"Here's a very well-written piece on what goes on inside a tech-support call center."

Things go on inside tech-support centers?!? I thought they just put everyone on hold!

Nothing new here... Carry on.

[stephenisu]

It's all true. I used to work for a certain government contracted tech support call center in Lawrence KS. Some of the people there couldn't operate a calculator, let alone a computer. Oddly enough, that's how HR liked it. If you put an idiot with a script in front of them on the phone, they may piss off people, but they are less likely to do any real damage. As apposed to the guy who thinks he knows what he is doing, and magically get's IE uninstalled on a win98 machine and all hell breaks loose (had to see it to believe it).

Worked in a call center

[Anonymous Coward]

I originally worked for mindspring, they found that they got a better class of techs, who responded well on the phone when given a decent work environment; cut forward to 2 years later after the merger with earthlink. The new motto was low call times, let them call back. Costs rose, the work environment stunk, and most of the support personnel developed attitudes, not to mention that management developed a sweep everything under the rug attitude. Unfortunately call center phone support is getting to the point of burger flipping and telemarketing. A lot of friends complain that they know more about the product then the support personnel they are calling (some are semi-computer literate artists)

Re:Worked in a call center

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I worked for Earthlick for about 6 monthe in '96, part time. The place would wear a hole in your soul. They had an LED message board showing the queue and hold times. They would go from green to yellow to orange to red according to pre-set values. When they went orange, the "leads" or supervisors would jump up and start trying to rally people to work faster.

Then they started offering bonuses for "calls-per-hour". I wrote a dollar-sign on the little orange "Rls" (hangup) button on the phone because the more times I pressed that button, the more I got paid. I make a cha-ching sound each time I hit it. Got a big ol' bonus for it. They asked how I got so much faster and I told them it was because I stopped giving a shit. When told that wasn't what they were after, I reminded them that they were paying extra for it.

Favorite lines:
1) It's an operating system problem, call Microsoft

2) Those modems are known to be flaky, call US Robotics for a firmware upgrade

3) I can hear static on your phone line, call the phone company. You can't hear it? Yeah, it's typically on only one side of the line that's coming *from* your house, that's why you didn't know.

4) Yes, we are aware of a problem at that POP, there's a tech team there now, try it again in about 30 minutes.

Fun with Phones:

1) Call tech support yourself and solve many of your own problems in 3 seconds or less, receive bonus. (It helps to work the very early shift so there's a greater chance of ringing your own phone).

2) Your supervisor can see they you're on an "inside" call so make sure you call the 800 number.

3) If you call in and you don't get yourself, make sure you get your co-workers on board to solve each other's problems - CHA CHING!

4) This doesn't work because supervisors montitor calls.

5) But your phone can only be monitored by one other phone at a time so go to an empty cubicle across the building and let it monitor your phone. Place a piece of paper under the handset so the phone sits in the cradle without hanging up. Enjoy the show as your supervisor calls in the phone guy and they keep glancing over at you. Ask them what's wrong and watch them squirm.
----------
And in the end all they do is create more calls which they try frantically to take which creates even more calls - your never get ahead and you piss off all your customers.

The salon article talks about outsourced tech support but Earthlick was screwing itself with this attitude in-house.
----------

2 cents

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

When I ordered DSL, it had to be MSN. It never worked. But even as the Tech Support guys (in India) could not find the problem in their database (and therefor could not solve the issue, I just bailed on DSL for cable), they where polite and actually spent lots (LOTS) of time with me. Now the Comcast guys, they suck, tried to stick me with a "premium" install service charge even though all they did was drop off a box and a disc (my wife, the barracuda took care of them).

Re:2 cents

[jsmyth]

Maybe the article only describes what US call centres are like.

Heehee. I worked over two years in European tech support - based in Ireland - for one of the big three (at that time), and it was all true! One difference - in my section, we had laptops, so using laplink and a serial cable we could install games on our machines. Got rid of the frustration. But not the big brother attitude of the omnipresent phone stats and supervisors...

Orwellian?

[CaptainAlbert]

Orwellian? In what way?

I'd have said Kafka-esque, perhaps.

Clueless? No surprise

[mytec]

I worked doing tech support at an ISP some years ago. Once I gained more knowledge I moved on to bigger and better things. It cannot be easy to hold on to talented tech support persons for the relatively low pay they receive vs the stress of dealing with irate customers and the pressure of keeping call times down. Most probably move on like I did.

For anyone too lazy to read the entire article.

[bad enema]

The last three words does suffice pretty well.

"Bullshit. Total bullshit."

And we wonder why computer illiterate people always come to directly to the geek in their life for help whenever something goes wrong.

Re:For anyone too lazy to read the entire article.

[Sergeant Beavis]

I get laid everytime I fix my wife's PC :)

Unfortunately for me, she runs Linux. /ba-da boom!

This call may be monitored...

[lutefish]

For the time being, I'm the guy doing the monitoring. Recorded calls, live calls, I shudder to think how many I've listened to in the past months. And we do indeed listen to them (whilst existing in that impossible state of forced-web-browsing-boredom) with at least one ear. Occasionally I get callers fired, largely for fun, but sometimes because they're rubbish. Of course, this is telemarketing, not tech support, and the government (UK) have reasonably strict laws on what will and won't hack it. Same third-party, outsourced set up. Perhaps some sort of regulatory/accountability / government-in-your-backyard intervention is required?

obligatory dead troll link

[enrico_suave]

Internet Help Desk skit (it's in quicktime)

It's mildly amusing, but there is grains of truth in the humor...

e.

Very, very familiar.

[Murmer]

I used to work at a Prominent Canadian ISP, and this sounds very familiar.

If you're a big fan of "root causes", well, the root cause of crappy tech support is the business model. The people who work there get paid per hour, but the actual company, or in this case "branch-of-other-company-via-internal-billing" gets paid per call that comes into the building. Therefore somebody who is needs three or four calls to fix a problem, rather than just one, is three or four more times as profitable to the company as one who calls once.

In this environment, the ideal setup is about 95% braindead scriptreaders who can cheaply solve the great majority of problems given a flowchart and three or four tries and a tiny handful of people who handle the real problems from the persistent clients. But if you're actually good, and you want to keep your job, you have to play by Management's playbook.

There's an optimal point somewhere where the cheapness of tech-support expenses is balanced against the cost of losing clients, and I promise you, some very smart people have worked out those numbers.

Seriously, that's why consumer net access is so cheap, in both senses of the word, these days.

Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot

[darkscorp]

I personally enjoyed the description of different tech support workers:

A punter is someone who gets rid of problems by giving them to someone else. Punters tell customers that their problem is not really with their computer, but with their software, their printer, their phone lines, solar flares, whatever they can make sound believable. Then a punter will look at the piece of paper hanging above their phone and read you those four magic words. We don't support that. If you want your problem fixed, a punter will tell you, you'll have to call someone else.

Karen is part of a growing group called givers. Like punters, they don't really solve any problems, but instead of just asking you to call someone else, givers want you to have a parting gift. They'll listen to your problem and then randomly choose a piece of hardware to send you. Of course it won't solve anything, but givers have discovered that people usually calm down and start agreeing as soon as they think you're sending them something to fix the problem. And by the time they get the new part and discover it has no effect, they'll call back and someone else will have to figure out how to deal with them. Givers are really just punters with style, and they find their tactic very satisfying. Karen and her ilk get to spend all day playing Santa.

Ted is someone I don't speak to. Ted is a formatter. Ted, and those like him, have only one solution to their customers' problems. Erase everything on the computer's hard drive and start over from scratch. While this can be effective for solving all sorts of software troubles, it's like amputating someone's leg to fix an ingrown toenail. The solution is usually worse than the problem. Most times Ted doesn't actually follow through with his plan. The entire strategy is just a bluff. Most people will balk at the proposition of losing everything and decide they can live with whatever problem they've called to complain about. At the very least they'll decide to hang up, back up their data, and call back -- at which point they'll become someone else's problem.

This could be a fun quiz addition for e-mode.com: Which Tech Support Staffer Are You?

I think I am a "Santa"

Quote

[savagedome]

A friend of mine who works for tech support summarized it very nicely. According to him 'Working in tech support is like living an unreality that when a client opens up an issue with the support, they imagine that a group of people in a room is working devotedly to their specific problem. And I live this for every single client'.

Re:Violation of copyright laws

[0x0d0a]

On the other hand, I don't think that the story submitter had the right to get the link to the story accepted. Dammit, Slashdot editors *normally* don't allow links to stories that require jumping through hoops to read, but they grandfather news sources in. At one point, the NYT didn't require registration, so they got in. At one point, Salon wasn't a pain in the ass to read, and so it got in.

I'd like to see Salon and the NYT removed from the "special pass" list.

Support is demanding and expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked my way up a call center for an ERP software manufacturer into consulting. Many of my peers did the same thing. We came out of those experiences with great expertise. We ended up knowing more about the software than the developers and more about the hardware than the vendors. That's why we now are all making a comfortable living outside of support.

I came up through an original support staff of under 6 all the way through a 100+ org with sophisticated call tracking and metrics and high levels of customer satisfaction. Our customers were deploying and implementing production manufacturing systems. They simply could not get up and running without our support. And they were paying 5-figures + just for support, so there was a real incentive and resource base to make quality support happen. Despite that there were times when our customers got less than the best level of support. I'd hate to think what support is like in low margin, high volume businesses.

For the technically adept, support becomes a physiological challenge. Customers yell and curse at you. Jobs are on the line. Halted production runs can stop an entire shop floor. Big money is on the line. Even when you know what you are doing, it's hard not to take this personally. It is no longer a technical challenge, but a psychological one. Those that can't cope with this reality burn out, those that can become rich as consultants.

Even in the best of support orgs, with all the financial resources, support is still the bottom of the totem poll in most companies. Too little respect is afforded the support staff by other departments (but those few in the know, actually find the broad knowledge from the support group). Support is seen as a beginning, not an endgame for their most talented people. The writing is on the wall once you start to become an internal consultant to the sales and development departments. You will be leaving support and taking your knowledge and mentoring skills to greener pastures.

In my experience, for complicated software I've found that a support group can utilize as many resources as the sales or development group. How many companies do you know that put as much resources into support as into the other groups? In support, like everything else, you get what you pay for. Even when a company realizes the value of support, the best people eventually go elsewhere. Until these issues get resolved, support will remain in its generally shabby shape.

Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot

[m0nk3ym1nd]

Was this full-length quote posted with permission of Salon.com? It was certainly done without attribution. Adding injury to insult, this unattributed posting has potentially deprived Salon of income, of which it does *not* enjoy an overabundance. The article is only available to Salon Premium members (I'm one) who pay a modest annual fee to view the usually top-notch content. If this is how we treat out friends....

The Mail-Merge Couch

[stuffduff]

Back when Microsoft Office was pretty new, Bill Gates was touring the facility and in one of the call centers, he discovered a couch in the center of the room. When he asked about the couch, he was told that it was the Mail-Merge couch; because when anyone needed help with Mail-Merge, they would be on the phone for a long time.

And you wonder...

[Amigori]

...why offshoring has become so popular. Americans don't want these jobs, effectively the janitors of the computer world. And honestly, I'd rather spend my nights improving my spanish with the mexicans cleaning Walmart or [insert large chain retailer] than spending 8 hours under the watchful eye of the telecomm system. At least mopping floors has some physical exercise and your not stuck in cubicle world and less stress too.

The high turnover rate of employment is cause of concern for me. However, it won't end until people realize that the job is horrible and shouldn't go after it because of the money. $8/hr to flip burgers at McDonalds or $9/hr to get screamed at, both by management and the caller, and have to worry how to get "customers" off the phone as quickly as possible, I'd take burger-flippin' any day. I may come home smelling like french fries, but a quick shower will fix that and that extra dollar just isn't worth it to me.

Amigori

HP email support is really good

[Junior J. Junior III]

I've been having some outstanding support from HP lately. I just bought a laptop from them last month, and had a number of questions for them regarding upgrades and repartitioning my hard drive to dual boot linux and windows. I'm very impressed and glad that I went with HP.

- Their technicians have responded within 24 hours (usually within 2 hours) to all my emails.

- They provided useful information without a load of sales pitch and other BS (minimal indemnification and warnings where prudent and necessary)

- The replies were in good English using complete sentences and proper technical document style and language.

- They told me up front they don't support linux (reasonable because there's so many distros and different ways to configure linux; I'd have expected REAL linux support if they were selling/endorsing a particular distro, of course), yet their techs went ahead and gave assistance with setting up the partitions for dual-booting anyway! (I wasn't just wiping the drive, but needed to re-size the partition so I could avoid having to reinstall, configure, and tweak all the WinXP stuff, and they were very helpful and responsive to my requests for information.)

Re:Not all that enlightening

[MCZapf]

According to the article, it's even worse than that. The people with ultra-short call time averages - those who basically just hang up on people - are promoted. Repeatedly.

The not so simple solution

[Joe U]

Tech support is horrible because the customers are letting it get horrible.

Complain. Often, constantly, daily. Write letters, not email, call every day.

Tie up their support phone lines to the point where nothing gets done. Tie up their sales lines as well.

Demand to speak to the president of the company.

File complaints with every consumer group you can find.

Write to magazines, tell them how horrible the support is, tell them you hate the products.

If the company has 12,000 unresolved complaints filed with the BBB in a 2 month period, what do you think will happen to their customer service?

More important to them, what do you think will happen to their stock price?

I remember when...

[trveler]

Back in '92 I called MS tech support with a windows com port problem. The guy I got actually knew what he was talking about, diagnosed it in under 2 minutes. I still remember how he would say "hmmm.... baddah baddah baddah...." while he was typing on his keyboard. Anyway, he even called me back on the east coast and read me a "debug" script to nail down the "floating com port" problem.

What I wouldn't give for those days....

Welcome to the Internet Help Desk

[hayne]

If you haven't seen it already, go to the Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie web site and watch their "Welcome to the Internet Help Desk" video.

Retail sales are just like this...

[teamhasnoi]

I got trained for two days at Minneapolis' CompUSA. Then I was thrown out on the floor. At first, I had to read the boxes, just like your current favorites at Best Buy and Fry's. After awhile I remembered the crap on the sides of the box, so I could give a convincing run down of features.

Soon, manglement decided that since they couldn't get the onhand inventory to match, they would give several of us cordless phones and have us field the 'pricing and availability' calls to the store. This was running around the store and checking to see if the product was actually there, and actually 9.95 - on top of trying to help people who had decided to physically come to the store and perhaps buy something.

The best part was when you were telling someone about an expensive piece of hardware and some call comes in (we weren't allowed to ignore calls) for the price of a printer cable, or if we have the '20 CDs for 20 bucks' deal in.

I had one guy go off and scream at me, to which I responded, "Please go back there and talk to Rick. He's the boss. I am doing the job(S) he gave me. Tell him he's a fucking moron." He responded, "YOU'RE THE FUCKING MORON" and stormed out.

I tried to tell the boss what bad service this was causing, and he said, "You need to try harder." Grrr.

About three weeks later, the phones disappeared, and I was back to software. And hardware!

At this time, I didn't own a computer of any sort, as they were unattainable on my hourly rate. And here I am trying to sell them. Ugh. I gave up my fakery and lies. I became a 'troublemaker'. If I didn't know if software did a certain something, I would crack the box and read the manual (this was discouraged) even if it was for my own education. If someone wanted a telphone, fax machine, or sound card, I told them that the 'extended warranty' was a ripoff.

I became well versed in the Mac line we carried, and sold a lot of them because I liked them, and they were easy for the customer to demo themselves.

People seemed to like my honesty. And I learned more about selling, and sold more than lots of smarmy 'say-anythings' there, because I only sold the stuff I knew, and liked. Of course, I quit not long after for other reasons. After that, I was well on my way to knowing my stuff, and built my first computer out of Salvation Army parts.

Oh, lots of retail stories came out of that evil place...

Having recently been outsourced

[Moderation abuser]

From the IT dept of a very large phone manufacturer to an even larger outsourcing company, I can reveal that my job is now no longer to fix problems and design solutions to help my colleagues, it is instead, to make money at the expense of my former colleagues.

Unlike the article, we do currently actually fix the problems, but guess what. Now 60% of fixes have to be within 24 hours, so what do you do with troublesome customers? Ticket goes on "waiting for customer" immediately, call them back at lunchtime, three calls and it gets closed. The metrics look good.

That Apache upgrade? Not part of baseline break/fix. Now costs you money and 3 days of my time (how much per hour?) as we update the OS, apache rev, modules. Oh, it broke your application? But you approved the change managment and we don't support homegrown applications.

Grid computing. Yum. $100/month/machine for supporting workstations becomes $1,000/month/machine as the desktops are migrated to *clustered* servers in the machine room. And you thought it was such a good idea before the outsourcing, at least they aren't on your budget, I wonder is it corporate who're taking the financial hit as the numbers of supported servers rockets?

Out of hours support? I'm off at 5 mate. Hourly rates double in the evening and double again at the weekend. And they start in 3 digits. What? You want a production system upgraded at the weekend? Oh you need a DBA and Financials administrator as well? And that 100Gb restore which is taking 10 hours? You get billed for every second which is out of baseline hours.

The worst

[UserChrisCanter4]

The worst part of this whole setup is the poor, clueless end-user, who actually thinks tech support knows what they're doing.

I work in the repair department at a large electronics store. One of my duties (other than actually repairing or upgrading computers) is "inspecting" equipment such as wireless routers to make sure that we aren't getting scammed. It burns me up when someone brings in their 3rd unit in as many days, saying, "wow, what's wrong with you guys? I've been on the phone with D-Link all day, and this is the third bad unit I've gotten". I just want to yell out, "no sir, you've been on the phone with an outsourced guy in Manilla who may or may not have ever even seen a picture of your product, and he says it's faulty because his only concern is getting you off the phone in less than fifteen minutes."

I had a young woman come in the other day with some random Gateway desktop that looked like a CRT iMac knock-off (an all-in-one design where the mainboard and drives were installed in a section below the monitor). She plunks it down on my desk, and says, "The guy at Gateway's tech support says it needs a new video card." I took one look at this obviously completely integrated computer, and said (without thinking), "Are you sure he said that?" "Of course he said that," I thought immediately afterward, "he's tech support. He has no idea what that product even looks like. He doesn't know that the video is integrated." Just for grins I opened it up, on the off chance that there was some ghetto six-inch VGA cable that ran to an actual card. Interestingly, there actually was, but it ran from a proprietary pinout that allowed video to flow up to the monitor to a DB-15 connection on the motherboard, and power to flow down from the single AC jack that was located in the monitor . I showed the connection to the woman, then showed her a couple of video cards, and explained why they were wrong and what she could do (basically nothing, as she was outside of warranty). The funny part about the whole thing was that it looked like it was actually the CRT that was damaged, as it was exhibiting that "missing one part of the color spectrum" bit that is more often than not a CRT defect.

It's a shame, but I don't know of any consumer computer manufacturer that has what I would call "good" tech support anymore, with the exception of Apple (and then you only get 90 days unless you spring for Applecare).

Re:Oversea tech support

[Fastolfe]

If we farm all of our jobs out to India, who will be left to buy anything?

Indians, of course.

Globalization will balance everything out in the long run, but the first few hundred years are going to piss a lot of people off.

The USA is increasingly catering to companies and those that own them, at the expense of the individual. Taken to an extreme perspective, the USA might be seen as a land of corporations surrounded by a sea of poverty, an extreme polarization of wealth.

Fortunately there are a few things that can't really be moved overseas (today, at least). Things like person-to-person service, sales, government, construction. Well, and lawyers. And crime. As other jobs dry up and move to less wealthy nations, these industries will probably boom. But in the end salaries will balance out just about everywhere. The only way you might outperform local salary averages is if your position requires physical proximity, and many don't, nowadays.

What can you do? Buy some stock.

I have a tale myself

[wizman]

The one I worked for was a bit different. Small Internet Providers throughout the country contracted us to handle their technical support for them. Since many of these were "mom and pop" operations with just a few hundred customers in one city, they relied heavily on maintaining that local image. As a result, we were NEVER, EVER allowed to give any indication that we were not located in the area the person was calling from. I remember talking to customers of a Florida ISP about how nice the weather is, when in fact I'm sitting in Toledo, Ohio (hint to the company's identity?) in a snowstorm. If we were asked for our location, we had to respond that we were not permitted to give out details on our location due to security concerns. I had to give that line a few times a day.

We also had to be crafty. Although some "premium" customers had dedicated phone numbers so that we could find out which ISP they were calling for, many of the individual ISP's calls were routed to a common toll free number, so we'd have no idea as to which of the hundreds of ISP's we do support for the caller is from. We answer the call generically ("Tech Support, how may I assist you?") and usually asked for the customer's e-mail address for an indication of which ISP they were with. The domain name would give away the ISP. Unfortunately, people often did not give the domain name, or had offsite e-mail accounts. Since we couldn't give away that we were not with "their ISP", I couldn't flat out ask. I'd have to narrow it down by area code, and then search between ISP's in that area to find out who they were with -- often taking 10-15 minutes.

I remember one time management signed a deal and gave the call center side a chance to prepare. It was a HUGE customer - larger than all of our other ISP's combined. One night, on my shift, they simply forwarded the tech support number over to us. We went from an average 3 minute call queue time to well over an hour. We did not have the staff to handle the calls, and had no information at all about the specifics of the ISP -- dialup numbers, e-mail servers, etc. It was days before we even had the correct info to give customers. In the meantime, we just had to go with it.

And finally, we had no training program at all, so the company tried to hire people from an outsourcer in the area who had already been through their hideous training program. We paid a dollar an hour more, so it was usually pretty easy to do. Unfortunately, we supported dialup customers, and the company we stole people from supported cable modems, so new hirees usually knew nothing of dialup.

I lasted about six months there surprisingly. When I started it was a small operation with only a dozen or so techs. By the time I left, they had on average 30-40 people per shift. We grew so fast that they had to temporarily build a room in the warehouse and put up folding tables to make room for the new call center people. I'm sure they are much bigger by now, but probably still working out of the warehouse.

Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot

[K8Fan]

Same here. I pay for Salon - I find it worthwhile, I read it every day, and it comes with an insane number of additional freebies - like a subscription to Wired. And it's not as if you're locked out of reading for free what I pay for. You just have to pay by watching an ad.

I don't have the mod points I had yesterday, or I'd have modded the parent down. Sorry, but that's just not right. And it makes Slashdot readers look like a mob of freeloaders.

ok gotta rat em out, I used to work for this place

[hellraizr]

no love for them, gotta do it. THIS COMPANY IS CALLED *THE ANSWER GROUP*. they are based out of north lauderdale FL (right out side ft lauderdale). website is http://www.tag2.com. although I have no idea why it goes to a hughes network site, check out the whois info on the domain, my claims will be backed up.

just to give my fellow slashdotters an idea of what working for this company is like:

they employ over 5,000 of the worst possbile computer illiterates I've ever seen. most have never even seen the inside of a computer. they specificly say during interview "We do not prefer experience or certifications. we will give any one with computer knowledge a job but prefer that *we* train you"

they pay $11/hr WHILE logged into the phone, minimum wage when not logged in (which btw will be most of the time).

security is soo tight there all employees are run through a metal detector coming AND going from the complex (would say building but there are 6 of them). I asked once why they did this they responded "to protect the employees from the employees" referring to a couple times people started shooting guns in the call center.

This company is evil incarnate. the place is a total sweat shop. 3-400,000 sq ft per building of cubicles. it's soo disorienting navigating the cubicle farm you have to go by the signs posted.

Oh and everything the article said about the place is true. yes they are one of the largest support providers, they do compaq, HP and IBM, plus bellsouth/comcast, directv, and a bunch of others. All they care about is getting you off the phone in 12 minutes (thats what the dead giveaway was, totall company policy, if you spend 15 minutes you have 3 supervisors breathing down your neck). they will even go so far as you find a reason to manually disconnect @ 13 minutes telling you to call back again.

ATTN Florida Slashdotters: Can someone back me up on this place, I know someone else has to have worked there. I can't possibly describe how bad this place really is since I only worked there 4 days, but man it did ring some bells.

Oh btw, here's the whois info:

Registrant:
TAG (TAG6-DOM)
7562 Southgate Blvd
NORTH LAUDERDALE, FL 33068
US

Domain Name: TAG2.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Nunez, Juan (JN8854) jnunez@TAG2.COM
TAG
7562 SOUTHGATE BLVD
N LAUDERDALE, FL 33068-1362
US
(954) 724-6745 fax: (954) 726-0015

Record expires on 08-May-2008.
Record created on 07-May-1996.
Database last updated on 23-Feb-2004 12:07:40 EST.
Domain servers in listed order:

CMTU.MT.NS.ELS-GMS.ATT.NET 12.127.16.69
CBRU.BR.NS.ELS-GMS.ATT.NET 199.191.128.105

Re:Violation of copyright laws

[rueger]

The Salon site would not load the story after I had watched the ad. If their system does not function reliably I feel less compulsion to worry about this re-posting.

I watched ad, I done my time, now I want to read the article.

Or maybe I should have called Salon tech support????

Bad experience with Qwest

[snapman]

This story is absolutely true. I'm sure this will come as a shock to those who have dealt with Qwest, but I feel I must share my story...

<rant>

We recently dropped our long distance carrier from our phone line. The phone line is a shared ADSL line. The change goes through, and my DSL disappears. WTF?

I call my ISP, and they talk to my DSL provider (which is not Qwest). They determine within minutes that the circuit is open at Qwest's end, and that I need to call Qwest and get them to fix it.

Sighing heavily, I wait 45 minutes on hold to talk to Qwest DSL tech support. I describe my problem, and they ask if I have done anything to the line recently. Decent question to ask, so I tell them about dropping our LD carrier. He puts me on hold, then conferences me in with a DSL salesman. A DSL salesman! "We don't do have anything to do with someone else's DSL!" the salesman tells me. "You'll have to talk to your ISP again." They transfer me to repair, and repair says there is nothing wrong with my line. My phone line that is. "That's not the problem!" I say. "Well, it's not our problem."

So I call my ISP back, and they say the problem is still at Qwest's end. They can't provide DSL service over an open circuit. I still need to get Qwest on the phone. They tell me to have Qwest conference me in with them. Trying to be patient, I call Qwest again...

After another 45 minutes on hold, I get someone who is even more clueless than the previous person. I tell him my problem, and he wants to look me up in their DSL database. "But I am not a Qwest DSL customer!" I tell him. He looks me up anyway. "I can't find you in the database," he says. Really. I just told you that. Heasks what operating system I'm using. WTF? I ask him to conference in my ISP so that they can describe what's going on. Frequent repetitions of this request are met with a huge amount of resistance. "I can talk to someone here about your problem," he says. "Fine," I say, talk to someone else and put me on hold again.

"We don't support other provider's DSL," he returns with after 5 minutes on hold. "That's not the problem!" I plea. "It's not our problem," he says, and transfers me to repair, who claims they don't have anything to do with DSL. Angry, I hang up, and call my ISP back. "Help me please!"

A few days go by. My ISP and DSL provider escalate this help call within their own systems and get a Qwest person with a clue on the case. Within a few hours, they determine that Qwest miswired my line after we dropped our LD carrier. WTF? Within a few minutes of determining this, my DSL service is back on.

"It's not our problem." No one at Qwest even made the slightest effort to try to delve deeper into my problem, they just wanted to get me off the phone as quickly as possible. Today's tech support is getting more and more useless. If you don't have an inside person in the system, you don't stand a chance of getting your problem fixed these days.

</rant>

A Very Different Environment

[howlinmonkey]

I manage a small callcenter (5 people) who take calls for support on products we sell. This is a little different because we aren't the manufacturer, or an outsourced arm of the manufacturer. We are the endpoint of the distribution channel.

Our goals are reduced visits by field engineers who typically bill $$$$ to be onsite to solve what is frequently a simple problem. Our calls aren't timed, and we do pretty much whatever it takes to solve the problem. Today, we talked a customer thru configuring Zone Alarm correctly so they can use our product. Sure it took over half an hour, most of our calls do. But the important point is that the customer was happy when we were done.

I have been here 4 years now, and don't have the absolute gut level hatred of my job that I hear from many support people. I am posting this because I want you to know that not all support centers are awful dens of customer dissatisfaction. Some of us do actually do our jobs.

Re:You can't get parts from India...

[Skapare]

You've certainly identified the real culprit here. Even before corporations started setting up shop in India to hire people for lower wages (which are probably great wages in India), it was very typical for corporations to misuse, or not even use at all, the advanced skills many people have. It seems they are doing exactly the same thing in India.

There was a situation a few years ago when I lived in Dallas. There was a woman who I met who was wanting to learn more about Unix. Turns out she was being hired on an H-1B visa by Texas Instruments to be a Unix systems administrator. But she seemed to be a smart person so I asked her more about herself and found out she had a master's degree in CS, and the only experience she had with Unix is having logged in as a student user to a Linux machine a few times. So why would an American corporation hire someone obviously well qualified for more advanced work into a lower level job (run around and fix Sun desktops for engineers) she had no experience in? Obviously for cheaper wages (which, despite claims to the contrary, is easy to get away with using H-1B) is one of the reasons. But they probably could have her doing the more advanced work at the lower wages, too, so why not? Corporations also try to keep people down; maybe managers are afraid of being replaced by people that know more. But this has been a common practice for decades, to underutilize people's skills. It didn't change even with H-1B, and it won't change with outsourcing in India.

I can't blame any Indians (or Chinese, or Russians, or anyone else) for wanting to find better work for better pay than they have been getting before. The real blame goes to corporate executives who just try to screw people over, whether American or Indian ... all for profit. People in America are trying to recover their own jobs, and it's quite obvious the only way to do that is a change of government, since the corporations themselves are obviously not doing it (and aren't expected to, since their loyalty is strictly to their shareholders). The saddest part of this situation is that it will breed some hatred for India and Indians that is not due, and may take years to erase.

What I'd really like to see happen is that Indians get together and form all new companies that better respect people than the companies in America run by greedy fat cat scrooges, and end up not only putting everyone in India to work, but also end up coming to America and displacing these crappy companies we have here.

Re:Similar to my experiences...

[An Onimous Cow Herd]

wow - another Streamer!

I've worked for Stream in N.Ireland, Dallas and Holland - and i can confirm the lack of training. Problem-solving was never emphasised, rather reduce call times and meet targets. I've supported over 7 major contracts for various manufacturers - and the absolute worst case scenario was 8 hours training in a product we were totally unfamiliar with, then thrown onto the phones. Talk about being thrown to the wolves!
However, i can safely say that the experience i gained with Stream has benefited me in my career change to the legal profession, where i can bullshit and bluff with the best of them!

Clean water performs better

[FirstTimeCaller]

Water Technologies from GE

Helping conserve one of our most precious natural resources.

See what's possible

There. Was that so painful? If you're going to plagerize the article, you might as well plagerize the ad too!

Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot

[dasmegabyte]

Chilling, but not really Orwellian. It's more Heller-esque.

In an Orwellian world, you're damned no matter what. In a Heller-esque world, you're only damned so far as you follow the written rules -- if you trump those and follow the ACTUAL rules, you can succeed quite well. Loni is a Milo Minderbinder.

Tech Support for some large company (true story)

[crawdaddy]

I got hired on doing tech support for (one of?) the largest software companies in the world. The only call center for this department of theirs is in Austin. If anyone knows who I'm talking about, say it, for I am fearful of their wrath. I'm not fond of getting LEGAL WARNINGS AT MY HOME ADDRESS FOR SOMETHING I DID ONLINE (HINT HINT).

The training was decent, when the instructor was able to speak over the people in the back of the class talking. Usually that was only when the people in the back of the class were sleeping. We were told to try and keep a 7-minute average call time, which was impossible because the databases to search for registered customers were slow as hell (especially since they ran off the software developed by the company we were supporting...HINT HINT). If a customer wasn't in the database, we had to add them, which was even slower. Then we had to search on the intranet's knowledge base (KB), which, by the way, was slow, until we found the problem. We were told specifically not to say anything that wasn't in the KB and that if we were smart, the only words coming out of our mouths would either be from a script from training or a script from the KB. This included denying knowledge of pending lawsuits against said company for fraud, much less denying knowledge of the Attorney General looking into unethical business practices, etc. Thankfully, I was fired on the third day because I opened up a DOS prompt to ping a user. Sure, I had to save a file called dos.bat onto the desktop that contained the line "cmd" in it to get to the prompt, but even so, I was never told that going to a DOS prompt was an offense punishable by termination.

I wasn't sad to go, though. So many calls were related to the previously mentioned class action suit against the company or the problem that inspired the lawsuit that I wanted to wash my hands each time I finished a call. The official policy was that if the user hadn't purchased an extended warranty (possibly needed 2-3 if they had purchased their product long enough in the past), then they would have to send in their product and pay a $100 repair fee because a faulty part in the product finally failed completely and, even though the company was aware that many products were shipped with said faulty products, they still charged the customers. They also did not recall the products or even acknowledge that there was any kind of specific problem. We were simply told to alert the user that they needed to send the machine in and our repair center would take care of the rest.