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Worst Explanation From Tech Support?
Disgruntled-with-Tech-Support asks: "Let's face it: At some point or another, we've had to deal with some form of tech support. Quite often, it's a hit-or-miss experience depending on the level of support required. Occasionally, strange, bizarre, or nonsensical explanations result from the problems reported, such as this one: I had just had DSL installed, only to find it much slower than the 56K line I was looking to get rid of. On calling the provider, I was told (by someone who likely reading off cue cards) to visit one of their internal websites for measuring bandwidth. While there, I observed that they had both bytes per second and bits per second listed, and that the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14. I pointed this out as a possible problem, and the guy's reasoning: 'Uh, it looks like the bytes are getting through to you ok, but the bits are getting stuck someplace.' What was your worst explanation from tech support?"
I completely agree with this. I've worked tech support, and even POS (point-of-sale) support before. Often times, if some layman asks you what you did to fix the problem, I give them a non-sensical (to the layman) answer, just so they stop bothering me. I have also developed new words for cashiers, as taught to me from other techs to get people to comply to what you're doing.
For instance, you don't say: "We are going to reset/restart your unix server" you say: "We are going to bump your server" You don't say: "A backhoe dug up your local T-1 line, and now you're on dialup, credit authorizations are going to take longer" You say: "Please don't call me, call the credit authorization company" There are so many more, but I just can't think of any handy right now.
Key is, you have to dumb things down a bit so the average lay person doesn't take 45 minutes chatting about what could be the technicial difficulty.
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Another lame blog
I would have asked for the one port hub just to see what they would have sold you...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
The problem is simple: you have a fixed budget which is universally too little to hire a lot of good people. You have a fixed (or increasing) call volume. So, what to do?
Well, in most places today they construct scripts and then hire peons to read them. They figure that most people will be deterred by this. They spend their nut on a theoretical third level person or people who are going to take care of the insurmountable issues. The rest of the people are there to obstruct the majority of people from the people who actually have a shot at fixing problems.
I've never worked that kind of desk. I actually know what i'm doing and if I don't, I find out fast. I hire people who are either tabula rasa, whom I can turn into something decent, or who have worked in service industries (I don't hire other people's help desk people, in other words). I prefer ex-military people. They are used to being treated like mushrooms and still solving problems. I also like to hire bright young women fresh out of college (or even those who didn't finish). Besides the obvious improvement in the surroundings, they tend to be pretty good at first level support if you give them a solid grounding. They're better at settling customers down in many cases. Then, garnish with one or two talented techs to sit in the middle and start spreading knowledge around. No scripts. Keep a team together for 6 months and everyone pretty much rises to the level of the 2nd level people.
The funny thing is that I can't keep employees very well (heh). They leave me and go make more money elsewhere with the skills they gain. Good money, too. I'm glad to see so many of them succeed. At my current job they have budget, and we've had the same team for 2.5 years. That's an all time record for me.
Even in 1994, imagine being told in NYC to hire 6 techs at salaries between $25k and $35k (preferred under 30). Even getting people to show up for that money in Manhattan is a pain in the ass.
As for problem solving skills, you tend to like those who worked in service industries. I personally worked at an appliance store for my parents from when I was 11 on. Me and my brother used to go out on a truck and fix refrigerators, washers, dryers, etc. It wasn't all that dissimilar to fixing up computers - there was a user interface, and a good portion of the time the problem was that the people were using the interface wrong. Say, not knowing how to use the washer timer or overloading the dryer or letting crap melt in the dishwasher and foul things up, or failing to clean the condenser coil at the bottom of the fridge (this is important). The rest of the time it was hardware issues. The hardware was modular and easily replaceable. Sound familiar?
Good support isn't unattainable. The sucky help desks have thrown in the towel though and basically don't care.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Not necessarily. He may have just assumed the caller was a moron and was either having some fun or trying to get rid of him ASAP.
Kibibytes as word is a failure. Outside of a few pedagogues on the internet, noone even knows such a term exists. Those familiar with computers are resistant to using new terms. Those unfamiliar consider it all gibberish anyways. And the new term are even more nonsensical as at least kilo and mega are somewhat familiar terms.
Besides which, kilobyte and megabyte and gigabyte is not jargon. It is a computer term. Sorry but your attempt to revise history has failed.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life