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Tech Support Levels Dropping
NeoPrime writes "USA Today is reporting on the growing concern of the language barrier, when it comes to tech support. It appears that each year it is becoming more compelling to companies to reconsider the use of overseas help desks. According to this story, based '[o]n a 10-point scale, the average level rated by desktop owners dropped from 7.0 in 2003 to 6.3 this year; notebooks fell from 7.2 to 6.1.'"
It is called colloquialism and every region, state has it. You can pick up some of it from tv (in exagerated form) but still you can get a taste for it. Just like in Texas where yall means you all.
Useless sig.
I've had so many problems with my Dell laptop that I got to experience this drop first hand over two years. The first year had local support, so when my motherboard died, my ethernet port just stopped working, and my harddrive had a major crash, the tech support was able to understand me and have a replacement part sent out the next day, taking maybe an hour of my time each phone call. This caused me to think Dell had great support and I would recommend Dell to other people. Then the next year came and Dell had outsourced their support. In this last year I've had 4 hard drives die out on me, I was on hard drive 5 when the mobo died. Suddenly with a year left on my support contract they decided they didn't need to fulfill their end. Support didn't know what I was talking about, wouldn't give me contact information, and several times hung up on me. I finally got them to send a replacement computer, but it is slower than my original machine, and my additional equipment (batteries, chargers, modular drives) are unusable in the new machine. When I called them about these problems Dell support told me they would send out equivalent equipment and a replacement motherboard with comparable equipment to replace. So a week later after not hearing from them I called and find out my order was cancelled. So go through the same process. Called them back sooner this time to find out the same thing happened again, no replacement parts for me. It's now been 4 months since I got the original unit replaced and I'm yet to have Dell fulfill their end of my support contract. Bad tech support, bad customer service, and companies hell-bent on cutting costs at the expense of the customer are the problems, it isn't outsourcing alone (though a tech who speaks my language would be a nice start, I know I'm asking a lot...).
If you require your computer to function reliably, or at least have good support when something goes wrong, stay the hell away from Dell.
I blame the vendors for cheaping-out on training and hiring qualified staff for tech support jobs. Of course, since tech support is considered the lowest point on the IT career totem pole, there aren't many qualified people out there to begin with... and those that are certainly don't want the piss-poor salaries paid to your typical phone jock.
I know we're talking PC's here, but I have to say, Apple has awesome technical support. Are their margins any better than the PC manufacturers? I would guess that they are, given the price point of their systems. Maybe these people should stop compaining and start replying with their pocket book. I've called Apple tech support on three occasions and always had an extremely knowledgable, english speaking individual answer my questions. The one time I was outside the area of expertise of the rep, he quickly transfered me to someone who knew the area better.
To some extent I have to say - what do the eMachine-style budget PC users expect? They cost like $399 and come with more processing power, memory and hard disk space they could ever use. The savings have to come from somewhere.
I'm on about three hours sleep, beware.
Using [o]n would be due to the original passage having on at the start of a sentence - ie, "On a 10-point scale...". If I quoted that, and had on as the first word, no change, it was capitalised before, it would be capitalised now. If on was partway through a sentence, we'd make the O in On a lower-case o, then put brackets around it to indicate it's changed from the original source.
[T]he for the same reason - "I attacked the dog, which had a... " could be the original sentence. I could be quoting that in my own article, as eg "'[T]he dog, which had a...'". In the original the was not the start of the sentence, so it would be non-capitalised. Though in the article, the is changed to [T]he as a sentence must start with a capital letter.
In short, [o]n and [T]he and so forth are just an indication that the quoted passage has been changed slightly from the original due to positioning of the passage in a sentence, or due to the placement of the quote in a new passage.
People who work at User Support, and especially people writing manuals should be FORCED to use software (general) in language version they support.
Real situation: ISP in Belgium where people have a connection. Belgium has three languages and some people use English on their machines. So that is 4 languages you should have your hands on. Naturaly M$ renames their stuiff with every other version and translation.
Next a Japanese person calls with a Japanese Windows who has problems with a connection. The next is an Italian. Next Russian. No, I am not making this up. The provider at that time had a lot of Ambassies as their customer.
What you then do is just ask what it is in whatever language you at that moment speak (Most callcenter agents in Belgium are tri-langual) and try to figure it out.
About the manuals: people don't read them. Even if you say that the solution is on page 12 of teir manual and the call they are doing now costs them 2EUR per minute, people still will not look in the manual.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Had a similar Earthlink problem, & it WAS ELink's problem, and they LOST! Responses from the Hindu accented Tech Support: "We will have your DSL line reconnected in 5-7 days". "We will have your DSL line reconnected in 7-10 days". "We will have your DSL line reconnected in 28 days". "You wil have to contact your Phone Company". Their foreign TS crew is cluelesss on what to do, don't document it, and will plainly lie, just to get a customer off their back, and U.S. management doesn't have a clue as to what goes on. When I got mad and accused ELink TS of not knowing what to do and not being willing to give me to someone who could fix 'Their Problem' (how to keep their revenue stream coming in from me), there was silence. Technical incompetence is at the heart of Tech Service problems. It could be on the side of users, but I sure hear a lot of BS, in the very few times I call. The one place I do NOT get B.S. with Tech. Support on software is SolidWorks, but then I pay nearly $2000/yr for upgrades and phone support...out of Utah, in my case. So I cancelled my ELink service & asked to release the Elink hold on my Ph# and that resulted in "That will take 7-10 business days." which saved me $20/month. But, I had to cancel my existing phone # and get a new one, because Earthlink Tech Support couldn't execute for a customer that wants to leave their grasp. Earthlink is going to lose subscribers with the inept offshore Tech Suport. I doubt the Elink manager of TS has any clue of what is going on, as I doubt he shops his own system pretending to be a customer like me. JD Powers reports judging customer satisfaction in the first 60 days of owning a new car or an ISP service is a joke. Earthlink will also have no clue that I will no longer recommend them, which over time can have a large effect when "Word of Mouth" goes against you.
I don't know. If the "company whose name rhymes with hell" is the one *i'm* thinking of, I've never had a problem with their tech support. The few times I've called them about a machine that was under warranty and needed a new part, the person was easy to understand, listened to me, and had my new part in the mail quickly and effeciently. Granted, I was calling about very obvious things like the video card has suddenly started making everything look dim and streaked. I've tried different monitors with no result. In other words, I had already troubleshooted the problem before calling so the person the phone was able to skip all that drek. YMMV.
What's really sad is, when Dell did their tech support in house they had some awesome people on their staff, people who could walk you through taking a precision apart and putting it back together including telling you where on the motherboard things were located. Now? Not so much.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
I've worked in tech support too, and I have very rarely met anyone as incompetent as the people who currently do Dell's tech support. Regardless of the native language the tech speaks, they all seem to be morons.
We had one Dell tech onsite who damn near took out our entire production database when performing an emergency upgrade because he 'forgot' where he unplugged some cables from.
Of course that seemed minor after the fact.. We found out the Dell rep we were dealing with had sent the onsite tech out to install incompatible parts in our Dell server.. Because of this the entire process had to be repeated - during business hours.
We've had plenty of dealings with their offshored phone support too. If you have to call them you had better plan to put a day aside before hand, because it will take you that long to 1) get through and 2) get your point across. After that you get to wait for 3 months for them to never e-mail you back or contact you with a solution. Do not EVER let them off the phone without solving your problem first.
My favorite call to date was when they told us the Dell laptop we purchased with Windows XP, complete with the little 'Built for Windows XP' sticker affixed to it, was 'not compatible with Windows XP'.
I'm sure there are other companies out there with horrible technical support too.. Dell tops my list, though. Watchguard and ATI are tied for second.. Watchguard not so much for their technical support (those guys seem dedicated to helping) as their shitty ass products.
What I've found, is that people always bring up Dell this, Dell that. Dell actually has the SMALLEST percent of it's technical workforce overseas when compared to it's competitors. In addition to that, the majority of the business accounts are being brought back into the US. Dell's outlook at one point was "Everyone is doing it, we'll do it too, only slightly better than everyone else." Well Dell did that, and everyone cried foul on Dell, and not all of the other vendors. They were used to crap from the other vendors. Who can blame them [customers] anyway? Dell sits there and advertises award winning customer support, when those awards were from like 3 years ago. It takes a long time to get to the top, but if you fall a little bit, you might as well have fallen to the bottom. I'll never understand why everyone cries foul on Dell and not everyone else. Either way, Dell's already announced major changes in bringing tech support back to the United States. Has any other major vendor?
uh...actually the article is pointing out the shortcomings of using offshore labor that can create a language barrier. sort of the opposite of what you posted.