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.'"

Comments

Marketing Dweeb Double Speak

[CaptainZapp]

Sony's general manager of Vaio Service Operations, Steven Nickel, says the company has recently changed support partners who "weren't meeting stringent requirements." And managers who monitor live calls remotely from support headquarters in Fort Myers, Fla., can now intervene in a case as necessary, via instant messages.

Wow! Could it be that Mr. Nickel is speaking with a forked tongue? I can't speak for Sony worldwide, but the domestic support organisation has an image which is somewhere between SCO and Rambus.

Case in point: A friend of mine bought a VAIO, which never really worked. After the third repair attempt he got it back with a hole in the case, requiring a nasty letter from his lawyer until they finally reimbursed him. That was after accusing him of breaking it himself.

Does Mr. Nickel mean they changed their service model from driving a screwdriver through the computer to let it splatter on concrete from the 5th floor or wot?

Re:Marketing Dweeb Double Speak

[Emil Brink]

Just as a counter-point, I own a Sony DSC-P1 digital camera. I bought it at Fry's on a business trip to Califoria back in 2001.

During subsequent years, the camera (or its battery) developed a problem; it wouldn't "hold a charge", but would instead signal being fully charged, and then drop to empty/no charge from mere minutes of use. It was useless.

I surfed around, and one day I found this note about the problem. It's on a (as far as I know, I'm not a regular) US site, and I'm in Sweden with a camera bought three years ago in a diferent country, and without any warranty cards or anything sent in.

I thought "what the heck", and e-mailed Sony about it. That's right, I just wrote a question to "info@sony.se", describing my situation and linking to the above page (or maybe Sony's page about the problem, which seems to be gone now). Writing to a general "info" address of a major multinational felt almost silly, in an "of course I won't get a reply" kind of way. But, what can I say; I got a reply within 24 hours! It was from their service representatives here, asking me to send the camera to them, including all accessories. No questions asked.

I did so, and in one week I got it back, with a new battery (that's a $50 value right there, approximately), new charger, a replaced power port in the camera body, and upgraded firmware. The cost to me was the postage to get the camera to the service techs, approx $8 or so.

So, I guess my point is that Sony are surely capable of excellent service, too!

Free Market Capitalism

[SirStanley]

The curse of free markets is that things like Out sourcing can happen, taking american jobs away. However, the market has ways of resolving things it self. You take a relatively minimaly skilled job like Tech support, ship it over seas to even cheaper labor and you get your ass bitten.

What has happened here is the market provided a cheaper means, but at a cost (Customer satisfication) so hopefully, companies will fix this problem by moving these jobs back to where ever they originally were.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[farnz]

Also, the highest profit margin customers are the ones with most options when it comes to changing for better service; if your quality of service drops too low, it's worth your competitors' time competing for high-margin customers on quality of service rather than price.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[PainKilleR-CE]

Why is it ok to import sneakers and t-shirts from cheap Phillipine workers and importing "office jobs" is not?

Not to mention things like ketchup...
Anyway, the reason it becomes an issue here is because a good number of people that sit at their desk reading Slashdot all day are tech support people. The jobs have the same level of turnover and pay roughly the same in the US, but some people still prefer a shitty low-paying job at a desk to a shitty low-paying job behind a counter or stove, and almost all people would prefer a shitty low-paying job behind a desk to looking for a new job with that shitty low-paying job on their resume.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[Detritus]

I would rather spend a few more bucks for an item that was made in the USA. I'm not usually given that choice.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[sjames]

Why is it specifically a `curse' that Americans lose jobs? Those jobs mean people in a much poorer country can finally make a living.

It's a curse for anybody to lose a job.

I certainly agree that the pollution and exploitation represent the worst end of the spectrum.

The fundamental problem with all outsourcing though happens when the country exporting the labor is still not able to develop the local economy. Example, people in india get good jobs programming or doing tech support for U.S. companies. These workers now want the various trappings of geek life and can now afford them. So, they buy all of that from Asia and the U.S. Oops, there goes the local economy. At the same time, their pay has no hope of scaling to the point where those goods have the same real cost to them as they do in the U.S. since as soon as their pay gets to that point, the outsourcing will shift somewhere else, leaving a country full of highly skilled workers who can't find work.

If India really wants to build it's economy on tech, local companies will need to start producing tech with the costs and prices scaled to the local economy. Anything else is just ba dotcom style bubble that is sure to burst just when things start looking really good.

All that said, that doesn't mean the outsourcing is actually BAD for India, it COULD provide the tempory boost needed to bootstrap the local economy. Of course, as soon as that process starts, U.S. corps will try to pull a quick switch and outsource elsewhere before they accidentally fund the company that will later eat their lunch.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[Eamon C]

Anyone who brings up "free markets" during a discussion about outsourcing needs to take an economics class. In a free market, it's true that jobs can move overseas... but so can the people seeking them. There is no free market, and as long as money buys influence, there never will be.

Not that I care much about tech support jobs, but I'm getting *really* tired of these uninformed libertarian rants.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[stuph]

Because my t-shirts don't fall apart when I ask them to do something they don't have a script for (like using an old one to wax my car)

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[Master of Transhuman]

Your cheap t-shirt is not running your company.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[jlusk4]

The new geeks in India aren't *just* buying their electronics from Asia.

Presumably, they dine out more often.

Or, they hire cooks, maids, drivers.

They buy nicer and more clothes, which, even if not manufactured locally, are delivered by local truckers and stevedores and sold by people working in retail outlets.

They build bigger houses and pay more taxes.

Presumably, they give more to charity (based on what I've heard about lower-income and formerly-lower-income people in the U.S. tending to give more to charity than upper-income folks, as a percentage of income).

And, when their countries threaten nuclear war w/each other, the big multinationals call 'em up and say "Friends, we're going to have find another back office if you're going to do that."

So, we're exporting jobs, opportunity, world peace, hope, Mom and apple pie. Who could argue with that? Think of the children!

Ok, so I got progressively more sarcastic in the preceding paragraph, but seriously.... It's like giving blood. You lose some, the other party gets what they need.

That's not to say it isn't painful. And it is sure irritating when you see those gains go into some corrupt person's pocket. But you have to hope humans' universal desire for justice will eventually prevail (and corruption will be eliminated), as more and more countries get with the "civilized society" program. (I equate civilization with compassion, not just politely ripping somebody off.)

Here's another angle on corruption, from the economic point of view: it's friction, isn't it? Businesses would prefer not to pay bribes, I bet. Or rather, they'd prefer to keep their expenses predictable, and not greater than their competitor's expenses (i.e., some semblance of "fair").

So, I think the question is not "how can we stop this?" but rather "how can we help this along, so things become fair more quickly?"

Is it better to say "you can't have our jobs until your environment is clean" or is it better to say "here, have some jobs; now please take your new money and spend some of it on cleaning up your environment and implementing new laws"?

Gee, I hope this wasn't a page of nothing. Sorry if it was.

John.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[superpulpsicle]

It's natural to see techsupport folks are always the one complaining about the offshoring since they are the most vocal.

Developers and hardcore engineers typically don't talk as much. As a result management will be happy to cash out on the quiet group. Off shoring them positions else where. I am not saying there is no good developers offshore, I am just saying developers are the easiet social target for management to pick on. Human Resource 101.

Re:Free Market Capitalism

[sjames]

All of those good things you mentioned are what I would consider part of the bootstrapping. However, just as the dot-com boom was a great booster for delivery truck drivers, and office furnature makers (until the real estate prices drove service people into shelters anyway), and the dot-bomb took it all away (except the real-estate prices), if India doesn't develop that stimulus into a full economy at all levels, it will be sustained only until outsourcing shifts to somewhere cheaper.

How many of those maids, truckers, waiters, etc will STILL have a decent job when the outsourcing moves on?

On the other hand, if India builds local INDUSTRY (not just service), it has a chance to sustain itself even after outsourcing goes away.

The really interesting question is what will happen if there is DOUBLE outsourcing. That is Indian companies set themselves up as outsource providers, then set up call centers elsewhere for even lower pay?

Capitalism

[Orgazmus]

Well, that is the way of the capitalism.
The money goes to whoever takes the job for a lesser amount of money.

Re:Capitalism

[swordboy]

I'll tell you what:

I work for a large corporation and we made a big deal out of the language barrier and complete ineptitude of some of the people on the other end of the phone. Now, we've renewed all of our support and paid extra for the premium level of service. HP/Compaq's call center is in Canada somewhere and IBM's call center actually announces itself on the phone menu:

You're call is now being routed to our support center in Atlanta, Georgia.

If enough consumers made a stink about it, tech support wouldn't be in India for them. Come to think of it, if one of the big PC vendors wanted to get a leg up on the competition, they could advertise "English speaking tech support" as the number one feature of their PCs. They'd be sold out in no time.

Re:Capitalism

[Monkeyman334]

The thing is the Indian help centers were incapable of doing their job as well as native speakers. So it's not just who will do it for less, it's who can actually do the job.

Re:Capitalism

[qwijibo]

The job of tech support is to get the customer off the phone in the shortest period of time. The ones providing tech support bill based on number of calls.

How many call centers track the resolution of the issues and customer satisfaction? I would guess it's a very small percentage. Customer satisfaction is the antithesis of the purpose the tech support is there to provide. The reason that good customer service is so hard to find is that people who convince the customer all is lost and they should give up in 2 minutes are promoted. On the other hand, the person who can solve most problems, but has a 10 minute average call time will be reprimanded by management for not handling their share of calls.

Customer service is an expense to the company providing it. When the company already has your money, what is the incentive to spend more of their money on providing better service? Very few companies care about providing good service. They just have to provide a level of service that's not noticeably worse than the competition.

Re:Capitalism

[Jedi Alec]

The ones providing tech support bill based on number of calls.

if the company that hires the callcenter chooses this kind of contract, then yes, that's what yóu're gonna get. You get what you pay for and stuff. I know for a fact that when I worked at an out-source callcenter that one of our customers who DID care about service levels paid by the minute, not by the call. They also had people checking the service levels on a daily basis, so things don't always work this way. In fact, working callcenter in a NUTS company right now, our level of service is pretty much the biggest difference there is between the various competitors on the market, so there's a very big emphasis on keeping the customer happy.

Your name please?

[ejdmoo]

"Frank"

"OK, Frank, how do you spell that?"

Gah!

Re:Your name please?

[antifoidulus]

Mr. Blitzer, I didn't know such an esteemed journalist as yourself frequented slashdot! When will Cowboy Neal get his own talk show on CNN? I mean come one, if Judy Woodruff can get one, clearly you have time for the Commander Taco Cowboy Neal Power Hour! You don't even have to put it on prime time, most geeks are awake at 4 am.

Re:Your name please?

[houghi]

They ask me for a name and I say
Brian
Bravo
Rodger
India
Alpha
November

Hello mister November, how may I help you?

Re:Your name please?

[goldmeer]

"F - as in Frank"
"R - as in Frank"
"A - as in Frank"
"N - as in Frank"
"K - as in Frank"

Phonetic alphabet

[Skiron]

Too true - when the hardware support at my firm (UK) moved to Sri Lanka, everybody was advised to use the phonetic alphabet when making helpdesk calls - it really it a mess with these of-shore support desks for communication.

Spend like 10 minutes explaining who you are.

Re:Phonetic alphabet

[KontinMonet]

But it's better fun using the 'un-phonetic' alphabet, which goes something like:

C as in Church
E as in Eye
G as in George
I as in Itch
L as in Llanfairpwll..blah..gogogoch
M as in Mnemonic
P as in Psychologist
T as in The
X as in Ten

...you get the idea...

Re:Why use tech support?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing that the kind of people who read USA Today really *really* need manuals and tech support.

And illustrations.

And GUIs.

And they probably love Clippy, too.

"Ooh! Look! My little paperclip friend is back! Brandy, come look! Say 'hi', Clippy!"

"Oh, cuuuuuuute!"

Maybe this will provide the motivation

[antifoidulus]

to put some money into automation, which is probably where most tech support is going to be in 10 years anyway. Outsourcing "hid" the costs for a while, but as the service levels fall(the service was probably initially good because only the best were doing it, once everyone else jumped on the bandwagon, then it started to fall) and costs increase, companies are going to look to new ways to save money, and it probably won't be by hiring Americans.

MSFT is very guilty of this

[Anonymous Coward]

Their techs are skilled, but I often call again, just so I can get a native english speaker. I don't mind working with heavily accented people, but when you have critical issues which can affect thousands of users, that small barrier becomes more than a nusance, it becomes dangerous.. /coward

I don't use tech support often, but

[robslimo]

the average person in the workforce is being required more and more to use computers (and similar technologies) in their work (students also). An earlier (down-modded as troll and rightly so) post said "don't buy software if you don't know how to use it." On the off chance that the poster was serious, please consider those who have little or no choice.

Back to me... I said I don't use tech support much, but my few experiences are mixed. On Aug 9, I wanted to know the exact date that I could expect XP SP2 to hit my lab PCs via AutoUpdates, so I called MS tech support. I talked to a lady who said (in a confident manner), "today!" Well, she was off by a couple of weeks. As usual with support issues, I found better information on the web.

Eh, it's a trade off.

[garcia]

You take a relatively minimaly skilled job like Tech support, ship it over seas to even cheaper labor and you get your ass bitten.

Eh, I worked in tech support. The English native speakers are equally as worthless as those that are ESL overseas workers. It's basically a trade off for the most part.

From my personal experience the ESL workers have more technical experience and end up being able to do something for you even if it takes longer for you to get your point across. The native English speakers suck at understanding your point AND they suck at the technical side of things.

$9.00/hr jobs with shitty benefits (if any at all) to put up w/raving assholes bitching at you because your Internet connection is down isn't worth it for most people that have a clue (unless they are college students that need a flexible schedule).

Re:Eh, it's a trade off.

[maskedbishounen]

Disclaimer: Unrelated ramble about (English) Tech Support

A few months ago I changed DSL providers. I went through the trouble of getting a new modem, as the other was ISP-branded and lacked in some of the required features.

I was supposed to be sent instructions about the new modem, but never was. I download the manual (having to download things related to setting up your internet connection... funny how that works) and go through the steps.

Blink, blink, bliiink~ sync fails.

I try a few alterations to the settings, all of which fail, and call up tech support. Maybe the line isn't active yet? Well, they tell me it is, and walk me through setting up the modem.

The fun part is how I was told to do it. First, set your box to your external IP. Next, try to access the modem's internal IP..

It was then that I gave up the idea of getting anything useful out of them. The modem only allows connections from IPs on it's own subnet, by default.

As it turns out, though, for this particular modem, you have to reset it for certain changes to take effect. Most setting don't need the reset, but it turns out this one did. To make it better, I only found this out from the an obscure PDF the next day. Tech never mentioned it at all. Ah well...

Re:Eh, it's a trade off.

[dubstar]

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.

and it's not just the language barrier

[katdesign]

There's a cultural one too. Depending on the problem, users will expect empathy from the other side. With cultural differences, that gets harder. As a European, I've had to call a few US helpdesks in the past, and it's just not the same. You'd expect it to be ok, but i guess Americans just have a different method of social interaction than us Europeans.

Ugly Americans

[ForestStryfe]

"The only way to break through is to throw a tantrum and become an 'ugly American."

I couldn't agree more. I had problems with Earthlink a few months ago after a bad storm had gone through - our DSL was down for most of the day, but I couldn't get a tech to give me a straight answer to my simple question. Eventually, I argued my way to a manager, who still refused to give me a straight answer. By the time I was done, they had lost their "american" accents and were more angry with me than I was with them. We tried calling customer service to get a complaint filed, only to find that the techs I had spoken with never logged any of the calls like they were supposed to, so it was impossible to even attempt to get a free month out of them.

I find that a lot of problems stem from the fact that they refuse to deviate from the scripts that they're given - and won't believe you (with good reason - I know I don't usually believe the useres that I work with) that you've tried all of that already.

Re:Ugly Americans

[Kurayamino-X]

hmm....

"our DSL was down for most of the day... ...so it was impossible to even attempt to get a free month out of them."

so your entitled to a free month why? your DSL died because of a goddamn storm, theres not much tech support can really freaking do. do you call up and bitch at the power companies and demand free electricity when a storm nocks down powerlines and plunges you into darkness for a few minutes to a few hours?

Re:Ugly Americans

[ForestStryfe]

I was more upset at the way that I had been treated - and this wasn't the first time that this had happened. I wanted a simple straight answer and had to dance on my head in order to even attempt it. The fact of the matter was that I had called three times in one day, had spoken to a couple of techs, and not one word of my conversations had been recorded.

When their tech support was still in the U.S., we had gotten compensation a couple of times before for the problems stemming from them. I'm sorry, but if there's no communication between the workers here and there, then there's a significant problem that needs to be addressed. Unless it's been down for two days or more, the techs over there aren't even aware of it.

Re:Ugly Americans

[Laebshade]

We tried calling customer service to get a complaint filed, only to find that the techs I had spoken with never logged any of the calls

And this is why, my friends, that you always get the name, extension, and possibly company ID # to whomever you talk to.

Re:Ugly Americans

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I find that a lot of problems stem from the fact that they refuse to deviate from the scripts that they're given

I work for a US based call center.

Typically when we're told, "I'm a network administrator! I know what the hell media state: disconnected means! It means something's wrong on YOUR end!" the answer is "Is the PC/Link light on the modem?" followed by, "...no."

It's not that we're not willing to deviate from our pre-determined method of troubleshooting, it's that there are alot of asswads out there who work a sense of apathy towards customer "troubleshooting." Which is typically kicking the modem and wondering why it's not working.

Language is a stupid way to communicate

[Anonymous Coward]

There's really two issues here, that are both somewhat addressed in the article:

1) Americans speak their own brand of English that's incomprehensible to most of the rest of the world, and vice versa. That goes double for anybody with a regional accent. If I can't understand Mississippian, what chance does somebody from India have?

2) There's a definite technical language gap, irrespective of dialect. Trying to figure out what's actually wrong is usually 90% of handling a call. Your typical electronics consumer only knows that this doohickey isn't doing what he wants it to do.

The dialect-related problems can be solved by having regional call centers, but the technical language gap is a bigger and longer-term problem. As the article says, "We're not going to give you a crash-course in Excel over the phone"... but if the consumer won't give it to himself, he's going to blame the product, the vendor, or the support staff when it doesn't do what he thinks it should.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[Skiron]

I am in Pompey, England. I regularly deal with people in Montreal CA and East Hartford USA - big problem - with my English accent and the speed I speak, they just can't understand me - no matter how I try to speak.

The usual fix normally ends up as an E-Mail.

Watching "The Simpsons" finally pays off.

[Chatmag]

After listening to Apu on "The Simpsons" all these years, I don't have any problem understanding tech support.

Re:Watching "The Simpsons" finally pays off.

[Chatmag]

Insightful? Thanks whoever did that, but it was supposed to be "Funny". :)

May I Suggest

[kevin_conaway]

this article for those folks who think that people are "stealing" or "taking" jobs away from Americans?

You get what you pay for

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumers expect top quality products, but are not willing to pay for it. As is commonly known, the margins for computers are razor thin. On top of this, when people want top notch service, how can the companies provide it? I am sorry, but the companies are not wrong to cut some costs where they can by using offshore support for a product with very little margins.

If you want service, buy a service contract from someone local. As in come to your home and fix it.

money to be made?

[spectrokid]

Seriously, can all these outsourced IT'ers make a living driving around town with an AD-aware CD in their back pocket? How much is the average user prepared to pay for saving his butt?

Re:money to be made?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the uk (for me at least) its around £30-40 per home machine.

That includes cleaning off all the nastiness, installing either a popup stopper or firefox etc.

Not bad really, getting a machine back up and running in under an hour, having a brew and a chat to the users. Its just a bonus to be paid for doing what I would do anyway.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[damu]

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.

More dumb users

[nuggz]

Tech support is expensive.
Users are getting dumber and calling tech support for things they shouldn't.

Ever hear of someone calling their ISP to help them clear disk space to install the ISP software?
They can just hang up (frustrated customer)
Or they can help the customer, this is expensive, so get a lower level cheaper tech to do it.

That being said I rarely call tech support for anything other then my ISP is broken. Even then I've just about given up, when I telnet to the smtp port on my mailserver and it replies with an error message, they want me to reboot my computer.

Slashdot Headline Clarity Dropping

[orthogonal]

Given the headline "Tech Support Levels Dropping", I assumed it meant that companies were decreasing the level (that is, the amount) of staffing -- or at least decreasing staffing in the U.S.

But what the headline is really trying to cmmunicate is that satisfaction with tech support is dropping -- especially overseas tech support -- which might lead to more tech support staff being hired in the U.S.

So should I complain "Slashdot Headline Clarity Dropping", or should I just be grateful it's not a dupe?

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[random_culchie]

I think you are understating the differences in regional dialects and accents.
I live in Ireland a reletivly small country and I have sometimes have difficulty understanding people from different regions!

getting paid to call hell

[Alien54]

I have actually been paid cold hard cash at my usual computer onsite repair rates to call a tech support line for a company whose name shall remain undisclosed and which rhymes with hell. Not just to sort things out since the unit was under warranty and my customer just could not under the accents on the other side, but to put the people on the other end of the line through some torture as well. The people were well pleased with the value of the entertainment they received. I say, with tongue only slightly in cheek, that I may consider this a whole new line of business.

The company may be "saving money" by paying the people one fifth of what stateside would get, but I can say with confidence that the call took ten times longer than it would have if someone with competant computer knowledge was on the line. Rote reading from of a incomplete trouble shooting guide does not replace expert knowledge. The worse thing you can do to those folks is to follow there directions literally and exactly.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[analog_line]

I completely concur. Right now I do work as a hourly computer consultant (or "tech support for hire" as I like to call it) and I charge full hourly rate for all time on the phone to the useless tech support people, which only really happens with Internet stuff generally, as I generally build all the machines my clients use myself.

We do no advertising, and even then we have more work than we can handle sometimes, just through word of mouth. Personally, I hope computer stuff gets more and more compliacted and touchy, because that means more money for me. Plumbers make a damn good living, and I don't see why I don't stand to do much the same, seeing as the plumbing I work on is way more complex and far more prone to break down.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[Jedi Alec]

so there you were, thinking yourself really tough, making fun of some poor sod in an out-source callcenter who never quite got the training from the not-to-be-named company to really do the job well, who can do absolutely nothing but follow a couple of silly script lines and who gets paid shit to swallow yours? bravo!

Re:getting paid to call hell

[qwijibo]

Plumbing is just a different discipline. The goal of plumbing is to get the crap out of your building. You really don't care what happens once it gets out of your building. That's someone else's problem.

IT is about bringing some crap into your building while keeping other crap out. Calculated crap management is what makes IT a science.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[twbecker]

While I agree that the language barrier can only hurt tech support, I think people have forgotten how bad it was even when it was onshore. The salaries were still pretty low and the skill level of the support people reflected that. Think about it, tech support horror stories have been around much longer than the off-shoring trend. The fact that they're in India now just adds insult to injury.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a Fortune 100 corporation that outsourced its internal help desk to India. The main effect seems to have been that everyone now pesters me for technical support instead of calling the supposed IT department.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[FooDog]

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.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[Glamdrlng]

Rote reading from of a incomplete trouble shooting guide does not replace expert knowledge.

Thank you for pointing out that the language barrier isn't the only problem here. My primary frustration with Dell's tech support hasn't been the language barrier so much as it's been the technical proficiency or lack thereof. Plus, it's an insult to one's intelligence when you talk to three different techs in Bangalore and they all introduce themselves as "Bob", "Ralph", and "Andy".

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.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[dasmegabyte]

Which is why offshoring seems so good to many companies. If you're resigned to having shitty support, you may as well pay LESS for it.

Incidentally, I've never had a better time of support than with my Apple gear. They always are cordial and knowledgable on the phone, they BELIEVE you when you say it's busted, they arrange all the pickup and delivery with a 5 day turnaround...and remember that battery recall from last week? I got mine the next day. Orderered after 4 on thursday, battery was on the porch when I got home. Could not believe it.

Dis me for paying $300 over the cost of a comparably sized and priced Acer if you want. But it's been worth it already in headaches averted -- and I have two and a half more years of this stuff!

Re:getting paid to call hell

[StalinsNotDead]

I'm certain this has been posted on slashdot at some time in the past, but it's worth reading. (At least in my opinion)

It is an article written by someone in tech support.

You either have to subscribe or watch an ad. Sorry.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[Thantalos1]

I formerly worked for said unamed company, in server support no less, and I can tell you exactly when things went down hill (in 2000). The managers became much more intrested in how little time you spent on the phone and not in how well you solved the problem. This is also when this company forgot that the only reason to buy their systems was the support, they are not cheaper, faster, nor more stable.

Aside from that tech support has always been hit or miss. I have known people with excellent tecnical backgrounds who could fix the problem if they were sitting in front of the box, but were tottaly unable to work over the phone.

I have always said that excellent (not just good) tech support is black magic. It cannot be trained in. Good and even great techs can be trained but the life expenctancy of most phone techs is 2 years.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[The Spoonman]

And, besides that, plumbing's easy. There's only two things you need to know:

1. Shit goes down.

2. Payday's Tuesday.

Re:getting paid to call hell

[greatone]

no my father always told me there are 5 rules to plumbing.

1. Shit goes down
2. Air goes up
3. Hot on the left
4. Cold on the right.
5. Payday's Tuesday

Re:getting paid to call hell

[jonnystiph]

so there you were, thinking yourself really tough, making fun of some poor sod in an out-source callcenter who never quite got the training from the not-to-be-named company to really do the job well, who can do absolutely nothing but follow a couple of silly script lines and who gets paid shit to swallow yours? bravo!

Bravo yourself! Not in the sarcastic context either. I am so glad that someone brought this up. Call centers are crap. Tech support is hard work, espicially over the phone, and espicially considering these are entry level tech jobs. How many people have worked a Tier 1 phone support job and had a fair-good understanding of correct T-shooting techniques of computers.

Now, I am a unix admin. At one time not too many years ago, I was that asshole on Tier-1 support that knew enough about customer service to keep you from hating the company, but not nearly enough about your computer to keep you hating me. Please people, these are just people that need to keep a job, just like anyone else. Yes, you know more than them, big fucking deal. There are plenty of people out there that know more than you. That and there are plenty of people that could turn your body into pulpy mass, but hopefully they don't. There are laws against physically abusing someone, but none to protect from mental abuse. This job is hard enough, let them and thier shoddy training be, ask to be esecalated, chances are you can and will be.

just my $.02

Re:getting paid to call hell

[vsprintf]

The problem is that #1 is not always true. That's when you really need a plumber, and generally at weekend rates.

Documentation from hell

[Vo0k]

People who work at User Support, and especially people writing manuals should be FORCED to use software (general) in language version they support.

I got a CAM program with translation to English. The problem is the translator apparently never used any english program himself, learnt english at school and never had to use it really before the translation. Examples? (with my translations)

Secure Tool - save the tool set to a file.
Save Under
Programme End
Displace - move
Edit Row - (the only way to enter text into project)
Demark - unselect
Adjust position - move point
Size line - measure distance
Clearance - material to be removed by the CNC

No, the program is not an after-hours shareware. It's a multi-thousand-dollar commercial software, a flagship product of the company that makes it. And no, it's not really crappy. The backend is marvelous. It's the frontend and translations that really suck.

Re:Documentation from hell

[houghi]

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.

Language barriers?! Ha.

[cniemira]

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.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[MBaldelli]

you should always speak in the most clear and correct way when making a non-personal phone call, including additional redundancy e.g. "A for apple".

Uhhh, On Monday, I tried my best to speak with as little slang, and as little of an accent as I could, and I still couldn't make myself clear to Ghumpta in New Delhi, because that's where Dell happened to have moved their support to. It too me having to make Ghumpta repeat himself six times in order to make heads and tails of what he was trying to tell me.

It also took Herculean efforts on my part not to blow up on his sorry ass when he told me something that was clearly a lie.

Comanpies are seeing a fall in profits and interests in their products? Good! Put localized support that can speak basically the same language, instead of looking for the cheapest way to piss off your customer base.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

> it'd be like someone from London speaking cockney rhyming slang and expecting that to be understood

Heh. Cockney rhyming tech support.

"What? No, no, I don't *have* a Mac, I have a PC! What? NO! I have *one* broken *Windows* computer! Why do you keep talking about Apples in pairs? And no, I do *not* think this should be lemon squeezy! Give me your manager! No, dammit! Not the *governor!* GAAAAAH!" /sound of quiet sobbing in the background.

Waiting Game

[Baldrson]

What I've found, especially with Dell, is that the primary function of over-seas telephone support is to burn up man hours. Since man hours are less costly over there than here, it is cheap to get a client to simply hang up, thereby implicitly abrogating their part of the agreement and implicitly waiving their right to support.

Its gotten so bad that I recommend people purchase generic computers rather than suffer the abuse of major name brand computers.

Re:Waiting Game

[rbmyers]

The problem is not outsourcing, and the problem is not cheap overseas labor. You can force people to wait on hold without any human intervention whatsoever. The strategy is called rationing by inconvenience, and Dell was using it long before offshoring became trendy.

Re:Waiting Game

[twifosp]

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?

Is it really the offshoring?

[nial-in-a-box]

Frankly, I don't think that any company that supports Windows XP based PCs could possibly offer a satisfactory level of technical support. I am currently providing technical support on a college campus during move-in and what I am seeing nearly has me in tears. Malware was just starting to become critical during last year's move-in, but this time around it is simply shocking. I have seen countless brand new computers that are already impossibly crippled.

What upsets me so much about this is not that Microsoft sucks at writing secure, reliable software but rather that there are so many people that are so willing to exploit it. Considering how many unique exploits there are on Windows XP, I feel that regardless of secure we think that Linux or BSD or Mac OS X may be, that if they had the dominant market share in their current state there would also be a large number of malware apps running wild on those platforms.

When you consider that it takes a significant amount of time to diagnose and resolve malware issues properly over the telephone, it immediately becomes impossible to offer good technical support. Sure, there are other key issues, such as outright hardware failure, but when malware is slowing down the machine average call time automatically increases. So unless your policy is to shaft users (and their data) and tell them to reformat/reinstall/use the restore CD right off the bat, or you are willing to pay what it really takes to have enough reps to help your customers, then there is absolutely no way to provide satisfactory technical support. Not in California, not in Canada, not in India.

HP Customer 'support'

[MalaclypseTheYounger]

I can't even BEGIN to explain how BAD HP customer support is. Sometimes you will start off with an American support agent, and as they pass you off to 'technical' people I always end up getting switched to some Indian guy in Bangalore. I don't know why, but I can NEVER understand these guys/gals. I work with people all over the world, Latin American, European, Asian, and I can understand their accents. But never Indian accents. Now when something goes wrong with an HP product I always debate voiding my warranty and fixing it myself rather than going through the hassle of calling their 'hell desk'.

Some problems I've had: Hard drive failure, HP Printer failure, Boot failure (required reinstall). On average, it takes me 4-5 phone calls with various people to get my case resolved. They never call you back, when they say they will. Their managers don't seem to care either. I can't understand how any business in the U.S. thinks this is good support.

I would like to condemn any CEO/CIO who supports Indian outsourcing of IT help desk operations to having to use it for themselves, personally, every time they have a question/issue/problem with their PC. I bet $5 they wise up and stop using outsourcing overseas.

Of course, that will never happen because the CEO/CIO always has their 'IT geek' in their pocket, who they can call at any time and they will personally show up and fix anything/everything that happens.

I guess this outsourcing of the help desk to other countries (mainly India) is just another way to 'screw the middle class'. Can't get your problem resolved? Are you 16 hours out of warranty? Buy a new PC/HardDrive/Printer... because the help desk won't help you.

again he misses the point though...

[CiXeL]

I can compete with foreign workers (i work my ass off), i just can't compete with the increasing industry-wide pay cut that has resulted where now I suddenly cannot afford to pay for existing debts that I could afford previously.

I'm already making plans for my girlfriend and I to move out of california now since it's just too expensive and there are increasingly less and less tech jobs here.

The division seems to be between people who own a home and those who don't. Everyone I see who doesn't own a home here already is struggling and the ones who do are taking vacations. I've pulled out my savings to go on 'vacation' to the east coast to look for work.

Re:again he misses the point though...

[dave420]

So, you were being overpaid for your job when the market stabilised and re-adjusted itself, leaving you with a smaller wage which means you're not as well off as you were before.

If IT workers didn't insist on inflated wages, we'd be a lot more happy. The jobs are going overseas as Americans ask for too much money to do what is essentially a basic task. Anyone can program a computer given enough books to read. Anyone can fix computer problems. It's not like it's a gift - IT professionals aren't "chosen by the elders" or "pre-ordained by the prophecy" - they're just guys and gals who type on keyboards all day.

I'm not trolling - this is a point I've tried to make countless times on slashdot (but always been modded out of existance).

The free market America tried to hard to push on the world has finally come of age. It was instigated when America was a very economically-viable place to have a business. Now, that free market has gained more momentum in other, more economically steady, parts of the world. Because of that, the jobs are now flowing the other way, which America doesn't seem to like.

Something about cake and eating it springs to mind... ;)

Re:again he misses the point though...

[PainKilleR-CE]

I'm already making plans for my girlfriend and I to move out of california now since it's just too expensive and there are increasingly less and less tech jobs here.

Believe me, you'll be happy you did, and not because there are any more tech jobs outside of California than in (though there may be because companies are leaving CA for the same reason people do). Instead, it will simply be because you can actually afford to live on the same (or lesser) pay. At least, as long as you don't move to New York or somewhere with a similarly high cost of living.

The division seems to be between people who own a home and those who don't. Everyone I see who doesn't own a home here already is struggling and the ones who do are taking vacations. I've pulled out my savings to go on 'vacation' to the east coast to look for work.

This is simply because those that own a home either bought at a lower price than is currently demanded, or can actually afford a home at current prices. Even those with homes are often taking out 2nds on their home to live their lives and take their vacations.

Before I left California the paper had a front-page story on a Habitat for Humanity house that was selling for $250K to a qualified low-income buyer, and housing prices have continued to go up since then. For $250K in some areas around here (Hampton Roads, VA) I can have a very nice house on a substantial piece of land, or a nice house on a smaller piece of land (depending on how close I want to be to work, basically; and that smaller piece of land is bigger than anything in a CA suburb).

There is still one company offering great support

[bradleyland]

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.

USA Today Levels Dropping

[Dr. Cody]

I'm guessing that the kind of people who read USA Today really *really* need manuals and tech support.

And illustrations.

And GUIs.

And they probably love Clippy, too.

"Ooh! Look! My little paperclip friend is back! Brandy, come look! Say 'hi', Clippy!"

"Oh, cuuuuuuute!"

I think it was Dave Barry who accused USA Today of being the direct descendant of Weekly Reader.

Problem from both sides.

[houghi]

I agree that language differences can result in some problems. It is also the expectancy of the customer that has changed.

Where a few years ago people who needed help were willing to do something themselves and were helping to find the solution, now customers just want it fixed. I am not saying that that is a bad thing. It just is a fact.

Imagine when a few years ago someone called an ISP and said that his internet was not responding, you could ask to open a DOS window and do a ping and as a rep get the resukts in about a minute. Now you need to explain how to do that with the customer moaning that he does not understand it and that it should just work.

I live in Belgium and Belgiun being a country with three languages, we understand perfectly what the situation is with language barriers. The Belgian-French is not the same as the French-French and Flemish is not the same as Dutch. The dialects that are spoken especialy in Flanders can be so different that the people from one side do not understand the people from the other side.

The willingness of BOTH parties will result in a solution. If however one does not want to work with the other, you have just created a unsolvable situation. I have heard people who called in from France to the call center in Belgium and did not want any help from a Belgian rep. I have heard Belgians not wanting to be helped by Dutch reps.

Luckily I myself am able to get support in 4 languages within several dialects, so for me personally the situation is non-existing.

Marketing Doubleplus Groupthink

[Tangurena]

A division of Sony runs Everquest (or evercrack if you prefer), and earlier this year they felt that replacing guides (volunteers who get nothing but free expansions and free subscription - worth about $200/year in forgone billing) with offshored salaried employees was cheaper to sony than the volunteers.

Proponents of offshoring have propped it up as the new religion of business. Like the TQM or 6-Sigma of the past. Wildly irrational business decisions are being made by the groupthinkers who are today's and tomorrow's CEOs, because everyone else is doing it.

Re:Marketing Doubleplus Groupthink

[Puls4r]

Bzzzt. Completely wrong. What happened here is that volunteers (whose name I won't mention) SUED the parent company and won because they were working more than they should have for "free". Since then, the volunteer programs of nearly every large MMORPG have been shut down because it's cheaper to pay for crappy help than it is to litigate against volunteers who suddenly want to be paid. Good try though.

Re:Marketing Doubleplus Groupthink

[jerky42]

I wish you could get modded up some more.

Read CIO magazine, and they were all about offshoring for the longest time, even with no numbers. All the CIOs they interview are doing it, "just so they can have an answer for the CEO/CFO when he asks." The sad thing is, most of these people have been through the first outsourcing/insourcing craze, and just don't have the sack to tell their bosses that outsourcing/offshoring costs triple what you think it will in hidden costs and lost opportunities.

It's the knowledge, not the accent.

[dpbsmith]

Most of my nontechnical acquaintances are savvy enough to select "help" from a menu or read the glossy "getting started" summary card packed at the top of the box. If Clippy has the answer for them, they don't call tech support.

The problem is not whether the person on the phone has a detectable accent or a professional demeanor. The problem is that for the last five years, tech support people, foreign or domestic have been human versions of Clippy. Only with fewer preprogrammed answers. The problem is that in so many cases they appear to be reading from a top forty FAQ sheet and cannot solve any problem that the average user can't solve themselves.

I'm happy with anyone who actually solves my problem, and I'll be most other customers are, too.

Re:It's the knowledge, not the accent.

[TGK]

The problem, as you so eloquently point out when you say "The problem is that in so many cases they appear to be reading from a top forty FAQ sheet and cannot solve any problem that the average user can't solve themselves," is that fully half of the users are dumber than that.

That means that fully half of the questions are answered by reading off that sheet. Now, if 1/2 of your job can be done for you by reading the appropriate line off of a piece of paper, aren't you going to read that line? More to the point, if you're paying someone to do a job that, about 1/2 the time can be done by reading a known solution off of a piece of paper, aren't you going to insist that they read that line first?

Sure, there are people out there with legitimate problems. They need legitimate solutions. If there was a way to filter the idiots out of the call queue so tech support could help the ones that actually need help (as opposed to the ones that need help reading) I'm sure they'd do it. As is, we're all at the mercy of the horde of vindictive idiots who insist that nothing can possibly be wrong with [insert product here] because it was working yesterday. Of course it was working yesterday; if it hadn't been working yesterday they'd have called in YESTERDAY. What changed? It broke! What's so hard to understand about this?

Tech support suffers because of marketing and feature envy. People want the newest, fastest, latest whiz-bang contraption out there. Even my mother, who hasn't the faintest clue how to perform even the most basic functions with a PC is talking about how great a tablet PC would be. We introduce more and more complex devices to people who have fundamentally no idea what they're doing with them and then are surprised when they can't make them work!

You don't buy a $4,000 amp for your first stereo. You don't buy a Ferrari Testerosa for your kid to learn to drive on. You don't teach a newly hired cook to make baked Alaska before he can make a grilled cheese sandwich. Why do we believe this doesn't hold up for computers?

Southern England accents are impossible.

[Gordonjcp]

No-one can understand them, not even other people from the south of England. That's why they all jabber away like bonobo monkeys on speed, seemingly without pausing for breath. I work in tech support, and I *dread* getting calls for anywhere south of about Birmingham.

As an interesting aside, most call centres in the UK are in Scotland, because people perceive Scottish accents as educated and authoratative. English accents are, apparently, too annoying to be much good for call centres. Strange but true.

Obligatory PA quote

[Glamdrlng]

Case in point: A friend of mine bought a VAIO, which never really worked. After the third repair attempt he got it back with a hole in the case, requiring a nasty letter from his lawyer until they finally reimbursed him. That was after accusing him of breaking it himself.

Sorry but I have to...

Piro: "I see the RAID controller got 'the screwdriver'."

Largo: "It was not l33t. It deserved d34th."

Re:There is still one company offering great suppo

[east coast]

I've called Apple tech support on three occasions and always had an extremely knowledgable...

Not to seem trollish but Apple also has a few advantages:

1. Less software means that there is less chances for a third party to screw over the PC.

2. Less virii/adware means less problems to contend with as well as a greater chance of a non-fouled system

3. Most of Apples hardware is from Apple. This also means not having to contend with third party problems

4. Most Apple owners seem to have a very specific use for the PC when they buy it. Joe Sixpack buys an E-Machine because it's cheap and it runs the best-known OS. Joe Sixpack is less likely to have as much experience as the Apple user. I doubt many people by an Apple as a first PC because most people either don't know what they want/need or they just want a general PC.

Cost

[BenjyD]

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.

Re:Explain this language...!

[Kalixis]

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.

Re:I hate it when I'm right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Peculiarly enough, I've had the same experience with Non-Indian (read: American) tech support as well.

Besides being inexperienced, and unable to communicate very clearly, they're also largely obnoxious and condescending, something which I am yet to see from an Indian centre.

I don't know why, but I get this feeling that a large amount of tech support isn't bad because of it's ethnic background, but more because tech support workers are usually not trained much, except for a few days of "orientation" (which basically comes down to how to report, document and bill your calls. Not about the products you're supporting)

The kind of support I sometimes look for can only be given by the developers, but they wouldn't be developers if they spend their time answering calls, would they? Invariably, the people who do support are not those who develop their products, and this will remain. It's all fine and dandy to spew forth large dollops of righteous indignation at every mention of a lost job, but the facts might not (in fact, do not) corroborate what you choose to say.

This is not a troll, This is just information from my experience. Take it as you see fit.

IT support, admin and helpdesks, Bill's legacy

[alwynschoeman]

Every day I am amazed at the lack of skill and knowledge in IT personnel. 9 out of 10 of them should never have been a sys admin, programmer or support person.

I think Microsoft is largely to blame. When people leaving school suddenly awakened to the fact that you don't just get handed a well paying job, Microsoft were pushing MSCE, etc. on the technically challenged masses.

In the end only Microsoft gained. The masses eventually got paid less because of the laws of supply and demand, but still companies felt that they were bestowed with armies of skilled people certified 'smart' by Microsoft.

Actually the armies of idiots might be the one thing that gives Microsoft staying power in companies. Migrate to Linux? Unless you re-hire your whole IT department you are in big troubles.
At least your department will be much smaller.
If you cannot even manage something you are certified for, what about something that actually requires a brain. Now make that idiot a manager and it becomes impossible.

I must apologize for using 'idiot', its a relative thing. I am smart in technology, but an idiot when it comes to stuff like financial investment, legal matters, fixing cars, etc. See, no harm done.

Now helpdesk personnel need to be patient. Thats where the Filipino's shine, pleasant and patient, but not very smart on the technical stuff no matter what they tell themselves.

I guess its a catch 22, very few tech savvy people will work in a helpdesk. Maybe it will be the first true mass market for good AI?

Re:IT support, admin and helpdesks, Bill's legacy

[Mitleid]

How can you honestly say Microsoft is to blame for the sad state of the IT admin and tech support fields? It's not like Microsoft FORCED companies to accept their MSCEs; business owners and IT managers were the ones who figured it'd be a good idea to let a private company determine the education requirements for the IT employees. Micrsoft just rode the wave and laughed all the way to the bank.

The state of "mainstream" IT in the U.S. seems to be more systematic than anything. Business owners and their advisors have gotten it into their head that "official" certifications are what qualifies one for a position, not actual technical knowledge. It functions the same way as the U.S. education system; some of the DUMBEST people I've known were straight A students, but I'm sure with an educational record as "impressive" as a college degree and even graduate school (*shudder*) they'll have no trouble at all finding a job or getting into college/graduate school. Colleges are just making a killing by riding on the blind faith business managers give to college degrees. So is Microsoft. Don't blame them; blame your boss(es).

Re:Ugly EARTHLINK!

[BoRegardless]

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.

Blame the stock market

[DeprecatedFeature]

Companies sell stock.
Stockholders expect a healthy percentage return, better than the market average.
Company must make large profit to return value to shareholders.
Consumers demand cheap cheap cheap computers.
Company does whatever it takes to show large profit while still selling computer for ridiculously low price, including sending all manufacturing and tech support and accounting and so on to low labor cost foreign country.
Company upper management/shareholders rejoice at increased profitability.
Everyone else suffers.

The company I work for is in the process of relocating IT and accounting to a lower cost IT support center in Mexico (time zone restrictions prevented using India or Manila). Their stock is kicking butt because they've demonstrated all this efficiency and profitability. I have roughly 6 months before I know I'm out of a job. It's ugly, but that's how the whole thing works.
Incidentally, incompetence is running amuck in plenty of US based IT shops, too, just because first line tech support is probably the lowest paid job in the house, and you sometimes get what you pay for.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[nwbvt]

There are two sides to the communication problems. While I agree that the tech support center should not be required to speak every dialect of the English language like a native speaker (that would be impossible), they should do as much as they can to understand the various dialects, whether it is Southern, Texan, New England, British, or Indian.

It should be noted that such a problem is not inherent to tech support centers overseas. A representative from Vermont may have just as much trouble understanding a caller from South Carolina as the representative in India. Thus this issue does not do much to support the racist/ethnocentric view that no one in California should go unemployed while people in India have work.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[PainKilleR-CE]

Most people that speak UK English can probably make themselves understood to others than speak UK English. The same can be said about US English. On the other hand, if you get someone with a particularly harsh dialect of US English speaking to someone with a particularly harsh dialect of UK English (ie. someone from the back woods of the south and someone from the films Trainspotting or Snatch), it's quite possible that even when trying to be understood neither will have any idea what the other is saying, even without slang.

Personally, I couldn't understand what 90% of the people I met were saying for the first 2 months after I moved to Virginia, and this is about as far north as you can go before you are completely out of the south (and to those that contest that Virginia is in the south: where was the capital of the Confederacy?).

If a company doesn't provide tech support that can handle the calls it will receive, then they are very likely to lose business eventually.

Attitude, knowledge, language and poor phone conne

[pcause]

I really felt this article understaned how bad the situation has become. I'll describe my Dell "experience" below, but while this was for my home system, I also buy $500K+ per year for my company and am on a team that set policy for a $5 billion dollar company's purchases. Dell shouldn't assume that it is OK to send home users to India and keep corporate users in the US. many of us unimportant home users get to decide how oompany's spend their $$$.

I called Dell technical support. I initially had a terrible connection. One assumes the IP telephone technology wasn't working well at that point. Even when I tried back and went through all the menus again, the volume was low. I had to ask 3 times to get the person to speak up.

The next problem was that the people you get know very little. I'm a very expert computer user. The operator refused to listen to me when I described the problem and insisted on going through a checlkist of stuff about installing anti-virus, patches, etc. It was very aggrevating and they are not traied to recognize people who have expertise and not trivial problems.

The person's attitude was one of uncertainty and confusion at each step. They literally disappeared for 3-5 minutes at each step. I assume this was to read a document and then ask someone else what it meant. Very annoying. When I tried to discuss things they clearly could only reread the script. When I asked if there was someone more expert they said we had to go through the steps first.

I'm sure they were following procedure, but my problem was a hardware problem. I knew it and that was the issue that they agreed to after 30 minutes of wasting my time. I tried early in the call to just get to the hardware discussion, but had to give up and go through stupid questions and a variety of time wasting steps.

Finally, there was the launguage / accent problem. The person's English was passable and the accent was heavy and made udnerstanding difficult at times.

overall, I hated the experience. I will look for alternatives to Dell with US based support for my next purchases, including my $500K+ of corporate purchases.

The basic problem with tech support

[Alioth]

The basic problem - the reason why tech support in general (especially from a large company) is almost certain to suck whether it's in India, Wales, the United States or even Texas - is that people who are clueful don't want to do technical support.

Tech support is generally a low-paid entry level job. Many people in tech support aren't there to make a career, they are there simply because they need some kind of job. (It always amused me when I was a teenager looking for entry-level jobs how it always said 'Why are you applying for a job at company X?' and you had to write some BS-filled 'go forward' corporate speak response on how the company is so wonderful, and how it'll be the start of a long career etc. when the genuine answer is simply 'because I need the money'.)

Generally, the people in tech support will not have a clue and don't care to have a clue; they just want to collect their paycheck. Those with a clue would never do tech support even if you doubled their salary because the job is utterly stultifying.

I have worked in a small call centre (12 positions). Fortunately, it *was not* tech support, but railway information. But even there we had the same problem: the job really demanded someone who knew geography well and had an interest in the railways, and the majority of people there just wanted a paycheck. Turnover was fast - it was rare that anyone stayed in the call centre for more than 6 months before leaving the company or finding a job somewhere else in the company. The trouble is there was quite a bit of knowledge you needed to do the job well thanks to the byzantine fare structure and the complex geography of the national railway network, and usually at 6 months the person was just getting competent and fast at doing the job - and they'd go and leave. I would imagine tech support isn't much different.

Re:The basic problem with tech support

[suso]

Well, that might be true once the dust has settled but I'm sure that this could not be said back in the mid-90s when a lot of us had a good deal of personal computer experience, but not enough to land us in a programming or sysadmin position. Back then the techsupport wasn't that bad, and it was before the days of the scripts that they go through now to fix your problem.

Re:The basic problem with tech support

[twifosp]

You are mostly correct. Tech support IS, for the most part, a crappy entry level job.

Why? Because people refuse to pay for it and expect it for free.

There are plenty of tiers to choose from from companies like Dell. You can get gold or platinum support, escalations on demand, all kinds of professional support.

You just have to pay for it. But but but, it should be for freeeeeee! Well, no one ever complains that they didn't get free tech support when they go out and install a bunch of after market parts on their car. No one dreams of slapping new firmware [software] on their big screen TV to change the color programming.

For some reason computers aren't considered appliances. And everything you can dream of doing, should be supported by the manufacture. Well that's pretty dillusional and short sighted on the customers part. No one expects these things with other appliances, why computers?

I'm not saying tech support isn't bad. It is. Especially the consumer entry level portion. But there are options. I know for sure Dell offers quite a few support options for consumers. And tons more for the enterprise segment. If you pay for it, you can talk to the same american professional support staff every day. Hell, you can even outsource your own IT department and have Dell take care of everything. In todays age, you hook a computer up with a fresh install of windows XP to the internet and whammo, you're hit with a myriad of malicious software. Why is the computer company at fault for that again?

It's a trade off. You get what you pay for in most cases. I still say Dell should beef up their entry level support to how it was 3-4 years ago. But you can't say it's all gone. They just charge you for it now.

Dell? Are you listening?

[erroneus]

Dell sells clones. They aren't truly any better than any other PC out there. They make some pretty nice cases though.

That said, the ONE thing that made Dell better than the rest was their support. It did't take long before they realized that it was a BAD BUSINESS DECISION to move their corporate support overseas. They moved it back to the U.S. pretty quickly when companies started dumping Dell.

That said, it proves they are aware of the problems it causes -- this is not a surprise to them in the least. The message I get from that fast? They prefer to abuse their users when they think they can get away with it. If you're not a corporate user, they don't care about you. Simple right? They might try to deny it, but their actions speak the loudest.

Free Markets -vs- Capitalism

[ahfoo]

The idea of a "Free Market" and the economic system called Capitalism are not one and the same thing.
The United States of America is historically thought of as a having a Capitalist economy with equity markets playing a central position in its economy. But Capitalism, with its implication of a central role for equity markets, is much older than the US and is often thought to have emerged in its modern form in the city-state of Venice in the fifteenth century. The word "bourse" is a French coinage that refers to what Americans call a stock market.
On the other hand, this phrase "Free Market" is little more than an idealistic slogan. It's not too far removed from the term "socialism" in the sense that both merely refer to a general tendency that is never really expected to exist in the absolute sense and would require vastly different societies than the ones we have today even to begin to approach.
I just want to remind everyone of this fact because when someone starts a thread with the phrase "Free Market Capitalism" it really just leads to a lot of misunderstandings. It's not unlike the ETS writing question that asks students to give their opinion on whether artists or engineers contribute more to society. This is a misleading question because the disctinctions upon which the topic are premised are false.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[johnw]

In fact, I hate to tell you, but unless you're speaking the original English language, which you're not, you are using a dialect.

Define "original English language".

American English differs quite a lot from English English but neither can claim to be the original. It's pretty clear that English has grown away from American English just as much as American English has grown away from English.

Everyone speaks a dialect.

John

Dont blame the Indians

[BobRooney]

Just because you can't understand someone on tech support doesn't necessarily mean they are an Indian, or other foreign-based call center. There are plenty of American Citizens with poor command of the English Language. I have had several people call me for various telemarketing reasons who could hardly read their script. I promptly laughed at them and hung up, but their accent was clearly an American one.

The problem has nothing to do with where call centers are located but rather who's doing the work on the phone with you. All good support personnel should be trained in "standard" American English to help avoid ambiguity, since everyone can understand the version of English you hear on the CNN or other standard media outlets, even if you dont' normally speak that way.

I myself work with customers on the phone and make a point of suppressing my slight New York accent and not using any slang that might not be clear.

It's difficult enough trying to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical people without a 2-way language barrier getting in the way. A support rep should be able to decipher people's accents, within reason and should be trained in speaking a relatively standard form of the language they are providing support in.

This doesn't just apply to English, but also Spanish. We have support rep where I work who is responsible for helping spanish speaking customers. When on the phone with a customer she speaks "standard" spanish that you would usually hear on Telemundo or Univision. There is a definite difference between the dialect she speaks on the phone and what she uses when she's on the phone with her husband for example.

Re:Sorry but I have no sympathy for this guy

[sharkey]

wtf is Alabama English?

Lahf is lahk a box a choc'lates, you nevva know whut you gonna git.

I called hell not too long ago myself.

[SatanicPuppy]

Funny story.

I inherited an "hINSPERON" laptop, and during the course of use ran across an odd LED error code. Found nothing about it online, had nothing better to do, so, what the hell, I called hell.

I have called hell many times in the past, but this was one of the longest waits I've ever had, raising the question of where all this money they're saving is going. Finally I get through to a support rep with an indian accent that was understandable, at least to me.

However, clearly she did not understand anything I was saying. I needed one piece of information, very specific (Middle LED Orange-Orange-Green repeating), which SHOULD have been available on their website. I asked the question, she put me on hold for ten minutes, came back and said, "It's not important".

"Maybe not," sez I, "but I still want to know."

Ten more minutes. "It's not important"

"Yes, you said that, and I said I still want to know."

Ten more minutes. "You don't need to know."

I DO need to know, to justify the last two hours of my life!"

Ten more minutes. "It's a battery code."

"No, really? The little battery ideogram next to the LED would never have given me that impression. what does it MEAN?"

Five more minutes, then I hung up. I've had many bad experiences with hell, but that was the worst in terms of sheer pointlessness.

ObCitySlickers

[sharkey]

...should I just be grateful it's not a dupe?

Day ain't over yet.

Partly customer's own fault?

[tehanu]

I keep on hearing about how *insert big computer company*'s customer support is crap, but this doesn't seem to be affecting their profits any. Does bad customer support really affect the bysiness they get? If say Dell's customer support is crap, don't the customers just whine until their nearest geek friend/relative do the work for them free? The average buyer of computers relies on price and big numbers on the box (the MHz myth) and the ooh-shiny factor in terms of making purchasing decisions. Customer support is hardly ever considered (ditto with things like security for software purchases...). If the consumers don't care, why should the companies? If consumers want good customer support they should be willing to pay for it by making it part of their purchasing decisions eg. two identical systems from two computers, one with good customer support, one with not-so-good but the other one is cheaper, the vast majority of people will go for the cheaper one.

If customers don't vote with their wallets then why should Dell/Sony/HP et al. care about good customer support (from the POV of a business)? The idea of good customer support is to build loyalty but the average computer buyer doesn't consider support important at all when buying stuff as they will just get their nearest geek to fix it for them and they don't want to pay the extra money for good support as they want it as cheap as possible. Then from a financial POV to the business, it's just an annoying expense they have to have that doesn't add anything to the bottom line (since customers don't seem to be deserting them in droves or making purchasing decisions based on customer support reputation) and so it makes sense (from a financial POV) to do it as cheaply as possible even if it is crap.

Just A Natural Consequence

[blueZhift]

The language and accent related issues are really just a natural consequence of offshoring. In the beginning most of the people working the call centers in India (for example) were probably among the best educated there. As demand grew, more call centers were opened and more people in India heard that this was a good way to make some money. Well, the proportion of well educated and talented people in India is probably no different than in the U.S., so it was inevitable that many of the people working in the call centers now are not among the best educated and most talented. Not that they're morons, just average folk. I mean really, how many of us could communicate fluently in a foreign language? I could communicate very very badly in two or three others. With a predetermined script I could do better, but that's about it. And forget about casual conversation!

While companies could try to better train their workers, I think that with respect to foreign language skills a limit is being reached. That is, even if the person in the call center understands English perfectly, they may still have an accent when speaking it that a U.S. customer will have a hard time with. I personally like accents, but Indian accented English is one of the most difficult for me to understand. I usually have to know the person for a while to fully understand what they are saying. Unfortunately, an already upset customer in the U.S. is not likely to have the patience for that.

English better for college labs, tech support

[Myrrh]

Remember back in college when you had a TA -- or worse, a prof -- who could barely speak English, trying to teach you a subject you barely understood anyway? Remember how frustrating it was to have to simultaneously learn some extremely difficult subject and learn what sounded like something halfway between English and some other language?

Well, lo and behold, computer companies are finally realizing that it's hard for people who may or may not be good at computers, to receive Tech support from someone who barely speaks English.

You'd think that fall into the realm of common sense, but then again, most universities don't care that their TA's hardly speak English, so why should computer companies care? /bitter

Re:but what are the results?

[b-lou]

Completely agree with you on both points. I've been a tech manager for over 10 years and I always tell my staff, "we support people, not computers."

Tech Support is a LOSS Leader

[da_Den_man]

I managed a Computer Store for 3 years, and developed a reputation of being able to solve problems. This brought the customers in and kept them coming back, and telling friends that also came in. My business was selling parts, so I gave information away for free. This produced great sales and great rapport with the clients. Not for any reason other than the solutions were explained, the language was without accent(other than a Southern Drawl), and the recommended solutions WORKED. It increased sales because the clients understood that any problems would be resolved Fairly.

I left that position to work for a Software Company as the Technical Support Manager. This is when Problems became " Issues " and my team of techs also had to make Sales Calls, and after a time were instructed to SELL more than Fix. Time on the phone was rated, solutions were dropped down to quick fixes to get them off the line and get to the next person. Towards the end of my tenure a 900 help line was implemented, and the company went to EMAIL or 900 calls ONLY. They never understood why Technical Support costs them money, and couldn't MAKE money. No matter how many times I tried to explain that SUPPORT should be given freely, as the clients have already PAID for the product (At least for the version they bought). Soon it broke down to releases being rushed (almost a year before they were even ready) because the stock holders wanted to cash out. The Product and the company later went under, in part due to the Internet boom ("Everything on the Net Should be FREE!!") and partially due to no support being given to ANY product without a signed and paid contract.

Technical Support taught me more about human nature than I cared to know. It also taught me that when someone BUYS something, they should be able to call the manufacturer and get support when the product fails. These days it seems that it is easier and cheaper to just replace the product (meaning spending money for a replacement) Rather than fight through the Technical Support nightmare (Language barriers DO affect SALES. ) or the non-solutions provided because the person on the other end of the phone has no clue what it is you are talking about.

When I buy a car or a major appliance, and there is a recall or a problem, I take it back to the dealer where I purchased it to get it repaired. If I have a question on how something on that vehicle or appliance I call that same dealer. They sold it, they shoudl REPRESENT it, at least if they want me to buy from them again. I consider any purchase over $100 a MAJOR purchase. I shouldn't have to go through a translator to get an issue resolved. I shouldn't be talking to Hamir in India when I bought the product downtown at Sears or Best Buy. I should and EXPECT to get the problem solved ASAP rather than say "Oh, thats just how it works, and I have to live with it".

Computers are the ONLY industry where being treated properly (sure, its because of my ignorance I am asking a QUESTION) and with respect to being a CUSTOMER is not required. It has been this way for Years and is only getting worse. Companies in the Industry don't feel they OWE the customer anything, because we have become a Nation/World of consumers. THX1138 anyone? Its turned into a "Brave New World".

Re:AOL and Indians

[NerveGas]

I don't have any problem with any person in the world providing the support. I don't care what country they're from, really. But I do expect two things from them:

1. They should be proficient in the basic responsibilities of their job.
2. They should be understandable.

Unfortunately, finding a support rep that meets even one of those qualifications seems to be quite the accomplishment for most companies.

steve