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Customers Treated as Culprits in Support Calls?
ApolloX asks: "I've worked in the software industry for a number of years and I understand how volatile large computer and database systems can be. Most of the time, I'm only called in when something breaks. I know first hand that issues such as a lack of concurrency control, or just a bad database optimization, can lead to corrupted or even lost data. What I don't know is, why most customer support representatives, in the event there is a data error, will treat the customer as if they are liars or are trying to scam them. I can recall many similar support calls to other companies over the years in which the phrase 'our computer system is never wrong' was repeatedly used as justification for an issue the representative knew little about. Since when did computers become so infallible such that the customer is always wrong? Why does it take multiple escalations of support calls before anyone starts believing that maybe the computer made a mistake?"
"On a recent call to a company, let's call it Givo, my account number was accidentally wiped from the system. Throughout the process, I spoke with half a dozen representatives who claimed I had never had their service before and at each step I was 'guilty until proven innocent'. What's worse was that at some moments, even when presented with evidence of my case history in their system, representatives would disregard it because the system told them my account did not exist and had never existed."
The problem, having worked for a time as customer support for an extremely large company, is simply how many people actually DO lie. It is excessively rare (relatively speaking) that a customer, in most fields, has a problem and its not their fault. Think retail: how many people will try to trade in something they broke? Think an ISP: How many people will claim their internet service is down, when they actually screwed up their PCs? By far, far, the majority. From my experience, its pushing 10 to 1.
So unfortunately, unless you want your company to go bankrupt, you can't take what the customer say at face value: they will, and DO abuse it. But at the same time, if you screw over too many innocents, you will go out of business too... so its a matter of finding a balance, unfortunately.
Have you ever had to work as a CSR? Have you ever had to take multiple calls per hour assisting users with various computing tasks? Have you ever had to spend hours out in the field diagnosing a problem with someone's machine, only to have them point out (once you finally find the problem) that they "tried doing this or that" with the computer? I spent 8 years as a CSR at a small ISP. We had a saying around the office. "The customer is always right, and the source of 95% of the problems." While the court system may describe someone as innocent until proven guilty, it's futile to apply that to a real-world application. No matter how an application "should" work (it bears noting that "should" is a curse word in the industry), there will always be a user that finds a way to royally screw something up and then blame it on the software (or hardware) not doing what the user thinks it "should" do. Remember the old adage, "make something idiot proof and God will make a better idiot".
Customer support representatives rarely know enough about how computers work to properly answer questions like that. If they were, they'd probably be working in a position where they repair such problems instead of fielding calls. Yes, there are some that are qualified, but normally companies will just take anyone willing to answer phones for $8 an hour and train them how to answer phones. I think many people don't know that data can become corrupt, and that anyone saying the data is wrong is trying to tell them the computer is lying. Computers don't lie, so the customer must be at fault.
The second rule of business is: The customer may not always be right, but they are NEVER wrong.... so, it's a lack of training for the CS people. CS jobs, sadly, often go to people who don't actually know how to treat other people with respect (no offence intended, i've worked various CS jobs; some people just are not cut out for it). Yes, that's a generalization, but it's also indicative of how our society has progressed. You see the same disregard for people in many things.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
EVERYONE LIES.
People drop their iPods and claim that they 'died'.
People hotplug drives that aren't hotplug and RMA them to Newegg.
People push GPOs to servers, then claim "I didn't change anything" to everyone else.
Combine this with the fact that on the other hand, the customers are frequently more knowledgeable than the front line support, and you're bound to have an antagonistic relationship. How many times have you called about a PC problem, and had to wade through the "ok, lets reboot in Safe Mode" or "please click Start, then Run, then "C M D -dot - E X E".... just to fix a farking bad video card?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
HAL: It can only be attributable to human error.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
The truth of the matter is that customer service departments lose money. The only one that I've heard of that has not at some period is Apple, and that is when their (well-trained, fluent, located in Texas) reps were selling things during the calls. In the eyes of the company, the first goal of the rep isn't necessarily to help, it is simply to make you disappear without complaining too much.
Because so many customers who call up are wrong?
:) ). And another group who are clueless.
;).
That's why many companies separate the customers into groups. One group who are usually right (or pay extra to be treated that way
Even companies like Dell have an Engineer-to-Engineer support, and at that level if a customer says the CDROM drive is broken it's not because it was used as a cup-holder
Now if companies could semi-automatically sort long-term customers into separate groups that'll be good.
It'll be good for me and _them_ when I tell them that they've screwed up their routing config, and no I do not need to reboot my ADSL modem - they don't go uh "that's not in the script" and keep asking me to do pointless stuff.
The kind of people who work 1st line support aren't really able to do more than follow a script. They have neither the motivation, nor the intellect to conceptualise or actually solve problems. They make up the majority of humanity. When your problem falls outside the scope of their limited understanding, they deny it exists.
This will come across as a troll but it's unfortunately the truth about people.
Deleted
I used to work tech support for a large software company. The majority of customer's lied to me about their problem. Over and over again, I would see the same problems and such problems were known to be caused either by human error, or lack of maintenance. Of course, if users would read the damn software manual, then they would have read the chapters on maintaining the software and data. On more than one occasion, the customer would tell me that there was no info in the manual about maintenance, yet I would direct them to the first page of that chapter every time.
It was a rare treat to have someone tech savy and call with a legitimate problem. But such things were often the exception, and not the rule.
In the case where they are separate, unless there is good communication between the two groups, the help desk staff only understand a certain application from a "black box" perspective, and are only familiar with their own (and/or their immediate colleagues) way of doing things with it. This begs the old question: how much I.T. knowledge do you expect your Help Desk staff to have, and how well should they understand the application from a design perspective? The other issue is that having answered a million questions about the software, the help desk staff are likely to be skeptical of new problems they have not previously encountered.
Where you have your I.T. dev staff manning the phones, the issue becomes one of pride (as seen on numerous other discussions). I don't know if it's just this industry, but in my experience (and not excluding myself) people who work as developers don't take criticism well, constructive or otherwise. Plus once you've gone through the frustration of multiple test cycles, fixes and detailed documentation, the last thing you want to hear is that you've missed something, so again, skepticism is the first reaction.
Work smarter, not harder.
Office Space summed it up best: "I'm a PEOPLE Person! Engineers don't know how to talk to people!"
If I had the source code, there is a good chance I could have fixed it in less than 9.5 hours.
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
but first - lol, slashdot has silly adverts. I used IE to post AC so I didn't have to log out/in on firefox... If they weren't placed so inconviently (and delivered by someone who made me adblock them elsewhere), I probably wouldn't bother having blocked them)
Anyway, recently I had an issue with a piece of software. I have a test server and a release server. We'll call them T and R. Recently T was rebuilt with a fresh install of the OS and the two relevant applications. One application (the one with problems) is upgraded fairly frequently, and the other might get one update a year. So, The software was setup and installed on the test server, and was fully updated.
There was a new plugin for the frequently updated software that would add features we'd like. I installed it on test, it worked beutifully.
I got the ok from my boss and put it on production. It failed miserably. The software itself continued to work, but the plugin did not. So I call the vendor (of the constantly updated software and plugin). The vendor tries to help me a bit, but then blames the other piece of software, and refuses to help further. Fine I can deal with that (except the vendor of the other piece of software is almost impossible to get support for - they are the opposite of HugeHard, hint hint). So I give up because it's *not* that important, and enough time has been wasted on it. Except the support rep from the first company keeps calling me and asking me if it's been fixed (even when I told him to drop the issue), when I say no, he won't do anything but tell me I need to contact the vendor of the other piece of software. Very tedious and annoying, and I couldn't tell him off because I have to keep a good relation with the company...
There are lies, the normal kind, and there are lies of omission. Leaving something out is often not the fault of the user. When tech support asks what happened, they might often not actually know. Like (here comes the car analogy) taking your car to the mechanic. The mechanic asks what's wrong with it. You tell him you don't know, its making a funny noise.
Software doesn't do a lot generally to track down what is happening when a failure happens. The bug reports help, but that is only on some software. Dr Watson was an attempt. Generally things are better, but throw out one non-standard error that causes a crash and the normal user is just lost and doesn't know. To most users a car is less complex than a computer and software. They don't know what they are supposed to know when they call tech support, only that they should call.
I've had tech support people do some fscking stupid things on the few times I've had to call them. So I don't think its just the user. If tech support asks the wrong questions they will get the wrong answers and before its over the user will be blamed.
The network group where I work started blocking all IPs that are not from North America. You guessed it, they got calls because the Internet didn't work. They could have avoided that by redirecting such http requests to a notice page, but no, they didn't. How is an average user to deal with that?
I think its about half and half regarding culpability wrt stupidity or lies.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I think it depends largely upon how you approach the situation. If you SOUND like you are trying to scam them, they are going to assume you are.
If you say 'Givo, my box doesn't work. Why?' and they say you need an account and THEN you say 'I have an account. No really. Look it up. No I don't have the account number, or a billing stub, or...' They're going to mark you as 'scammer.'
If you call up with all that info in hand, and demand to know why your box stopped working, and that you can prove you paid your bill, it's a different story.
First-level tech support DOES NOT CARE if you are trying to scam them. They are only trying to make sure the boss doesn't yell at them. They aren't reponsible for actually sending out the parts, so as long as you sound like you are on the up-and-up, you'll be fine. These people are paid just over minimum wage for work that is actually way over their heads, and they are just trying to get through each call for 8 hours.
Second-level (or third, depending on how tiered the system is at that company) is the one where you may have to show proof to continue.
If you've got the receipt for Givo service in your hand, and can rattle off the account number, they're going to take you seriously. If you just keep saying 'I'm Rick James, bitch! Look it up!' then you'll get nowhere.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Spoken like someone who has never worked in tech support. Most of the time, the customer did do something to screw up the software, and most customers show no qualms about lying to you to try to make it your fault.
(I stopped working in tech support when I realized I hated most of my customers. And the software I supported was high-end enough and buggy enough that the problem should have been our fault fare more often than it was.)
I setup a new mail server on an IP address that isn't listed in ANY blacklist I've found on the Internet. However, it did appear in a few ISP local black lists. I've been trying to get off some of these lists for over 2 weeks.
Watch the gory details at:
http://www.HandyNerds.com/blacklist.html
Oh, and if you can point me to the CIA Domain Blacklist as one tech support guy referred to, I would appreciate it.
Its a rule I follow when dealing with customer service people.
Technical problems, services, banking, whatever it doesn't matter.
I don't want people to say no. I want them to fix me problem and give me what I want.
But I also realise some customer service people, especially those on the front line do not have the authority to say "yes". It is their job to say "no".
So as soon as they refuse something I insist on being esclated, either to the next level of support up or to their supervisor/manager. I'm not rude about it, but I am persistant. I also make sure that I have the persons name at the start of the conversation (full name, and if they won't give it I make a note of that), and inform them if they don't escalate me I will be mentioning that when I do get through to higher up.
Obviously when you get to the top there is only small claims court (in the uk) left as an option but thats a very simple and painless process that doesn't even involve legal costs (between 10 and 100 in court costs is all and the losing party pays)
Its an effective method, admittedly I am generally right when I call up about things, have done my research and made sure I know as much as possible where I stand. But I'm also reasonably enough to accept the possibility that I could be wrong and given suitable proof of that will accept it - but it has to be well proven to me, not just assumed I am wrong and that I have to prove my case.
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
Generally when I am called to solve a problem, my first stance is to trust nothing and no one, they may not be intentionally lying but they, along with the hardware, cannot be trusted to be giving accurate reports.
There are many reasons for this, a lot of the time it's a case of, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing - they are making assumptions and you should not be mirroring, that can seem confrontational.
Other times they believe their job might be at risk, I wouldn't want to tell my boss that I'd corrupted the payroll, a little white lie to save your ass seems harmless but now that poor PFY is sweating because he's unable to meet his call quota.
When you've been burnt enough times, you tend to check everything twice inspite of other evidence.
Even after this, there is not excuse for poor manors.
No trees were harmed in the posting of this message. However, a great number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.
I knew that their customer support sucked when they put me on hold and I got a Sex Pistols tune:-
"Lie lie lie lie liar you lie lie lie lie lie
Tell me why tell me why why d'you have to lie
Should've realised that you should've
Told the truth should've realised you know what
I'll do
You're in suspension...
You're a liar!"
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
People will have something break, try to fix it themselves, then call for help, then lie about what they did.
People will do really stupid things then lie about it.
People will do things that obviously void their warranty and then lie about it.
"It was broken before I opened it, so why won't you fix it under the warranty?"
"My baby likes to play with my cell phone, so I let her play with it. It stopped working after she put it in her mouth. You mean that isn't covered under the warranty?!? My husband is a doctor and we are going to sue you!"
"You mean the salesman lied to me? I am going to sue your company. What do you mean I can't sue your company, he was your salesman! What to you mean he doesn't work for your company, he sold me your product!"
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
When I was in the support trenches, I always informed my users that the first two probabilities we needed to eliminate in solving their problem were user error and mis-reporting of the actual problem. I always made sure that my users understood that my sole interest lay in resolving their issue in the quickest possible way, and that 90% of the time, these first two concerns represented the quickest possible resolution. It's never anything personal against the user, if you're a professional, and techs who would mindlessly pursue such a mindset have no business in direct personal support.
In short, in telephone support, it's called "call control". You need to establish enough of a rapport with the user to ensure that they're working with you, not against you, in the resolution of THEIR problem, and that it's in BOTH your interests to solve that problem as expeditiously as possible.
I was hanging out on a playstation-related forum. There was a thread there discussing the importance of getting an extended warranty on your PS3, so that when a new and improved model comes out, you can take the old one into the shop, claim it doesn't work, and demand a replacement.
Many participants planned to do this. The couple of people who suggested it might be unethical were laughed at.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I was the alpha geek on the Help Desk for a multi-state corporation.
Many of the callers seemed to have a guilty conscience: they would say things like "Is it something I did wrong?"
My standard answer: "This probably wasn't your fault, but I'm looking for a way to blame you."
I agree 100% that most customer support calls are because of something stupid the customer did, but customer support reps often seem to forget that they are literally there to support the customer. If I have my techie friend fix my computer for free, he can condescend and make me feel stupid all he wants. That sort of attitude is not appropriate in a business relationship. If I'm paying for electronics, software, and in some cases the customer suppport itself, the person on the phone could have the courtesy to at least *pretend* they don't think I'm a drooling moron. There's no reason to use the tone of voice you'd use when speaking to a developmentally challenged toddler. Even if I'm displaying the intelligence of one. I've never really believed that "the customer is always right." But I do think that though we all know the customer is probably wrong, the customer should still feel like you do accept that platitude.
It's not really fair to beat up on tech support, though, as I find all the various customer service industries are getting more and more rude. It seems like everyone is forgetting that it's your privilege that I'm your paying customer, not the other way around. Once upon a time people tried to earn your business, and people who had to interact with the public/customers were trained with some sucecss to be polite and friendly. It's OK if it's insincere, if it's just an act for my benefit. You don't have to mean it when you tell me to have an nice day, but it's unprofessional not to say it.
Particularly the clueless-ISP-type ones:
Me: The proxy server with IP address [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] in your cluster is broken. It returns the Microsoft IIS page to everything that connects.
Them: OK, go to start, settings, control panel...
Me: I'm running Linux and I'm trying to hit Google. There are no Microsoft boxes of any description involved except for yours.
Them: We don't support Linux
Me: I'm not asking you to support Linux, I'm asking you to support your own proxy.
Them: Well, we still don't support...
Me: Tell you what. Can you set a specific proxy on your PC?
Them: Yes.
Me: Right, then set it to [IP ADDRESS]. Then try hitting Google.
Them: OK...(obviously thinking "anything for a quiet life") oh. Can you hold the line please?
Lather, rinse and repeat about once or twice a week for a year.
It took about 6-8 months before they even started to treat such reports seriously. I wouldn't have minded that bit except that it was a small company, they only had two people doing first line support and both soon got to know who I was.
I don't care how often it's the case that the customer's wrong, after a year of conversations like that I basically gave up contacting tech support unless I can be certain that the person on the other end will have half a brain.
The reason this may be, is because people are idiots. I've had to make a few tech support calls before, and once I tell them I already punched in my IP address in the browser and my routers firewall page says the service is down, they start treating me a bit better. It's because people will call to tell their internet is down, and its because at one point they turned the router off, or unplugged it, or something stupid. It's not always a mean CSR, but sometimes just people that don't know what they are doing.
A real experience I had helping one of my friends:
Me: "Alright, first open up your web browser."
Him: "...web browser?"
Secondly, this would likely anger the customer even more than trying to blame them. "We believe you may have done x, y, and z wrong" (when the customer doesn't even understand the technical issues behind x, y, and z) is a LOT more effective than "We screwed you." In the first instance, the customer starts thinking to themselves "Well, maybe is WAS my fault." With the second response, he starts screaming at the rep and threatening legal action.
It's a lot cheaper to have one customer suspicious of you (and reluctant to use you again) than to be besieged by lawyers or having to pay for serious damages done.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You sound like a charming person to work with.
So,basically, what you are saying is "People lie, people are stupid, and people think we are stupid."
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
All too true. Our entire company (Australian) was unable to support our largest customer (in the UK) due to faulty ISP routing (basically we were getting modem-equivalent connection speeds to the UK).
:P
After 3 days of being ignored entirely, and a direct call from our CEO, finally an escalation got the problem resolved.
We were actually told to next time inform them we were a corporate customer and things would proceed a lot quicker. Basically official policy for customer service is, if you're a corporate customer you won't get treated like trash. All other customers are complete dirtbags and will be treated accordingly.
Computer's don't make mistakes (with the exception of the f00f bug et. al of course... ).
People do.
The computer did not make the mistake. Either the person using it did, or the person who wrote the software for it did. The computer itself did not make a mistake, it just did what it was told.
First, and obvious, one: It costs money if you, the customer, are right. You're doing something that certainly won't get them a dime but might cost a fortune. Any chance to blame you and avoid the cost will be taken. Call center agents who do approve too many returns, refunds or even only repairs will not last for long.
Second, and less obvious (unless you worked in the field), people lie. People lie a lot. A damn lot. For pretty much the same reason, they want to avoid the cost of a new system. So they won't take responsibility for their stupidity and tell you they did "nothing" with a smile when they dump their coffee-filled laptop on your counter or when they drop that obviously exploded CPU (due to overheating after overclocking) on your desk. I've had people who tried to painstakingly remove that heat paste from their CPU and claim it was never even used in a system before.
I don't want to apologize the practice of trying to shift the blame on the customer. I've been in the customer's seat myself a few times, with legitimate claims and I went through the hassle as well. My experience is that you should choose your dealer carefully. I now found one that doesn't ask too many questions, and with whom I'm on "fair vs. fair" conditions by now. He trusts me to only return hardware that was faulty, I don't lie to him. It works.
And given the amount of faulty hardware we're dealing with today, where you can almost assume that every 5th piece of hardware you buy is DOA, I personally think I get further with this strategy. I don't break that much hardware to offset it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When in doubt, tell the callers to move the trash can.
The local cable company where I live is a great example of this. If you call as a residential customer with a problem, you wait on hold for several minutes, and then it's: reboot your PC, reboot your modem, "we don't support routers", check your network settings... Even if you tell them the "Sync" light is off indicating there is no upstream link. They seem to have a culture of assuming their network is infallible and the problem is always the customer (and Ok, it's residential ISP support - I can understand most problems probably ARE the customer, but they also have to realize that some of their customers are, for example, programmers and network technicians who, strangely enough, have internet at home).
Calling as a corporate customer, every time I've called they answer immediately (there's a different number for business vs residential). All I have to say is eg, "the sync light is off, I have no connectivity", they go on hold for a minute and come back saying "ok, there's an outage in your area, technicians are working on it now, they expect it to be repaired in an hour". The fact that our office router is a linux system doesn't bother them at all. I imagine if I were to tell them that as a residential customer, they would simply say "oh, it must be linux then, try installing windows" or something like that (it's the easy way out).
(Note, I don't use this company at home, I use another local reseller - same service, but their tech people are much nicer to deal with)
Speak before you think
One of my favorite calls was when I was the junior network admin at a largish (40k customers) ISP. The phone techs would ask my advice if they were stumped. Our techs were all trained to reason through things instead of using a set script. It worked pretty well for the techs who actually stayed after the training.
So this call comes in, and this lady says our "software" is causing her screen to go solid yellow every time she dials the modem. Fair enough, the tech decides, we'll have her uninstall and reinstall the acceleration software. She isn't using acceleration software. So it's not _our_ software, at least. So he talks her through removing the modem from the Windows device manager and reinstalling the driver. Same problem.
So, the customer is quite upset, understandably. The tech is frustrated because he really doesn't want to suggest reinstalling Windows, which the customer assures us her husband just did last week. So he comes to me, and asks. We talk for a minute or two, and I deduce that if it's not software, it must be hardware. The tech can't understand how dialing the modem makes the screen go yellow, and under normal circumstances I wouldn't either. I'm just never quick to just assume the hardware is operating under normal circumstances or is fully operational in the first place.
So, he tells the customer it's a coincidence that it happens with our service, because it seems to be a problem with her hardware. She's slow to accept that her computer just suddenly stopped working (isn't that how they usually stop, suddenly?). So the tech comes back and asks what, specifically, would cause the screen to go screwy when the modem is dialed. So I suggest that either the motherboard is mis-routing signals on the bus or there's a circuit in the machine that shouldn't be there -- some loose screw, some bit of bracket that's shorting something, or something similar. I suggest to the tech that he suggest to her to just have her computer cleaned and checked.
Ten minutes later, the customer calls back and thanks the technician for the wonderful support. She had unplugged the system, popped the cover, and removed the Big Ball of Dust that was connecting the PCB of her modem to the PCB of her video adapter. With the cover back on and power restored, she could get online and still see what she was doing.
Probably not, even though you managed to get Givo out of it some how... If you had, you'd realize (please pretend the rest is at all caps, the filter doesn't like it) he had the number, their database had lost it however. He even provided proof of other, prior accessions and transactions that they could verify.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
unless you own controlling or at least sizeable percentage amounts of stock in it.
I think the largest problem we have here is people making their employers' perceived
problems their own. If your job does not entail managing fraud then don't. If your
employer asks you to investigate fraud then do. Chances are your employer wont
even care and will only tack additional duties onto your workload while paying you
the same or less.
... I started my webcomic.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
By far the most pleasant customers are those who will read/listen to what you're saying, and will give you accurate information back. Their problem also gets resolved -much- faster.
I know a lot of you out there are going to be "but we often know better than the CSR anyway", but if that is the case, then wtf are you doing calling the support line? You obviously need help, so -let- them help you in the way that they know will be best. Yes, they'll walk you through a stupid flowchart on their screen - but those flowcharts are typically well-made to determine exact causes and exact solutions.
Too often when I get a call there'll be somebody saying "it doesn't work", and we spend 3 minutes just to find out -what- doesn't work, -when- it doesn't work, and -how- it doesn't work. Then when you get them a (possible) solution X, they're quiet for a while, get back to you and say "Hey, I tried Y and it didn't work", and we have to go figure out if them changing Y f'ed things up even more so that we have to undo Y before getting back to X.
The longest support call I've had was 3 hours, and was from exactly such a user, and I'm sure they were thinking "why the hell did that take so long? they suck!" but they never mentioned. Another user with the same problem just 2 weeks before who was one of the aforementioned was back up and running in 4 minutes.
Now of course we don't pre-judge our users, but it usually takes only a minute to figure out where they lay.. the 3 hour, the 2 minute, or somewhere inbetween variety, and will take appropriate action when determined. I.e. get some extra coffee and an aspirin for the 3 hour ones.
When you sign on to your ISP's service there should be a question, "how much do you know about computers/networking?" and if the customer answers "a little bit" then they get automatically escalated to second line tech support in the future. :)
Yeah, I got much better service with Verizon DSL since I switched to a business account.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
First, most/many customers don't necessarily lie as much as simply being ignorant of what may be going on. My mother, for example, wouldn't be able to tell you anything more than "when I click on this web page, it doesn't do what it used to do". It's the responsibility of the CSR to ask questions to lead the customer to the point of describing what's going on so that some clue might pop out to identify the problem.
Second, customer *do* lie... particularly when they're embarassed about either what they did to cause the problem or embarassed for not knowing what the problem actually is and having to call someone else to help fix it.
Third, you get some customers who are convinced they are right (they are "experts" in the field already) and their description of the problem will be influenced by their 'conclusion'.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I would suggest reading some of the posts by Patrick McKenzie on his blog. He has some great ideas on how to handle customer support and why you should treat your customers with the upmost respect.
One good post is this one in response to a rant from Ryan Carson @ Dropsend.
Patrick runs a small ISV selling bingo card software, so he has some experience dealing with non-technical customers. Definately worth subscribing to his RSS feed.
ÕÕ
except for the "customers always lie" part. many will claim to be masters because they can manage both outlook and ie (using them should be clue enough that they're not). to some "a little bit" is knowing where the power button is but not that the "pointing thingy" is a mouse.
What do the good know...except what the bad teach them in their excesses? - Clive Barker
"Since when did computers become so infallible such that the customer is always wrong? " :) )
Since companies (ALL, including yours and mine) advertise that they have the solutions to people's problems (for less money than you would think!). If the truth about programming bugs and incomplete features, operating system bugs, hardware bugs and network bugs was brought into the full light of day almost no one would buy a product (for the money asked). How many licenses, in the small type, admit that the product is not warranted to be fit for any use? Most. All advertising is a lie and people have been manipulated by that advertising to the point of believing it. (Yes I have examples, as you do, but this post is already too long
I feel for CSRs. They get to listen to people after the bad music, company ads, and all the other drivel. By that time, I'm already right round the bend. And I start out irritated because I wouldn't be calling if there was no problem. I can't even tune the drivel out. I hear a voice break into the bad music, I think "Ah!" and then it's some perky twit saying, "Visit our website at jelloforbrains.com! There's a big support section! It answers your questions! See new features! Order new products! Jelloforbrains.com!"
Apparently, it never occurs to the jelloheads who put these things together that you've just come off an extremely frustrating couple of hours on a badly designed website.
By the time the poor first-line CSR gets someone like me, I'm loaded for bear and ready to kill. I try to be polite. Honest, I do. At the other end, it probably feels like a merry-go-round on a minefield.
So here's an idea for corporations: STOP WASTING MY TIME. If you have to put me on hold, just send out a slow, pleasant, monotone beep every ten seconds or so to let me know the connection is working. No music, no ads, no drivel. Let me get on with my life till the rep shows up.
If there's some useful information you can put at the beginning, by all means do it before the slow beep starts. But remember, I'm talking about useful to *me*, not you. For instance, the "real" support requests probably center around real faults in the product, and (hopefully!) that's a limited list. The top three real issues could be enumerated, possibly with extensions to go to a pool of CSRs used to dealing with that issue.
I know. Users are idiots and the system will never work. People will just push buttons. Sure, I've done it on occasion myself in fits of berserk fury. The reason it happens is because the goddamn choices are goddamn useless. Psych 101 will tell you that people tend to behave according to other people's expectations of them. So, just maybe, if companies stopped treating users like idiots, at least some of them would stop behaving that way. If it worked on only 25%, that would still save a lot of money.
My personal experience suggests that 50% of whatever customers say is bull, and the other half is shit.
They only ever ring up for telephone support when they have actually broken something (admittedly not hard if they're running Windows); and when you ask them to do something, they outright lie to you that they have when they haven't. Best thing I ever did was advise a customer (who was having trouble with something simple -- like doing what they were told and typing their name, NOT their e-mail address, their NAME, into the box labelled "name") to pack their PC up in the original box, take it back to the store and get a refund because they were too bloody stupid to work a computer. If they were paying as much attention to that as they were to the rest of the call, though, they probably stuck the damn thing in a suitcase and took it to the railway station.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Then why is there a multi-billion dollar a year industry to repair comptuers?
Sorry, but you don't get to have my full name -- make a note of that. The only possible reason you'd need my full name is if you wanted to look me up in the phone book and harass me (or worse) outside of work. To reach me at work, you only need my first name, and either an ID number or extension number. There's too many creepy stalker types and vengeful insane types out there.
And yes, I've experienced this first-hand. I got passed an already-irate customer (in person, not even on the phone) making demands that we just couldn't meet. Am I going to give an angry, ranting, irate man all the information he needs to find me outside of work? No. He got my first name, and nothing else. Being the only person in the store by that name, it's all he needed.
You shouldn't expect last names, in fact, more companies should have policies that strictly prohibit giving out last names. Many companies insist on the use of fake names, which is not only better for security, but it can be used to eliminate the problem of having three people named "Jeff" on the phones. Frankly, I think it's rude of you to demand it.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
When I was just out of college, I did tech support for a local ISP for about two years. I managed to net a promotion or raise every other month by not succumbing to the tendencies you're describing. It's a lot harder to not to that than it sounds.
The problem comes earlier than that. 95% of the people who call in are on the war-path. It wasn't really so bad for me, because the ISP only had about ten thousand customers, meaning we had a few dozen regular callers and a few hundred occasional callers. It wasn't long until the problem users (and there are a suprising lot of them) were all being shipped straight to me, presumably because I have a deep voice, careful use of the language, I'm polite on the job and I'll put up with a lot of crap on the job.
I'm not going to say we had the cup-holder CD guy, but there's a lot of that kind of stuff to go around. The problem is, it's not funny, good natured or any of that. It's really sometimes quite bitter and acrimonious. I'll give you the example of Dave, who called in just after he moved; he wasn't able to dial in, and he was "certain it was [the ISP]'s low quality hardware tripping him up again." The problem was that he had forgotten to put a phone cable in place between the computer and the new wall.
Thing is, he had a teenage son, and that son would go screwing with his settings on a weekly basis. It wasn't long before he was asking for me by name to just go through the settings and roll them back one by one. He'd get furious if I didn't help with non-ISP stuff, and any suggestion that he just discipline the child or lock the machine down got met with a tantrum about how he paid his twenty dollars a month and that meant we had to come change the oil in his car if he wanted us to and rah rah rah.
They aren't treating you as a culprit. It's just that the chances you're going to be tolerable are miniscule, and it's almost certain that the person they just talked to completely screwed them off.
It's one of the paradoxes inherent in reliable systems: the more reliable your system, the fewer of your tech support calls will be from reasonable people who didn't cause their own problems. The more reliable the system, the lower the likelihood you're not a moron, and the higher the likelihood you're a jerk.
Given that Tivo's internal system is likely to be exceedingly simple, it seems to me quite likely that the rate of defects in their system is so low and the rate of assholes on the telephone so high that nearly everyone you talked to really has never seen a fault in the system, nor has met anyone else at work who has. They probably really believe what they're saying.
Going on the stuff I put up with at work ten years ago, I figure there's a good chance that the employee thought you had just misremembered the data you were trying to get them to look up by. About eleven times in ten, that's what's going on, and humoring the customer means they'll keep flogging the mistake, instead of trying to figure it out.
Not to mention these people are adults making nine bucks an hour without benefits, dealing with angry people on the phone all day. Wouldn't you assume the worst, if that was your life?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Since when did computers become so infallible such that the customer is always wrong? Why does it take multiple escalations of support calls before anyone starts believing that maybe the computer made a mistake?" Since a large number of customers that call in ARE lying and trying to scam free stuff? And I've done tech support for 7 years... I'm not just blindly guessing. I've heard customers pull just about everything.
Planet Zebeth - Metroid with a twist
The CSR's and managers that deal with the calls have been trained that the system is infallible.
They've also been trained not to waste time on calls that the data doesn't support.
If you want to blame someone, blame the corporate mindset and those that only look for that stock price to go up by doing things that will only drive the stock price down.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
I once had to call my ISP's "support" line for an issue at their end that had persisted over a couple of days. I'd gone through all the checks and knew, for certain, that it was their fault. But I still had to go through the script. All billed at premium rate, of course. (Did I mention that my ISP was also my cellphone operator?) I had to demand a supervisor before I got any sense out of them - and the supervisor confirmed within two minutes that the problem was at their end.
When service was restored, I wrote a filthy email to their Customer Services department, demanding an apology for the worthless "support" along with a full refund. I also asked for an explanation of how they could justify billing me £1.50 a minute to tell them that *they* had a problem, and why a free call to Customer Services couldn't have got a message passed across.
A week or so later, they called me back, to tell me that they were refunding the cost of the call and try to explain. This took about as long as the original call - and that week was the one week I was abroad, so they got as much out of me in roaming charges as they refunded.
Now who's the culprit?
I'll accept "I'm John and I'm the only John in the office", or "I'm John and my extension is xxxx" quite happily. In fact I did the exact same when I worked in sales they are free to have my first name, (and it was rather obvious since I wore a name badge saying so), and since I was the only male staff member in the store it wasn't going to be hard to identify me.
What I want is a way to be able to uniquely identify that person within the company that I have contacted, having a company policy of not giving out last names or real names is fine by me.
As long as I can have a name that can be linked back to you if I need to speak to your manager or bring up comments you have said or promises you made that I may later rely on in a court case. I'd be very happy if more customer service centers offered their staff ID numbers to give out for the exact same reasons as you listed - also preferably not their employee number since that has potential identity fraud problems.
The only exception I make on this is managers - those I do expect to give out full names, it comes with the responsibility of the job. I've also never had a problem in getting a managers full name so this is obviously something they understand.
Not giving me such a unique identifier is extremely bad customer service. I make a record of all conversations with customer service - not a recording (though occasionally I will, but only after informing the other party, not getting their permssion, legally I don't need that I just have to inform them) but a record using good old fashioned pen and paper, time, date, name and what they said - it comes in very very useful if things go wrong.
One case where someone (working for a major bank and credit card company) refused to give me a full name or an extention, they asked what I wanted it for, I told them so I could write it down for the record. At that point they hung up. Probably a stupid thing to do as when 30 minutes later I did get to someone on management level it put the manager on the deffensive having to apologise for the behaviour of a member of staff and they assured me that staff member would be disciplined - not something I wanted, I merely wanted my problem sorted out, the staff member in question dug their own grave.
I don't get angry with staff on the phone, they are just doing their job, thats why when they say no I go up a level, when they stop putting things higher up without solving my problem (or convincing me that I am incorrect) I will ask them if this is their final response, if so I'll ask them to put it in writing and inform them my next step will be the courts. I'll admit half the places take this as a bluff, half of them become more cooperative, or make "gestures of goodwill". After the court papers are served almost everywhere will back down. Those few I've had to take to court have been won easily.
Being agressive with customer service will not help you, if anything it will just put them on the defensive - there are far more effective ways of dealing with people than shouting, either in person or on the phone, ideally you want to put them in a position where helping you the way you want to be helped is the easiest option for them.
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
A monotone beep would really piss me off. Just make sure it's not quite elevator music, and don't EVER interrupt the hold music with a voice unless it's a real human being. Only exception would be if something actually changed at that very moment.
...No, it doesn't look like I have the rights needed to do that.
Actually, we could both be happy:
"You are now on hold. At any time while on hold you can choose from the following options:
Press 1 to listen to some music.
Press 2 to turn off all sound.
Press 3 to hear our top ten common issues and troubleshooting tips.
Press 9 to repeat this menu."
If you wanted to make sure the line was still working, you could press 2 to disable sound, then press 9 every now and then to listen to the menu again.
Oh, and by the way: Once I do make it through to their support, I usually manage to get someone reasonably intelligent to talk to, or at least get it down to simple, boolean questions that any idiot can answer. For example:
Me: I just switched over from a Linksys router to a Linux box, and I can't get a DHCP address. I did release it from the Linksys router, and all the lights are still on. Can you reset our DHCP lease at your end? (Had this problem with this ISP before.)
Tech: What's wrong?
Me: (simplifying) Well, I'm not connecting, and I've checked, and it's because I can't get anything from DHCP.
Tech: Have you set it to autoconnect?
Me: Yeah, that's what DHCP means. (You'd think that my knowing the letters DHCP would have helped her guess that much.)
Tech: Have you done start->run->ipconfig... (I see this as where she starts to respect that I know what I'm doing.)
Me: No, it's a Linux box. Got no Start, got no Run, but I've tried the Linux equivalent (ifdown/ifup)... We can run through your script if it makes you feel better, but it would be faster if you can just reset it on your end.
Tech:
Me: Alright, thanks.
Now, I should have gotten her name and supervisor, and told them about this call, because that's actually one of the FASTEST calls I've ever been on.
Oh well, may as well give it another try... I pop the linksys box back in, tell it to release _again_, and this time, it works.
Actually, Sharp support has been the only place I've had to do really stupid things like reinstall Windows on a laptop just to prove that my random hard drive issues were not because of Linux. Can't really blame them for that, but damn, it was annoying. Can't these people ship livecds to check your hardware?
But I think this should really be the model for level 1 tech support faced with someone who knows what they're doing at the other end.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I can't make it any clearer than that.
I recently had someone out in the field claim their LCD panel was broken. "It fell out of my bag onto the sidewalk. There are weird lines and the colors are all messed up. I can't read anything." "Do you have a camera phone?" (I wanted confirmation.) "No." So I had him hook up to an external monitor in a client's office and copy vital data to a thumb drive. He said that worked perfectly and he had no trouble. This confirmed the diagnosis of a broken screen.
I busted my ass getting him a replacement (coordinating so it would be waiting at his hotel when he arrived). His "broken" laptop arrived on my desk the next morning. I turned it on. It wasn't broken. Not a scratch. It was stuck in 640x480x16 color mode. Ugly, yes. Colors messed up, yes. Unreadable? Not even close. Funny lines everywhere. No.
How it got stuck in that particular display mode is anyone's guess. It was stuck because of a software conflict. Had he described the symptoms accurately, I would have told him how to change the resolution and color depth. That would have caused a blue-screen. Had we gotten that far, I would have determined the cause (quick search turned up the solution in minutes) and had him up and running pretty quick.
But he lied. He gave a textbook description of a cracked panel. There's no point in troubleshooting that in the field. Get your data off and wait for the replacement which should be coming directly. I wasted over an hour of my time prepping an exact replacement for him plus the cost of overnight delivery (both ways).
Can you guess why he lied? He wanted a better computer and thought that he would get an upgraded machine when I replaced his "broken" laptop.
Want better support?
Pay an extra $5 a month for your service.
Pay CSRs better to retain them for longer so that they become more and more skilled.
Call centers have massive turnover rates because frankly, the job kind of sucks. Bizarre shifts, sometimes extremely long shifts, and crap pay, depending on where you work. Customer service is something everyone complains about. A little more respect for reps would help a lot. Make it into a worthy career, and maybe people will stick around. Provide break time and ample vacation. Provide benefits. Encourage people to stay in the position for several years and become skilled at whatever it is they are supporting, rather than using the job as a stepping stone to other things. One skilled, experienced rep is probably better than 3 or 4 clueless new hires. In time, these reps should become coaches to new hires. People with generic management skills are *not*, simply by nature of having managed people, qualified to be a team leader in a call center. Handling even the most technical of technical support calls can be 50% psychology. It's not necessarily even that your problem is fixed, but that you leave happy and maintain your service.
But if you want bargain basement prices, that's where they're going to cut corners. It is where they have always cut corners. They're not going to cut the salaries and benefits of the executive officers in the company to save cash; that's for sure.
Don't take your frustration out on the reps. They've been dealing with upset, and sometimes childishly rude customers all day. As reps are bottom on the corporate totem pole, they have little influence over anything. Perhaps they are lucky and have a progressive management that listens to them. Probably not. They are probably underpaid or outright exploited contractors whose performance is based on metrics that have little to do with how happy you actually are, except to the extent that you affect the bottom line in some significant way.
If you get poor service, complain to the top. If a CSR is downright rude, mention them by name. They need to be disciplined or terminated. If you're ticked off about the service, spare the CSR, because it will be easier to fire the CSR than make systemic changes to the way the call center is managed (which may include things like training.)
I assume the Slashdot crowd here uses online "self servicing" before calling. Know that many people don't. Know that many people choose to engage in a 45 minute call (including hold time and navigating VRUs) rather than take 5 minutes to do a search on the website. The hold times you are experiencing may be a result of customers like this (and obviously, yes, if you're talking about an ISP, some people can't get online to use self-servicing, but you'd be surprised how many people are simply lazy).
10% of customers are simply unprofitable due to the havoc they wreak on their own computers, and the number of times they call technical support. Many customers will attempt to disguise problems they themselves caused, as a problem with the service whose tech support line they are calling. For example, a customer downloads malware which screws their system up. They will call and say that "your software" did this to their system and you damn well better help. Or it's Microsoft's problem, or some other piece of software they insist on running is interfering with your product.
Customers expect reps to be experts on every piece of software, OS, and possible configuration. I've seen people call reps "morons" because they don't know how to support FreeBSD or obscure desktop-altering applications on their $7.50 an hour salaries.
Sometimes CSRs are bastards because they've been dealing with childish jerks all day. Some CSRs are incompetent, or ill-tempered and don't belong on a company's front lines, but this is probably the exception rather than the rule. There are many reasons for bad customer service, but most of it has to do with shortcuts take
I currently work as a CSR for a multinational consumer electronics company. As far as this job category goes, we're pretty cozy. All full-time employees get benefits and I definitely make more than $9.00/hr.
We're traditionally known for having good service by customers. In fact, people downright love us (though some people will never be happy no matter what). The thing is, most of the time (especially with the portables), when it stops working, it's something they did. We ask as many questions as we can in a non-accusing tone and if at the end of that, they haven't straight-up admitted what they did to it or there isn't a specific, obvious problem that can be explained only by physical damage, we take their word for it. (by the way, we don't have a script so much as an information database)
For obvious physical damage issues (why is my screen all black and inky?) if it's within the warranty period they get an automatic discount. If they yell about it we negotiate, if they still yell about any price at all we go "Ok look, this is what happened, this is why it's not covered but we're going to make an exception for you. Next time this happens, we charge you." In this case the customer feels they've "won" but honestly it costs us way less money to fix their system at a further discount or for free than it does to lose them as a customer. They're happy, we're happy. Let's all hug.
We're trained to be able to make those judgment calls. I will admit that not all companies are so forward thinking. I've had my own share of customer support hell but the company I work for does it right.
It is easy to get riled up and want to reach out and punch someone if they're yelling at you for something they clearly did but you kind of have to "zen" that out and ignore it. Them's the breaks.
I got a fever...and the only cure is more cowbell!
You do realize that you are the reason that tech support is so useless these days right? "make a mistake and I will see you in court!". That is bullshit. If I had to deal with you when I was a supervisor of an ISP support team, my immediate reaction would be to terminate your service and refund you that month's bill. You are not worth it.
Monkey See, Monkey Do.
This principle also works in reverse.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Thank you for calling slashdot, please wait for the next available representative *insert hold music*
(The following message is general and not targeted directly at the source or any responses, and is intended to give an "inside" view of why customers are treated the way they are.)
Hello sir,
Thank you for contacting slashdot about why you are wrong.
You sir are why CSR's hate customers, because you're the selfrightous asshat demanding entitlement who thinks he's better than everyone else.
The golden rule of calling customer support is BE NICE (otherwise you will get the "customer is always wrong/stupid" treatment)
You are the same as everyone else, you do not get special treatment, asking for it only frustrates the person on the phone and this is WHY internet based companies outsource the Tier I support. Nobody wants to talk to you because you are just going WANT WANT WANT. Fortunately the indians are as good(or bad) as robots and when you ask them something they don't have on their flow chart or response list they don't know what to do and you leave even more pissed off.
Try this instead, you might actually get your problem solved and nobody willing to waste your time:
a) Call
b) Explain your problem, all the steps you have done, let THEM escalate you when they do not know what else to try, but DO NOT get off the phone untill your problem is resolved. There are MANY reps who are just there to make money, and they do so by getting you off the phone faster, it doesn't matter if you call back and get someone else, you are out of their metrics.
c) When speaking to someone above the first rep, DO NOT EVER ask for someone above them. Once again, let them escalate you, but do not get off the phone, unlike the tier I rep, the Teir II rep is usually not held to metrics so much as resolution. Some call centers that are outsourced only have Tier I and Tier II, because their supervisors manage the call center and DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING about the client's policies. If you are told there is nobody to escalate to, hang up, write a letter or an email or even ask to be called back by someone who works for the company (which is not going to happen, usually you will get get a Tier II rep again,) Just because you demand it does not magically make it exist.
Finally. When you get a callback, never ask for their supervisor, if you aren't already speaking to one, you have just shot yourself. If you get a courtesy call "how was your experience with our customer service" this is where you nail the rep to the wall if they were rude or treated you like rubbish.
In other lines of thought
- IF you email the company, NEVER ask for a supervisor or manager, ask to pass on a word to them, but don't ask for one, you will not get someone. Unlike a phone queue, where there is money being burned for every second you are on the call, emails just get sent to who can best solve the problem immediately, so there is no escalation. When given the option, try email first. A phone rep may be able to view a live chat or email record, but talking to a phone rep first and then talking to an email/live chat rep will never be able to know what exactly what happened on the call so you would be starting over short of whatever notes are left.
- Always respond twice to an email. The first email will always be system generated, and the second email will usually be a form "best-fit" response. Once you get the form mail, EVEN IF YOU THINK IT WAS WRITTEN BY A HUMAN (tip, humans are less empathetic and make spelling errors) Always make sure you get your question answered. This is not an invitation to keep asking the same question untill someone gives you the answer you want to read, but rather, because the "form" reply is a best fit, it usually only answers one question, so if you had two questions make sure both are answered.
Oh and READ dammit.
Many people do in fact read only the first paragraph, when in fact even if the question was answered, they will ask again because the form reply
story 1: ;-p. The system continued to crash a couple times a week for about a year (I had a 4 year extended warranty) and got worse over time. It finally got to the point where it crashed constantly..I called Dell tech support. After they figured out who I was and what system I had, I told them what was happening and that it was CPU failure that was causing it..I am a CS grad and IT specialist who does all sorts of hardware and software support for a living. After testing just about every other component in the system and not getting anywhere, they had me backup stuff to CD-R (DVD-R was not affordable 7 years ago), wipe the system and re-install win98. The system would freeze while booting off the CD. I called back, they ran a pile more tests taking a few more hours and finally after all that, sent out a tech (I had onsite support as well) who did a 2 minute CPU replacement. The system now never crashes...ever. I was right the whole time...they made me go through tons of grief before giving me the 2 minute repair job that I really needed. I currently use the very same machine as a server (debian linux) and it is rock solid. I swore to myself from that point on, I'd never buy another pre-built computer. I've hand built my last 2.
Bought a p3-600 Dell Dimension XPST in 1999. It had windows 98 on it from Dell. It crashed within 10 minutes of first boot up. I figured it was windows being windoze
story 2)
My dad calls and says his video display is all mucked up..being 2000 miles away from his PC, I can't be sure but after asking a bunch of questions, I am 90% sure his video card is fried...I tell him to call a friend and borrow a monitor to make sure his monitor isn't the problem. He does this and the friend's monitor doesn't make a difference on his PC..monitor is out as the source. I told him to call Dell and tell them all this and ask for a new video card...Dell proceeds to use the method in story #1 to have him try a bazillion things, none of which work, including backing up everything, wiping system and rebuilding it. Still doesn't work...He finally got pissed at them and demanded a new video card, which promptly fixed the problem. He was able to restore critical software from his backups but a lot of "almost critical" or "semi-important" stuff wasn't backed up right. I had to spend hours on the phone w/ him using remote control to help him clean up the mess Dell made.
I'm not trying to pick on dell...God knows I have a ton of them donated to the school where I run IT and they're usually rock solid...I know other companies do this the same way. I've talked to people to work front line phone support and they tell me similar horror stories. (Comcast, for example, threatens to bill the customer if they send out a worker to fix a problem that turns out to not be their problem but user-end so most users get scared and back off in the hopes the problem will resolve itself (oddly enough, they do resolve themselves sometimes with no interaction from the user...)). All I'm saying is that the phone tech people need to be able to use their brains along with the flow-chart or wizard or whatever.
Oh...3rd story: My dad's PC again...his older one from 1998. He had MSN dialup at the time (I know, mistake #1). He managed to hose his MSN software and couldn't get online. I was down visiting (he lived closer back then) and was trying to fix it. I called MSN tech support with the goal of simply getting the phone number, username and password for his account so I could set up a generic windows dialer to get him online so that I could download a new MSN installer for him...Took til 3rd or 4th level of escalation before I could get someone on the line who could understand that. I explained the same damn thing 3x to lower levels and heard crickets chirping on the other end...to top that off, the website the higher level got me to had a bug in it that I had to make my own work around for to download the file I needed...what should have been a 5-10 minute call turned into 2 hours of elevator music and frustration...
Ok..enough from me...I'm out!
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
When I was a CSR, the instant anyone pulled out the legal threat, it meant "please hold" for five minutes. We call that "giving them some quiet time". Actually filing a legal threat would be just fine, meant legal got to deal with it and not me.
I learned quickly never to give out my extension. I do not enjoy being someone's personal support bitch because they decide to bypass the support queue by routing every problem of theirs to me. Sometimes even other peoples problems.
You get my first name, you get a tracking number, and if you want more, then would you like to speak to a customer service manager sir?
I learned that angry people aren't even worth getting angry back at. But for me, they still ate at my soul even when I laughed them off afterward.
I thank my stars every day that I'm not in customer service anymore. I think I'd rather shovel shit.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
This is mainly because those helpdesk techs (ones who know how to fix the problems, and object to the call scripting) have been shuffled back into the darkened places of the helpdesk. When a tech seems to be more interested in fixing problems than towing the party line, this is often the case.
Other posters are correct, if you simply describe the problem, as well as any troubleshooting steps you've already taken, without making any assumptions or diagnosis of the issue yourself, a good phone tech will appreciate and respond to you in a positive fashion.
(Thats my blog.)
r ust-your-customers/ .
I wrote something just yesterday about how somebody fouled up product activation and ended up alienating a previously deliriously happy customer, a subject which should be near and dear to the anti-DRM crowd here: http://microisvjournal.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/t
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Several years ago, I had a t1 that went down. This router had a T1 plus several fiber gig links, and several ethernet interfaces. I talked to ISP help person to troubleshoot why the T1 died. After a couple minutes, the support jerk asked me to reboot the router to see if it clears the problem. There is no way I could reboot a production cisco 7500 to reset a T1. I told the support person that. She responded - " If I dont reboot the router then this support call is over". I quietly ( my temp guage was slowly rising) told the moron that this was a production router and reboot was out the question. We need to resolve without a reboot. The response was she would not be able to help me resolve this and I could call back when I could reboot router. Now, my temp gauge was maxxed out - I lost it. She hung up. I never encountered such a rude support person in my 12 year career as a network admin. I did my own troubleshooting and got a different support person to help. It took 10 mins to resolve.
Hi Guys, and Gals,
I'm not a newbie nor an expert however after doing hours of disgnostics and documenting what I've done then have a first line tech tell me to "reboot the system" and I reply, That was my second move or I did that several hrs, or days ago ( depending on how long it took me to actually find the problem and verify it). Then after ALWAYS wasting from 30 min to an hour it is finally escalated. Now it is, I'll concede, rare, but once in a while I would get a knowledgeable tech who when I list off what I have done and what diags. I've tried does not automaniacaly assume I'm a turkey. And withing a few minutes is either asking the right questions or is referring me up the line. It is sad that companies, like HP, for example, can not really bother train their 1st. line folks instead of outsourcing it to India where every third person either doesn't understand you or you can not understand them. However I digress. When you get to the senior tech or the Senior CSR techs, EG: case managers, if you are relatively polite and you clearly list and explain what you have done, right or wrong, they will go out of their way to help you. I do agree with the slashdotter who resented wasting time when they don't call for petty stuffs.
Captain V. Cautious
Usually, when you deal with any person who is working customer service, you are dealing with someone who makes minimum wage or just a little better. They work long hours and usually have really bad benefits. But we all want to save an extra buck or two, so guess where the company is skimping on funding... And then we act surprised when the underpaid, overworked customer service reps aren't smiling and happy. Cheap and easy will never be as good as moderately priced and thorough. It's the difference between shopping at Wal-Mart and Saks. Wal-Mart has a cheaper suit, but the Saks employees will take care of you.
Are you aware (as I was not until a few years ago) that it is the law that requires corporations to be obligated to their shareholders. That's it. The whole law. I'm sure it's written in legalese (since I can not remember everything) to the point that it's several books long, but that's the unobfuscated entirety of the foundation of corporate law.
Wouldn't it be nice if corporations were obligated to _society_, since they are just as social organisms as individuals are. Which society I'll leave as a thought experiment to the reader.
2^3 * 31 * 647
The truth of the matter is that customer service departments lose money. It does on the sales you've already made, that's true. The point of having outstanding customer service is to make money on future sales. Poor customer service means losing sales not only to that customer, but also to potential customers who hear about it. Bad news travels faster and further than good, so it's important to keep the bad news from happening. Otherwise the whole world reads about it on slashdot.
At a previous job, about once a month I had to make a support call which was rather awkward for both myself and the person on the other end.
I was working onsite, doing night shift break/fix for a large manufacturing company, employed by Large IT Company #1.
After a couple of years, LITC #1 lost the contract for the datacenter I was working in to LITC #2, so I switched employers, keeping the same desk, hours, and job.
LITC #1 still managed user accounts, authentication, and other tasks.
Once a month, around midnight, all of my access would go away. When I called LITC #1's helpdesk to check on my login ID, they would be friendly, and we would chat a bit, until they pulled up my account info, at which point they would get very evasive and uncomfortable, and I would have to ask the question:
"Is my account disabled, and flagged 'DO NOT REACTIVATE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! NOTIFY SECURITY!'?"
Sometimes they would answer yes, sometimes they would just hang up, but all in all it was an awkward situaition for both of us.
I've worked in a tech support role for 8 years. Prior to the I worked in the field as a consultant.
In the field I sometimes needed to depend on tech support myself. I learned in the field that if I called tech support and wanted effective help, I needed to humble myself and pretend that I knew absolutely nothing. SO in a sense I lied to tech support by playing dumb. Playing dumb seemed like waste of time. I had to let tech support take me down the same blind alleys I'd already been down. I had to humor them by redoing what I believed I'd already done. But by letting them work through they methodology one of a few things would happen: they'd find what I'd missed, they'd eventually take the problem to resolution down a path I wouldn't have followed, we'd gain mutual respect and put our heads together to solve the problem, or we'd need to escalate.
Within the first week of moving to phone support I learned the lesson, "Never entirely trust what the caller says." Seems not all people who can't find the answer themselves are filling to humble themselves to admitting they don't know the answer. Some, not all, want to gloss over then initial stages of the troubleshooting methodology, to get to the "heart of the problem."
Techsupport: "Do you have files in such and such a directory?"
C: "No."
Did the customer look? maybe yes, or maybe he thinks, hey I never put files there so there can't be any there, I'll save time by answering intuitively....
Sometimes it's not a matter of the customer trying to pull one over, as the customer doesn't want to admit they don't know how to empirically find the answer. Other times the customer didn't understand the question to begin with.
Anyway some of the deepest rat holes I found myself in were because I understood the customer to tell me something that in the end turned out not to be true. As a phone support person the customer has to be my eyes and ears. If I get incorrect information, whether my misunderstanding or the customer lie, I won't get to problem resolution. Some phone support personnel start to treat the customer as a hostile witness. Others have more gentle ways of starting over from the very beginning and looking for what was missed.
Exactly. This is one of the main problems I've had on accasion. Working in IT support myself I know that sometimes problems arise because the User doesn't know what they're doing. And I know that the majority of Not-User-Error issues can also be ones dealt with by a simple walkthrough script.
But I am a techie. When I've had ISP problems in the past I've already tried everything on the script. I've probably tried more than's on the script. I'm calling up because either I need to talk to someone who knows more than I do, or it's a technical issue that has to be done at their end.
So I psyche myself up for a phone-call. Then I get on the hold-queue. Then I get the hold music (badly-looped). Then I get through to first-line support. I know it's necessary, but having to re-go over less than I've already tried before it getting escalated further can just be frustrating.
I know there's no excuse for being impolite or flat-out rude, and I try my hardest to be civil, but it can be infuriating when you've been on-hold for 20 minutes effectively unable to do anything. And you're right, it would be nice if more ISPs and other companies would allow for the possibility of support calls coming from people with technical skills and experience.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
...the out of hours "24x7" team that handles evenings, nights and weekends probably support a hell of a lot more systems than the daytime people do. They might, for example, do phone tech support for 5 or 6 companies in today's climate of outsourcing. Hence they *may* have a shallower understanding of the issues. On the plus side, they do tend to have more autonomy...
...this is not rocket science, people.
"There's no problem here, you must have the wrong software"
hours later
"Oh, there is a problem here"
I was a Dell field tech around Christmas time a few years ago. For a while the Dell support line played "If I only had a brain." from the Wizard of OZ for their hold music. They pulled it after a short time.
That's why it would be good if companies could semiautomatically categorize callers, say based on track record.
caller actually only calls when it's the company's fault = add points
most support staff (or even who call gets escalated to) believe caller knows stuff (and not rude - worth dealing with) = add points.
Then you can fast track the useful ones with a clue - they may actually spot problems (and maybe even solutions) faster than inhouse staff (who might be busy with other stuff).
Most of the ignorant ones will willingly go through the script anyway. So as long you work out a decent script, that'll actually help them (Oh silly me, the notebook was plugged in BUT the power socket wasn't on).
Court is last resort, not first resort. If a company fails to render services promised and paid for, then they are legally obligated to render them upon penalty of law.
While I do not appreciate the amount of frivolous lawsuits that occur in the system, sometimes the law is the only way to get a disobedient company that is breaking their agreement to do what is right.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Of course customers lie. I lie sometimes. It's because I've come to expect a craptacular level of service from the CSR, and most often when I come straight across with my problem, their script takes me away from my problem.
... "Forget the data, let's just RMA this sucker"... "Sorry sir, to properly help you I need to follow the steps listed for me ...*sigh* after enough back and forth to hurt my brain, they still don't get it. I say goodbye and hang up. I call back. I say "My plug thingamajiggy broke off when I pulled the stick out. It's still stuck in the machine. What do I do?". Poof, RMA.
I call SanDisk because my memory stick just stopped working, I need RMA, and I mention I'm hoping (foolishly) there's a way to recover the data. What do they try to get me to do? Reformat the drive. "Uh, it's not listed in My Computer, it's in Device Manager as 'Unknown Device'"... "Ummm, ok, well, go into this "Device Manager" and right click and choose "Format Drive"... "Also, wouldn't Format Drive lose all my data that is the sole reason I'm calling?"
I call Linksys because their wireless repeater won't accept any subnet mask except 255.255.255.0. He won't help me until I can tell him the exact model of the WAP... even though I'm calling about the repeater. I can't access the WAP, it's in a ceiling, and it's working fine too...half an hour of back and forth (and refusing to escalate me), I hang up. I go to my office, look up a picture of the model sticker, go back to the repeater, call back, lie about having the model, lie as he tells me to completely reprogram the WAP, lie as he tells me to put it back to our config, and THEN he tells me "Ohhhh, yes, we know there's a problem with that".
I call Telus for help because I'm configuring a networked security system on a separate DSL line, and it would be easier to get get them to tell me their default gateway than to find a computer, hook it up, and find it that way. But it deviates from their script, so they tell me that there's no such thing as a "Default gateway" and it must be a custom setting on my device and they don't support it. Then they consult with someone else to confirm that "default gateway" is a foreign term. Then they consult with a Tier 2 and confidently tell me it must be 192.168.0.1. Then he goes, figures out how to type IPCONFIG, and tells me what HIS default gateway is. If I could have thought of a lie to get around the script and just get him to tell me the damn number, I would have done it. Instead, I was on hold so long after the last round that I just went, found a laptop, burned a knoppix CD, booted it up, and got my info.
It's for these reasons, and many, many others, that I find myself more and more lying to get the results I need. If I don't know what I want, I'll of course follow along, but if I know what I want and it's painfully obvious, sometimes it's just easier to play the game and be done with it.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
The other advantage to something like this is that it could actually helpissues get flagged up faster. How many times when calling for ISP support and getting a "There are no known faults" might possibly be because the first few reports are all still stuck at first-level because the knowledgable people aren't getting escalated fast enough?
Because somebody has to report a fault before it gets known. But there must be a scary amount of stock questions gone through before enough people are logged as having a serious issue with any given problem.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
I worked as a CSR for a mobile phone company for a while, and let me just say that in general, the computer system is more infallible than the end user is honest. The end user may be unintentionally dishonest, but I can't tell you how many times I had customers call in screaming about their "insanely high bill" and how we've made a mistake, and they didn't talk that much, and the computer has to be wrong.
Then you ask them, "do you know the person at the phone number 619-867-5309" and they say "yeah, that's my sister" and you say "according to my system, your sister called you at 4:28pm on March 3rd, and you talked for 4 hours. The next day, she called you at 7:08pm and talked for 20 minutes. Then it looks like you called someone else for 9 minutes, then called your sister back and talked for 3 more hours." They say "Ok" and I say "now I'm going to do some math here, in those two days, you talked for about 7 1/2 hours. that's 450 minutes, and you only have a 500 minute plan. In two days, your plan minutes were done and you started having overage, which resulted in your expensive bill."
At that point, they generally give in. See, in my experience dealing with these situations, is that people fall into one of two groups when they have an issue. Either 1) they just plain forgot, or don't realize that something is the case, or 2) they know exactly what happened, and they're trying to be enough of a pain in the ass so that you'll give them what they WANT, rather than what they DESERVE. I will spend 2 hours explaining your last 10 bills to you so that you understand that yes, it really is your fault that your current bill says what it does. That tends to happen when you haven't paid a bill in full and on time in the last year.
People are either ignorant (which I'm ok with) or they're out to scam you. Unfortunately, people that DO know what they're talking about and aren't trying to scam you get caught in the middle. If a company admits that the computer system is fallible even once, it opens them up for a field day of account credits when everyone and their dog calls in claiming the computer is wrong.
My favorite one is when people called in and told me the computer wasn't always right, and could be wrong -- I would tell them, "well...if the computer can be wrong like you say it is, then it could be wrong in either direction. Maybe it's under-reporting your minutes. I should look into that..."
The fact is, 99% of the time, the computer IS right, and it's the users ignorance or deceit at play.
You are a support call.
A number. A negative number on their balance sheet. Your call is costing them money, dipping into their profit margins. They have a greater incentive to drop you as a customer than to spend time trying to fix your problem.
Businesses today have very little incentive to treat people like people. They design as much cost out of their processes as possible, leaving only the absolute minimum necessary to conduct business. Extraneous circumstances don't happen in the mind of the business analyst - or even if they do, the business isn't willing to pay to write code for all of those "what if" scenarios. Instead, they write support process to minimize cost, hoping the customer with a valid problem will just figure it out on their own. Long hold times are used to discourage people from calling in the first place. Being unable to talk to a human also discourages callers. And let's not forget making it near impossible to talk to someone in the company who actually has the power to fix the problem.
I guess the bigger question is why we as a people consider it appropriate for businesses to do these things to us.
But, here are some things you can try:
I'm writing this on a Toshiba laptop that has gone through two DVD drives, a power supply, a processor fan, and a hard drive. After replacing the first DVD drive under warranty, the unit failed again a year later, along with the power supply. Now out of warranty, I was looking at having to spend quite a bit of my own money to have them replaced. A few weeks after a carefully crafted letter was sent, Toshiba replaced the DVD drive and power supply at no cost to me.
So if the company is ethical, a letter can work wonders. If not, well, you would be doing us all a favor to take your business elsewhere.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.