PC Call Centers Garner Lowest Satisfaction Score

Lucas123 writes "The University of Michigan took its first American Customer Satisfaction survey and found that of six industries measured for the Customers' Call Center Satisfaction Index, the PC industry received the lowest score, according to a Computerworld story. 'According to the survey, nearly 73% of the people who have bad experiences with their PC companies' call centers said they will consider purchasing their next PCs from another company, while 85% of customers who had their problems resolved by calling a PC call center said they would continue doing business with the company. Other calls centers included in the survey included banking, cell phone service, cable and satellite television, and insurance.'"

Comments

Profit!

[slapout]

1. Start computer company
2. Have good tech support
3. Profit!!!

Wait, somethings not right ...

Re:Profit!

[geekoid]

That a great start, but then.

1)want to make more money
2) cut back on call center
3) profit!....this quarter.

Re:Profit!

[KillerCow]

The problem is that the margins in the PC industry are razor thin, and with the number of people needed to man those phones, they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Retail customers aren't willing to pay for quality tech support. [Corporates are though.]

Even if they were able to pay them more (which they aren't), you aren't going to get good people who know what they are doing to sit on a phone all day every day dealing with angry/frustrated customers. No one ever calls tech support to tell them how happy they are with their purchase. I was a tech for a year, and it was horrible. You only get angry/upset people talking to you, and most of the problems can be resolved by following a script.

Add to this the PHBs who measure your performance based on average call times (not in actually resolving issues) and you get yourself micro-managed into mediocrity. Good people don't like being told to do a shitty job, and they will leave.

If you've got the skills to be a good tech, you can make more money doing a job that is more satisfying somewhere else.

Re:Profit!

[EggyToast]

That's the thing -- people DO read manuals if they're good manuals. if they flip through it and it's just page after page of "Thank you for purchasing one of our products" with a list of all possible specs and languages, they're going to assume it's crap.

If it was actually relevant to their computer and covered the basics, they would know it was a reference. Sadly, good documentation (and I mean good, not just "listing everything") is usually one of the first things cut, despite the amount of money it can potentially save.

Re:Profit!

[unlametheweak]

My experiences as a techie for some major Fortune 500 companies:

- MOST problems cannot be solved by following a script
- Also, company knowledge bases (for the tech's) are usually outdated, inaccurate and poorly designed
- People ARE willing to pay for tech support
        - When I did support for M$, customers of brand name computers with OEM operating systems would call in and ask for support because they couldn't get their problems solved through the OEM call centres (M$ customer service will just charge them of course)
- Customers are rarely angry unless you feed them with bullshit, keep transferring them, constantly put them on hold, etc. If you do like me and actually treat a customer like a decent human being instead of getting them off the phone as soon as possible, then you will probably not get promoted, but you will have a feeling of personal satisfaction that you actually bothered to help the customer solve their problem

Facts:
- most call centres have time limits for tech calls, which means techs are pressured to get people off the phone as soon as possible instead of giving them any type of quality support

- training is often limited to 2 to 3 weeks for a specific product, with much of the training time dedicated to human resources type training, i.e. how to talk to the customer to make them feel like you are helping them, instead of actually giving the techs the technical knowledge to actually solve their problems

- techs often make things up. Yes I've experienced this as a customer and have seen other techs do this. If people don't know the answer, they will just make-up there own answer just so they don't have to deal with the problem (having the customer do something that takes a long time can help to get the customer of the phone, like doing a chkdsk)

- With one company that I was with (that I quit in disgust), a customer told me that he noticed what seemed to be a manufacturers defect in the specific brand of computer. I went to my supervisor and he said this is not true. I asked my supervisor how he knew this since I never even told him the model number. He said "good point, I'll check", about 30 seconds later he said he checked and said there was no default with the product.

- Turnover rate is high in this business. So keeping experienced techs isn't so much an issue as keeping within the short term quarterly profit margin targets

Believe me I could write a whole book about my experiences, but I think you get my point. The only thing that seems to be saving any one company from bankruptcy through customer abandonment is that all companies seem to be colluding with the lie (or exaggeration at least) that they are providing technical support.

Let's face it, if a customer had a choice of saving their computer data or just getting their computer to work properly, they will pay. Often companies with out-of-warranty customers charge $2.00 per minute, often for the same poor technical support. It is a rip-off and a cash grab for the companies involved.

When I call and hear a thick foreign accent

[lena_10326]

...I don't even try. It's pointless.

Re:When I call and hear a thick foreign accent

[N3WBI3]

Its not racist its damn hard to understand people through an accent *especially* if you dont know what you're doing looking for help.

Re:When I call and hear a thick foreign accent

[ehrichweiss]

Unfortunately I don't think this is necessarily under the racist umbrella this time. There are several factors in delivering tech support and one of them is for the customer to be able to understand the tech. If that weren't enough, try calling tech support and finding one of the smarmy mofos who think they are engineers instead of peon techs reading from a script. I've seriously had some guy, who I'll only say was from the middle east by the sound of his accent, try to tell me repeatedly that Windows was running out of resources and that's the reason I was having problems with my internet connection; I was using an SGI and was trying to report a router that was failing and told him this no less than 25 times. I blame it on their culture that they think that being in any position of power "over" you means they know everything you do not about that subject; I don't know where it comes from but it's prevalent. That doesn't mean I hate the person, but I understand fully why someone might want to talk to someone who'll actually LISTEN(and understand what you're saying) for a change. Besides, I don't need something petty like a person's accent or skin color to hate them when there are so many other good reasons to hate everyone.

Re:When I call and hear a thick foreign accent

[drinkypoo]

Its not racist its damn hard to understand people through an accent *especially* if you dont know what you're doing looking for help.

Damn skippy. I am horrible at math (dyslexia related to numbers or something, they just run away from me, I have a hard time adding two three-digit numbers together even when you don't have to carry) and when I took pre-algebra in college, I had some kind of asian guy (sorry, I'm a typical dumb american in this regard) as an instructor and his accent was more or less impenetrable. I had no idea what the hell I was doing and certainly couldn't learn anything from him. I ended up dropping out and to this day I still have never passed a single class in algebra (although I do utilize it in a limited fashion occasionally. I mean even to use ohm's law you need that, unless you want to draw a triangle every time you want to do that.)

When you're talking about something you know well, it's easier to hear through someone's accent because you're more used to the words and concepts being expressed. When you are trying to learn something you don't know jack about, it becomes substantially harder. Most people don't know shit about computers and most tech support employees are no exception, so it's no wonder that many of us have a spectacularly hard time understanding the Indian tech on the other end of the shit phone connection.

Your call is important to us

[Hoi Polloi]

I'd leave a better comment but I'm still on hold with Dell...

Complexity

[truthsearch]

Wow, worse than cable service call centers? That's sad. I bet it's because of all the industries included, the PC industry has the most complex product and the most complex problems. Banking, television, insurance, and even cell phone service are all pretty straightforward. But PCs are such general purpose devices that the issues are bound to be more complex.

Of course there's the other obvious problems of poor call center training, etc. But that just compounds the issue.

Re:Complexity

[Jarjarthejedi]

I think you may have hit part of the problem there. It's hard enough to fix someone's computer problem when you have their computer in your hands, fixing it over the phone, especially when dealing with people who are, ahem, less than adept at computer use is exceedingly difficult. Combine that with the fact that many people think errors are simple on/off ordeals, "oh it's broken? hit a. problem solved" type things, and you have a very frustrating experience for both sides.

Rude reps.

[iknownuttin]

Customer service reps located outside of the U.S. are rated lower on communication skills.

I was once on a service call with a company's service rep and he was giving me instructions rather quickly and with a thick accent. When I asked him to repeat what he said, sometimes more than once, he became very irate and somewhat rude.

I had to call in because because of their lame website wouldn't activate their damned product. I no longer do business with them nor will I ever.

Well, lets look at this a bit closer

[ColdWetDog]

Other calls centers included in the survey included banking, cell phone service, cable and satellite television, and insurance.'"

Desktop computers and their attendant problems just might be more complex than:

- What's my bank balance?

- What are all of these calls to Bangladore doing on my cell phone bill and where is the damn ON button?

- What channel is Bugs Bunny on?

- Where's the lizard?

Not like Dell tech support is on my friends list (until you get to the server folks, they've seemed decent), but we're talking about a complex system in the hands of well, just about anybody.

Perhaps It's the Users

[BlueMikey]

I had a friend who once worked at an AOL call center in the Mac division. Real transcript: AOL: "What type of Mac do you have?" Caller: "Uh...tangerine?" Maybe the callers think the service is so shitty because they don't know that the problem is fixed or because they can't provide good enough information to the agent to get it fixed. I've had 10 times the problems with cable company call centers than I have with any other, including PC manufacturers.

Re:Perhaps It's the Users

[Mattintosh]

"Tangerine" tells a good Mac tech exactly what type of Mac that user has. It's a "tangerine" iMac with a 266 or 333MHz G3 processor (PPC750, IBM-style, with copper tracing instead of aluminum), between 64 (most likely) and 256 (max) MB of RAM (PC66 168-pin DIMM), a 24x CD-ROM drive, a 4 or 6 GB HDD (ATA/33), 10/100 Ethernet, an ATI Rage Pro LT 8MB video accelerator, and a 17" CRT screen.

But your point stands for other, less-distinctive types of hardware.

Re:Three types of support people

[tazbert]

No - #3 will have a short stay at his company, moving on when it becomes obvious that all his management chain cares about is his average handle time, not the quality of his support.

Partly depends on customer's abilities

[gEvil (beta)]

As anyone who's done any kind of support knows, a significant chunk of troubleshooting/support depends on the customer's ability to follow directions. When the support person says "I need you to click here and do this. Now read to me EXACTLY what the window that opens up says," they expect the person to do that. It doesn't help when the person on the other end does something else then says "It's not opening a window that says anything" or they say "It's giving me an error message" [duh, that was the point!] rather than "It says 'Program terminated. Error code: PEBKAC'". Yes, some companies have abysmal support. But sometimes the people asking for support don't help the problem either.

Re:Three types of support people

[kentmartin]

[i]#3 will have a long, successful stay at his company, which will reap the rewards of his hard work.[/i]

Will the fairies on his planet help him? Your idea of reaping the rewards gives us all the warm fuzzies, but such ideals sadly belong to the generation before us.

Seriously, part of the problem is it is no longer seen as cost effective to hold onto good employees. Take the UK, sometimes people can wheedle(sp?) an extra couple of grand from their employer every year or 3, but, a 10 grand pay rise doesn't even raise an eyebrow when someone changes company.

yea by phone..

[tempest69]

ok, I ate some troll bait here.

Having done some tech support over the phone a decade ago, I know that some things can actually be done over the phone. ISP support for one isnt too bad if you have a decent technician. The problem is that they dont pay the price for a technician, so they force a script down the throats of the support personel, and caos ensues.

Your best bet is to call tech support BEFORE YOU BUY... call the line, wait a few minutes on hold, if they dont pick up with a real person in a timely fasion, skip the purchase.... your not being treated right. If the voice on the other end is hard to understand, skip it again... if they pause when you ask a reasonable question like "I have a pixel in the middle of my screen that is always red, is that normal" run like mad..

Unless you have no need for warranty work or tech support check the support out, your paying for it.

Storm

You Sir, Are Misinformed.

[asphaltjesus]

When you become a part of the average big soul-sucking support center, what passes as productivity is **precisely** tracked.

Read the following carefully.

-No caring.
-Know nothing. They provide scripts. Don't _ever_ deviate from the scripts.

If you are with me so far, read on carefully.

Call center productivity is *NEVER* measured by customer satisfaction. It is measured as calls per unit of time. Period.

Take a moment to comprehend the implications of the previous statement before moving on.

If you meet/exceed the calls per hour (or whatever) then another component of your productivity is the number of parts shipped. More parts bad, less parts gets you an atta-boy from your manager and maybe even a shiny nickel.

Finally, a call center is most profitable when there is a queue. Fewer support people processing more calls per hour = profit & productivity.

Wrong

[WindBourne]

2 stays because management believes that the person has a clue. And if 1 has a nice enough personality, they will stay as well. 3 will normally move on.

Completely unfair comparison!

[burnttoy]

Banking, insurance even cable can be sorted out over the phone (unless your cable box has HCF'd). If a PC goes wrong then phone support is never going to be useful unless resetting does actually fix things. Even navigating your way through to a potentially incorrect setting is incredibly hard over the phone. Users don't listen properly, get frustrated and confused when they see the control panel for the first time if the machine is actually dead then it'll need to be RMA'd.

Both myself and the bank, cable company, insurance firm can get their hands on my account and/or their hardware (f'nar f'nar) and fix things if broken.

Many times I've tried to help people with their computers over the phone but when the problem is "I hit the power button and nothing happens" there's precious little I can do (other than get them to check connections) unless I can actually get there with a screwdriver.

Much as I hate computer as car analogues I wouldn't phone BMW and ask them to help me fix my Mini's engine over the phone! It just wouldn't work especially as I, like the poor broken computer users, I am no mechanic.

Ah well. My Mum bought a (pretty crap) PC a few years back but she deliberately bought it from a shop about 5 miles away. If it blows up instead of having to post the thing back or arrange pick up a bloke comes out with a screwdriver set and some spares. She paid more for that service but it was invaluable when lightning fried the modem.

Expectations out of whack

[Tablizer]

Computers are becoming like automobiles in terms of the cost and effort to maintain and fix. People want instant solutions on the cheap, which is unrealistic. The problem is that cars cost dozens of thousands of dollars such that people *expect* service to expensive. The retail price of PC's might be much lower than a car, but the maintenance and repair cost is not. If PC's would stop changing, then they would settle and become a commodity to fix or replace; but change pace prevents that. (MS-Windows being goofy doesn't help.) If people knew the real costs, they'd probably buy a Mac.

Exactly!

[iknownuttin]

Or maybe they stop trying when they hear your "thick foreign accent" :)

Exactly! You know, folks got so pissed at me when I did customer support in China. They couldn't understand a word I said - even though I speak perfect English! Go figure! I was hired as a support person by management. But nooooooooo, the Chinese are so racist they refuse to learn and take the time to understand me! After all, they're the customer and they should adjust to me because they are giving me!

Isn't that the attitude with a lot of companies these days?

Too many potential problems

[gilesjuk]

PCs have so many problems, so many different causes of problems. Hardware can cause crashes and problems, software can cause crashes and problems.

Before the Internet you wouldn't have so many different patch levels.

PC Tech support is hard, no mistake.

reason

[blhack]

This is because computer tech support is actually a pretty specialized skill. It isn't something like calling visa where they have a flowchart of 5 problems in front of them.

Unfortunately, the people running the call centers don't realize this. They give their employees the same sort of flow charts that are given in "non-specialized" fields.

There are people out there with the skills required to to these jobs very very well. Some companies, like intermec (mobile computer manufacturer), zebra (industrial printer manufacturer), or CLI (provider of dumb terminals for As/400 systems) hire very very good people. I have even gotten the same person on multiple calls who recognized me "Hey RYAN! did you get that battery charger replacement i sent you?"

Unfortunately, it hurts the bottom line to pay skilled labor, so the end user ends up suffering.

No, the problem is...

[sterno]

The reality is that PC support is inherently more complex. There are more moving parts in a PC. The end user has far more ability to alter the proper operation of the system but changing software and components. There's a hell of a lot more that can go wrong in a PC, it's much harder to diagnose, and that is why customer satisfaction is low.

When was the last time you installed more memory on your cable box, or upgraded the operating system? Cell phones are getting more complex, but by and large they are self contained systems that don't get modified much either. I'm sure that customer satisfaction will decline, the more phones become like PC's.

It's just the nature of the beast.