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Symantec CEO Says Bad Service Fix Only Temporary
Lucas123 writes "Symantec's CEO John Thompson says the company is still struggling with its consolidated ERP system and that it has only thrown bodies and not technology at the post-Veritas buyout issues that created poor customer service. 'I've kind of lost track where we are timing-wise...but we threw an awful lot of head count at this wait-time problem. Wait times from their peak of well over an hour are down to now under two minutes,' he said."
Dear customer, We apologize for the accidental good service. We promise we will make it bad again as soon as possible. Sincerely, Mr. Symantec
My sig is permanently on strike.
Obviously he's not called the support line lately. I just spent 45 minutes on hold today for Veritas support.
Though, nice marketing/support propaganda.
Now, if they could just get a handle on that "crappy products" problem, they would be doing really well.
For anyone who has worked in a call center, Fast food, Or even a 7-11 wait times are not really under control of the site offering the service. You have ran into or experianced the instant explosion in customers wanting something all at once. Most people just through simple observation can see this but you really don't understand it until you work one of these types of jobs.
In a call center you can staff appropriately and still have excessive wait times at random. I cannot count the number of times it has been dead all day long maybe 1 call an hour then for no apparent reason over the next two hours there are 1+ hour hold times. If you call in at random times during the day and have consistently 30 min - 1 hr hold times then I agree they need to get more headcount.
Also, if most of you had any idea how many people call in wasting 10-20 minutes of a tech's time asking really stupid questions that can usually be found within the table of contents of the admin guide provided you probably wouldn't complain about hold times so much. Basically if the IT staff do their job and actually research & test before implimentation our hold times would be in half or non-existent.
FROM TFA: We contact Symantec Enterprise Technical support(800 number ends in 6542). My co-worker was on hold for more than 1 hour. After dealing with Symantec for 2 hrs 34 minutes they came to the conclusion that there are still problems with SAV causing troubles with Explorer.exe after a successful login to the domain and have yet to provide us with a sound solution!
Your Symantec Anti-Virus is still broken
Your Symantec Veritas Backup Exec is broke
Your customer service wait line is STILL too long.
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I'm no Anonymous Coward!
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
One time, a local TV station decided to air some cheesy old 3-D flick for the 8 O'Clock Movie in actual 3-D, using a new 3-D process for television. The station struck a deal with 7-11 to distribute the 3-D glasses. The catch? They would cost about 33 cents apiece.
So here's me, Mr. 7-11 Guy in my orange smock, standing behind the counter. All of a sudden, at about 5pm, customers start filing into the store. It seems that just about everybody got a call at work at some point during the day, asking if mommy could pleeeeaaaasse go and get some of those 3-D glasses so everybody could watch the fun movie tonight. 33 cents was no big deal, so everybody did.
The problem was, if they were free I could just toss them at people as they walked through the door. That's the way dumb promotions usually worked. But because they were 33 cents, every single customer that came into the store just for 3-D glasses had to wait in line at my register (I was the only employee on duty). Not to mention all the other people who came in for beer etc., just like usual.
Well, I lost track at some point. But the following day my manager told me that, according to the register tapes, I spent the next three hours ringing up roughly one customer every thirty seconds.
The thing is, a few people walked out. At times the line was as much as 12 people long, which is pretty long for a 7-11. But most of them didn't (as testified by the fact that I rang up so many of them). I kept my cool, cracked jokes, and pretty much nobody yelled at me. In fact, one guy even gave me a $5 tip on a 33 cent pair of 3-D glasses. And because people were waiting in line at 7-11, half of them grabbed a candy bar or a bag of chips or beer or something while they were waiting to get their glasses rung up, so it was a huge windfall for the store.
My point? No, you can't control it when you get excessive wait times at random. But that doesn't mean you can't control your customer service.
Breakfast served all day!