Slashdot Mirror
The Future of Tech Support
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Christina Tynan-Wood reports on 7 emerging technologies and strategies that could make tech support less of a living hell for those in need of a fix. Augmented reality, self-healing systems, robot surrogates, avatar support — most seem the stuff of science fiction, but many are much closer than we might expect. 'As products become more and more interconnected, support itself will break off from the current model and become a product of its own,' Tynan-Wood writes. 'The same model has already happened in corporate IT, where technicians must orchestrate knowledge and skills across a variety of technology products. Even as the techniques and technologies used by corporate IT will change in the coming years, the shift in consumer tech support to an integrated approach will pose new opportunities for today's techs.'"
Here is a brief synopsis of the seven options:
Tech support hero #1: Augmented reality Thanks to James Cameron's Ferngully Furry Fantasy, tech support can now send the being of your choice to give you a hand with those annoying router problems. They've been programmed to be the minority of your choice(the one who's taking all the American jobs) so that you will rapidly become frustrated and tire yourself out trying to beat the shit out of them before you talk to an actual human.
Tech support hero #2: Support systems that know you They try to sell you shit you don't need. Moving on...
Tech support hero #3: Self-healing and self-aware machines
Which slow themselves to a crawl running Norton 3000, the self-aware program that dosen't have time to allocate computer resources for your Mickey-Mouse bullshit.
Tech support hero #4: An easier way to replace parts Need a new hinge for your laptop screen? Send the whole thing in to have it examined by a gaggle of third-world monkeys who gather around it in awe like a bunch of cro-magnons gathering around a fresh meteorite.
Tech support hero #5: Robots that do the hands-on support They've all been acquired by a subsidary of teledildonics.
Tech support hero #6: Smarter peer-to-peer support If one Indian can't solve your problems, what makes you think that a million will?!
Tech support hero #7: Virtual worlds with avatar support
*Sigh* GOTO 1
The latest offerings from Microsoft and Apple are far less crappy than their previous versions so need far less support.
What I find is quite often forgotten is the word "Support"
Most people generally just want someone to acknowledge they have a problem and give them a realistic time frame on when the problem can be fixed.
Computers are Logical, people are generally not and will always get emotional about a problem they are experiencing with any piece of technology, the more you abstract the support for these complex systems the more you alienate the people who actually require it.
As the workings of software and hardware become less clouded, i.e. known to users, the necessity of Tech Support will diminish.
Who today needs Tech Support to Shoe their Horse?
Hi, tech support, my self-healing robot surrogate avatar just broke down...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The future of consumer tech support is that your increasingly senile neighbor is still going to call you every time she has a problem with her POS desktop inkjet printer that you helped set up back in 6th grade - only because your mom made you (since you're such a smart young man and I'm sure it won't take you more than half an hour) - even though you now live in a different state that is 3 time zones away, goddamnit.
where technicians must orchestrate knowledge and skills across a variety of technology products
Let me put this in real terms: submit an ___(insert name of company document here)___, IT gets overworked. End users on phone support and other end seem determined to reduce the machine from a multicore to a TI-83Plus equivalent.
This summary was obviously written by upper management...the above description has not been my experience.
(Sorry for the mean words.)
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Microsoft Bob
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
Do you mean Clippy, or James Cameron ? I Guess I should read the article.
I am not making this up -- I found out today that my new Kenmore washer & dryer have Kenmore Connect, which lets you call tech support on your cell phone, then hold the phone up to the appliance so that it can be talked to directly. Supposedly, the majority of service calls are not hardware related, so this lets Sears see what's wrong with your machine and potentially fix it without having to send someone out. I'm guessing appliances connecting to service sites with wi-fi would be next.
"hero" #3: a desire that the equipment don't break in the first place (no kidding you get better tech support in that scenario, you won't be calling them).
How about this "hero": contract people who are actually good at it, instead of the lowest cost English-speaking third world sweatshop.
http://xkcd.com/627/
Seriously, I work in IT, and I get emails all the time, latest one today, that makes me shake my head in dismay ... Today's email, and I'm NOT KIDDING was asking me why I changed the priority on a ticket from "High" (chosen by customer) to "Medium" because ... "sound isn't working right".
They don't know how LUCKY they are that it was "Medium" and not "Lowest" or something lower. I'm in charge of 5 sites, most having over 100 computers on campus, with one other person.
"I'm sorry, but I'll drop this ticket of the dead computer, and rush right over there to fix your sound so you can listen to internet radio or your iTunes ... Is that okay with you???"
Probably would be better to have a second life instead of no life.
how dumb does a tech need to be to need smart phone to change ram? Wait most severs have that info on the door. just sounds like a way to sell some over priced help app.
some of the other ideas are better staring points to work from.
Tech support hero #2:??
most of time you need tell the next guy on the phone the same stuff that you told the first guy. Now planes like comcast need this bad as they can't even tell the cable guy to bringing cable cards when you tell the phone people you need them at times or some times the cable guy / phone people don't even know about them.
and cable cards is just 1 area that comcast phone and cable guys need to work one. Some times there own boxes can't even get the right config.
Self-healing?
auto updates are hit or miss at times and toner replacement that others the high priced stuff on it's own vs the 3rd party stuff? Some cars have oil change lights that only give the codes to the dealer to trun them off and if are a due it your self-er or go a jiffy lube you need to look it up on your own.
An easier way to replace parts
most pc's systems are easy to swap parts in but imacs and lots of small systmes are not that easy and apple wants to pay more for apple care do they can fix with out voiding the warranty and it's sucks that the imac makes it so much work just to swap a HDD out.
Robots that do the hands-on support
seems to be a high cost at first and likely 10+ years out thing also lag is bad for stuff like that.
Peer-to-peer support is cool and is at times way better then level 1 phone techs. Get rid of alot of the level 1 low call times and let them do more is a start and don't kick people out who are smarter then level 1 and take more time on the phone.
Look, as long as these things have a power switch and cables/cords to plug in, there will be a need for tech support (at least of the sighing, eye rolling, "DO IT LIKE THIS!" family type).
I feel that with some people, you could give them a rock and they'd still need help.
Great. Another marketing gimmick from Asshatzoft.
This isn't making tech support simpler. It's not making it easier to get assistance in any quantifiable manner.
What it's DOING is shifting the burden of tech support around a bit, and ultimately making things harder on the local
tech guru, called upon to provide (free) tech support (for a family member) who then has to
Ghost the drive.
Check the hardware.
Reinstall the OS from a clean base copy.
Reinstall relevant programs.
Filter sort the files from the ghost image.
Convince the family member never to buy from HP again, under pain of never providing similar service again.
(Actual results may vary; some people aren't willing to talk that way to their mother-in-law)
Fixing Decades Of IT Problems
Ed Sperling, 07.13.09, 06:00 AM EDT
Rising costs are forcing enterprises to deal with IT issues that they've ignored.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/12/enterprise-computers-mobile-technology-cio-network-enterprise.html?boxes=Homepagemostemailed
Getting Back To Outsourcing Basics
Alexei Miller, 08.17.10, 12:00 PM EDT
Complex theories and best practices often make deals more confusing.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/17/risk-management-innovation-technology-outsourcing.html?boxes=Homepagechannels
My all time Favorite: IBM TV AD - Universal Business Adapter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIOqOxI0K_I
I got a email from a guy in Nigeria that has a bunch of these for sale. All you need to do is prepay the shipping!
Management wants another layer of BS to cover up the previous layer of BS that covers up their total inability to deal with IT.
They do not want the truth. They want to hear what they want to hear. They want Snake Oil. And they want to be cool doing it.
So sell it to them! Stop fighting it! Do you want to starve? Don't be ridiculous!
And Snake oil, by the nature of being Snake oil, will not solve the problem, so ensures the further sales. Life is good!
Top managers do not want solutions. They want a relationship with a high power vendor in a sharp suit or a nice dress and high heels. They want to email and schedule and iphone and network or IM or text or whatever is popular with the elite set. It beats working!
Snake Oil Version 2.00 Now with Avatars!
Something about the image of a well dressed upper manager, with an expensive smartphone, on a well light, expensive set.
A hot chick runs through the frame, numbers and symbols are whizzing by. A 600 horsepower supercar gets worked in there too, if I can get the budget.
The manager is concentrating on something.
Fuck, he looks cool as he high speed downloads the top drawer promo video.
What is this video? Tension builds and builds.
And builds some more! What could it be????
He is viewing the promo, of Snake Oil 3.00 of course!
Now Self-healing and Self-aware!
how dumb does a tech need to be to need smart phone to change ram? Wait most severs have that info on the door. just sounds like a way to sell some over priced help app.
some of the other ideas are better staring points to work from.
You know, the "augmented reality" principle is not that bad. Here's for an example: wouldn't you like a Phone app to augment the reality of you paycheck and (factually) make the amount bigger?
No, seriously now: this example benefits of the same cover in the real world as the usefulness of augmented reality to change the RAM.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Tech support is a corporate scam to monetize crappy software.
Now that "free" software is all the rage, the "support services" business model is taking its place. The problem is that the better the software, the less support it requires. This monetarily incentives crappy software, bad interfaces, meaningless error messages, and thin or non-existent manuals. Sadly, even non-free software companies have figured this out and quality has suffered greatly as a result.
It's gotten so bad that for a lot of software you're directed to a "partner" company that can install and configure it for you. So unintuitive that they can get you to spend thousands of dollars on "training".
So really, I don't give a flying poo about new ways companies can further shake me down for using their half-baked products. I'm much more interested in products that do what they claim to without requiring support.
If I need to call tech support your product has failed!!
My
Tech support at my ISP insists on making me power cycle my modem regardless of what the problem is.
"Hi, I'm calling because my line attenuation keeps spiking and the SNR goes so low that I'm getting serious packet loss. It only seems to happen in wet weather, so I think there might be some corrosion on the line somewhere. Can you get it checked for me?"
"Hello sir, if you're having problems with your internet, please turn your router off for 20 seconds, then turn it back on again".
Shit, why didn't I think of that! I mean, I've be doing that as standard first step for what, fifteen years or so now?
They missed the best and most obvious way to improve support: Improve the quality of the products and make the use obvious enough so that support isn't necessary.
But that is a lot less sexy than self-healing robot avatars and not really worth an article.
1.) Don't change anything. Most of the faults I've ever encountered have been the direct result of someone, somewhere changing something. It might be the user futzing around with things they don't understand - or a technical person doing the same. It could be an upgrade that didn't work properly, or that hadn't been tested properly. it could be patches installed to fix some other probem. Whatever causes changes causes problems. The most reliable systems I've ever encountered were a set of Solaris 6 servers that only the supplier knew the root password for. They never crashed, never got upgraded patched or reconfigured. Of course this presupposes you have an operating system and application that actually works - which hopefully the mass market will attain within the bext 20 years or so.
2.) Get the user out of the loop. The worst thing about trying to support a system is having to deal with the user. they don't have the skills to reliably diagnose a fault. They can't follow instructions, they tell you what they think you want to hear and are so often the cause of the problem, in the first place. The single biggest improvement a company can make to its support operation (apart from #1, above) is to install remote diagnostics and remote take-over of users computers if the diagnostics detect a problem.
OK, three secrets:
If you can keep the users from installing their own stuff - software, tunes, their own hardware AND if you can keep them away from the internet, most company's fault rates would drop by at least 50%.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"In the future, machines will be made up of four -- or five or six -- modules. So if something breaks, you will get a CRU [customer-replaceable unit] sent to you," predicts Brendan Keegan, president of Worldwide TechServices, a provider of outsourced service technicians to major high-tech companies. Replacing a CRU will be about as hard as playing with Legos, he says: "If your RAM goes bad, the company might send you Module No. 6 to replace the RAM and a couple of other things. You pop the old one out and pop the new one in. And you are done."
MB, CPU, RAM, PSU, Hard Drive(s) and Graphic card - six modules, user replaceable. You've got broken RAM - we can send you a new one, which you can replace yourself without any soldering.
For less advanced - bigger units - Central Unit, Display Unit, Alphanumeric Input Unit, Pointing Device Unit. Sometimes Printing & Scanning Unit. Just connect/disconnect cables.
We already have it for years.
Businesses seek to hire fewer employees or employees that work for less money. As tech support becomes more and more mechanized we can expect less and less jobs. The jobs that are left will surely demand higher skill levels.
Current catastrophic unemployment levels are reflecting computers and technology elimination the need for workers. The vital part is that government must catch on and make certain that people have spending money even if they have no jobs. Without supporting displaced workers the economy will eventually suffer total collapse and no production at all will take place. Unlike welfare this new issue will not be helped by giving a minimal welfare allowance. The need is for people to be able to buy homes,cars, major appliances, vacations as well as the more trivial stuff. The catch is that those that are working will feel slighted as those that do not work will be living as well as they are.
Sometimes there is a great silence when a job killer becomes common place. The cell phone is a great example. Millions of office workers lost their jobs when cell phones became common. The small company often no longer needed someone sitting at a desk because the management could take phone calls while in the field. Computerized book keeping also made it possible for many small companies to do all or almost all of their book keeping chores. The trend will continue as more and more devices eliminate workers. If we do not adjust to this now we are all going to suffer..
Sorry folks if I'm slightly lame, but having being forced to try tech support over the last years, having also worked there and seen how thing go (especially seen what Finance wants):
A better support is utopic. The all support concept is utopic as much as doing it within several layers of outsourcing is dead nonsense.
All is just a way to grab more money from the business, trying to exploit as much as possible of the subscription model.
You need help? Help yourself. Then post your findings in a public site.
Share the knowledge instead of hiding it behind lawyers and copyrights in order to sell it at a roof high price and still ask for a higher price and ultimately never let people get to it.
Washer:Psst! Hey! Can you guys keep it down. I'm trying to take over the world here. One missing sock at a time.
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
That's the Windows way after all.
... but the users will not. Have you ever tried giving assistance to a person who argues that it's "impossible" that her computer have a password on it, because she doesn't want it to? Or tried to understand why a customer's computer has their cursor "move by itself on the screen" only to figure out after half an hour that they are just grazing their laptop's touchpad with their thumbs while typing? Tech support may change because the products themselves will need less human assistance, but troubleshooting customers is a need that will NEVER go away.
You know what would really make tech support better? Error messages that actually contained some information. To me the absolute WORST part of UI design is error messages. Come on, it's 2010, why are we still giving error codes instead of meaningful error messages?*(ok stuff thats in the kernel and whatnot that will be called bazillions of times and has to perform really well has an excuse, but other programs do not).
:P
As a part time sysadmin trying to understand cryptic error messages is probably the most frustrating part of my job, esp. when they don't give you any information. For example saying "file not found" without actually telling you WHAT file wasn't found. You obviously have that information available to you since you were looking for the file, so why the hell aren't you sharing it?
Even companies that generally have the other parts of their UI down pat are guilty of having crappy error messages. My favorite is Apple's "unexpected error"..... is the unexpected error the opposite of the expected error? I think "Unanticipated" would be a better word, but if they used that people might think that they aren't in fact programming gods
Unfortunately since error messages are probably the least sexy components of UI design there isn't really a lot of motivation to fix them and they will probably stay an afterthought for most projects.
Monstar L
That's modded "funny"? Are we laughing at his ignorance, or with it? What do Slashdot members from India think? Unfortunately for 'Ethanol-fueled', living in the U.S. won't make him smarter than someone in India. On the other hand, getting out of his basement, learning from and about other people and cultures, and seeing the world a little is a great way to learn.
As opposed to now where its some badly trained monkey who always assumes its the users fault, and give you the runaround until you give up.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
How about companies getting their shit together from an engineering and people perspective before selling their products to everyone? Better engineering up front will result in less support cost later. Of course, you could just refuse to support anything, but then you have a lot of pissed off customers who won't buy your shit ever again. If I can't support it myself, I really don't want it. The only things that I ever need tech support for are "Services" which end up not working because the "service provider" sucks. I'm talking about you AT&T, Comcast, Clearwire
What do I get this time? Clippy with bolts in his neck?
Having come from a tech support background I guarantee that little article will cause tech "Senior" management everywhere to consider laying off yet again more support staff with the argument "Hey the technology is there - we'll just use that and save costs!".....
That's the real reason why tech-support sucks these days. Senior Management and Business Planners only look at tech support as a loss... there is no income/benefit for them. So it is always under funded and cut when ever a savings is needed... or in this case "found".....