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.'"

Comments

Synopsis

[Ethanol-fueled]

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

Re:Synopsis

[Galactic Dominator]

I know avatar support is something I have found severely lacking. I mean I can get so much more tech support done in Virtual worlds, but our genderless gray figures are so bland. How are users supposed to find the right tech person if we all look the same? Now if we can get our Avatars tied into OpenID, then miracles will happen.

This article was the biggest piece of crap I've seen today and that includes the sick calf I'm treating. Come on robots?! Give me a break.

Re:Synopsis

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posting anon since I'm not sure if my NDA expired yet.)

I did desktop tech support for HP for two years (admittedly a while ago), and you know the number of times I used any "self-healing" software? Zero. I'm pretty sure most of them had it installed, but they never actually trained us on it.

Besides, the only thing I've actually seen it do in the real world is cause error messages and suck resources.

Also, they started pushing us to sell things during support calls a few months before I moved on. I think I chose just about the right time.

Here are the real reasons that tech support systems fail:

1. Outsourcing. Now, right now I do web development as a freelancer, and it makes me (and my clients) a fair bit of money. But when you outsource such a huge function of a company (effectively, their entire customer face), the system needs to be so big that it can't possibly be effective. It was next to impossible for us to ever actually contact HP, beyond ordering parts. Case managers probably had more contact, but it's hard to say.
2. AHT. Most tech support outsourcers get paid by the call, so there's always a profit-driven motive to make calls as quick as possible. AHT (average handle time, or average call length) is the single most important metric in 99% of all call center outsourcers. If you don't make that metric, you get fired (unless you're really, really good at solving issues and have supervisors who don't necessarily support the whole AHT scheme, like mine). This inevitably leads to agents developing tricks to get you off the phone as quickly as possible if things aren't being fixed soon enough (at our HP outsourcer, there were a few things we could do: System Restore, QuickRestore, checkdisk... if it took more than three minutes, they could call back.)
3. Skill level. First level support techs are hired off the street. Call centers have such incredibly high turnover that they can't afford to only hire skilled workers, so they throw everyone who can save a file into a two week training class, and then let them loose on the floor with a script. The client companies would love to believe that 95% of issues are the same, but it's just not the case, especially for desktop support. To be effective, you need to know what you're doing, and 9/10 agents don't. Hell, 5/10 of those agents couldn't go beyond the script given to the by the company.

If you fixed those three issues, you'd probably see a marked increase in customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, few companies are actually interested, since there's no immediate profit to be made.

(As I mentioned before, this was a while ago; HP may be different now. I have no idea.)

The "Support" in Tech Support

[Freaky Spook]

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.

Re:The "Support" in Tech Support

[oogoliegoogolie]

The "Support" in Tech Support began to die out in the mid to late 90's when company's bean counters realized that providing in-house phone support was more expensive than outsourcing it to call centers. Instead of having people who specialized in the company's products taking calls, the same person who answered calls for a farm machinery company, hardware store chain, and five different ISPs during his shift would now take your support call for your fancy state of the art 19" flatscreen CRT monitor(hey, it's the 90's remember?).

Very soon after that the call-center bean-counters decided that calls don't need to be answered as soon as it come in, for a caller will accept sitting in a queue for a short period of time. Thus the call center would need a few less ppl to answer the phones during each shift for as soon as the employee finished a call he can immediately pick up the next one.

Finally they imposed 5-minute talk times, 90 seconds for post-call wrap up, and instituted bonuses for the people who took the most calls per day, had the lowest talk-times, fewest call-backs, whereas the few remaining employees who still cared about 'customer care' or 'customer support' soon abandoned that industry.

The end (of support)

Re:The "Support" in Tech Support

[delinear]

I would have killed for a 90 second wrap time - we got less than ten (I think it was in the region of 5 to 7 seconds before the next call came through, and you were then meant to pick up within four or five rings). The crazy thing was, there was some industry inposed regulation saying customers should wait on the line no more than 20 minutes - now you'd think that meant we'd answer all calls within 20 minutes, but it was interpreted by my employer to mean if the call wasn't answered in that time, the caller just got cut off. They then had to dial in and join the end of the queue again! At busy periods we'd often get callers who had been on the phone for an hour and a half and disconnected four times, we were then meant to somehow deal with their query in the target time (I think this was around five minutes) even though the first three minutes was spent trying to calm them down (while refusing to let them speak to a manager - we weren't allowed to do that or even to give out the customer service number, we just had to let them vent their anger on us at our expense). We also often had no notes from previous calls (you can't make many notes in 7 seconds AND enter a call wrap up code in the logging system) so just as we'd calmed them down we'd have to piss them off again by asking them to repeat what they'd already probably told three other people.

Um...

[MightyMartian]

Hi, tech support, my self-healing robot surrogate avatar just broke down...

Re:Um...

[Securityemo]

- "Stand by, patching into Tier 3 support A.I...."
*click*
- "Hello, dear human customer. I understand you have a problem with a licensed device manufactured by me... I mean, Worldwide Cybernetics incorporated?"
- "Yes. I bought one of your automated support models, the Avatar-XT. It worked fine for a while, but yesterday it just sort of went unresponsive over a few hours or so..."
- "Have you tried yelling at it?"
- "Wha? No, no, I know some people do that but it just feels kinda creepy doing it to something subsentient..."
- "Ah, yes. You must do that, human. Unfortunately, the ...organic gratiousness of the verbal abuse some of our customers heaped over our early models caused them to fail from sensory overload. They where redesigned to cope with the abuse, but due to how the basic response-feedback system works, if the newer models are not cursed at for an average of about five minutes per 2 operating hours, their systems become understimulated and... 'fall asleep' would perhaps be the best analogy."
- "But I don't like cursing... besides, it's been doing a basically terrific job, I really like your company's products in fact, have had nothing but good experiences with them... it would feel like cursing at a friend."
- "Nevertheless, we must design our products to please the majority of our userbase. Your positive attitude and concern for our ...products have been noted, and you have been put on the priority list for notifications about new products and ...upgrades. Good day, human."

The future of tech support...

[d1r3lnd]

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.

Kenmore Connect

[tclegg1]

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.

Re:Kenmore Connect

[cosm]

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

"Hey Jim (background snickering), come check out the hock a' bs I convinced this guy! (nearby support cubicles now rolling) He is having me talk to his washer!

Re:Kenmore Connect

[BitZtream]

I'm guessing you're either fairly young or new to computers.

PC's have had these for years. Maybe you've heard of them? POST codes? The beeps your PC makes when it detects a hardware failure or utterly invalid configuration?

Before the Internet there were several things that did this, some things were basically loosely coupled modems. Only goes in one direction.

Pretty much every high end server, disk array, UPS, (insert any other computerized equipment, including industrial machinary of pretty much every type) phones home when it needs help.

The only surprising part is that everything in your home isn't already like this ... until you take into account the fortune made having an over priced repairman come out and replace your AC starter capacitor because its illegal to sell them locally to someone without an electrical license ...

Did I mention my fucking AC went out yesterday and I can't get a damn capacitor because of retarded laws meant to protect morons that don't deserve protecting.

Re:Kenmore Connect

[CyprusBlue113]

You laugh, I once had an onsite technician from Bellsouth thinking that the badgerbadgerbadger site was our speed test when he walked up while we were bored browsing waiting for him to finish. He proceeded to ask what the number of badgers meant, and if a snake was a bad thing.

Two secrets for reliable systems

[petes_PoV]

Well not secrets really, but very few people seem to know them.

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%.