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IT Support Pro Tells Why He Hates Live Chat
colinneagle writes "When someone calls into support, we first verify his or her account information. On the phone, this can take seconds. On a chat feature it can take a minute or two because people type slower than they speak. I also find that when people type in a chat they try to make the process go quicker by abbreviating the conversation. This means they might not give me all the information they would have if we were talking on the phone. The more descriptive a customer is about a problem, the easier and faster it will be to solve their issue. But the nature of a chat feature means people will abbreviate their stories to be more efficient, without realizing this just makes it more difficult to solve the problem. I end up asking more questions, which takes longer for the full story to come out. Explaining how to fix a problem can be difficult on the phone, but on a chat feature where I can't see your screen and likely have less information to work with, it can make it impossible to tackle a complex issue. It would be much more efficient for both me and the customer to talk on the phone so I can walk the customer through the steps I am taking."
No seriously, this reads like a random rant than an actual article. What are we here to discuss again?
Users can multitask during a text chat session, and the support staff can sit and wait while the user looks up their account code, or what ever.
The user doesn't have to put up with surly condescending attitude on a chat call.
The user doesn't have to put up with poor language skills or a heavy accent, or a shitty phone connection.
The user doesn't have to give out a telephone number, and be monitored and recorded for quality control purposes.
Chat sessions aren't something users were pressing for, they are an invention of the service organizations to cut costs.
If those organizations find they don't like them, I'm sure they could hire some competent English speaking help and actually teach them something more than reading through a solution tree in a book for a product they have never laid eyes on, while ignoring every thing the user is saying.
Especially when these solution trees invariably end with some stupid advice "like factory reset your device" thereby wiping out weeks if not months of work.
Also, people tend to think while typing, and questions are actually more well though out.
A stead stream of verbal "um, ah, like, seedimsayin?, I mean, Huh? Where? How do I do that? Wait while I find a pencile" etc. etc. etc. is not an efficiency model I like to engage in. Neither is explaining the problem to 4 consecutive flack catchers before finally finding someone who as even the shadow of a clue.
So, the service industry made this bed, they can damn well sleep in it. You built it, you fix it.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I need to preface this by saying that I am a 20 year IT veteran who does phone support for one job, and onsite support for another.
Phone support: Takes a guy 5 minutes to finally get to the point: Internet Explorer is crashing and he thinks its because his cable internet is going down, and he is calling to complain. I have to really listen to this guy and let him get through 5 minutes of bullshit before he gets to the point "Internet Explorer has stopped responding" etc. The rest of the conversation was full of more bullshit, but that isn't relevant.
Chat support: I'm on site migrating a dead computers data into a new computer, and there's this industry specific software that needs to be reinstalled and have the data restored. The website is a fuster cluck of documentation, so I hit the live chat option. The person on the other end was quick, had correct answers, and I had the info I needed to do the migration in short order, and lo and behold, it *worked* the first time.
Now, in both cases you have a very experienced technical person on one end of the line, and in the second case apparently, two. Had my customer been on chat in the second scenario, they'd probably STILL be trying to figure it out. So, it has its places, such as when both parties are literate enough (both computer and English) to have a normal conversation. But for "normal" people who type in "my internet is broke" even though they have to BE online to type that... yeah... welcome to my hell.
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For an IT person it is much easier, why should I wait on hold to get a HDD or MB replaced under warranty. My time is valuable and when I need to spend an hour on the phone to get something like that done it is really a waste of time and energy. Also when doing end user support a lot of times it is faster and easier when I can fire back an email with detailed instructions and screenshots on how to fix whatever issue it is. For those times when the problem is too complicated then you pick up the phone do a remote control session and resolve the issue. There is a fine balance between all of them.
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It would be much more efficient...
It depends how you measure efficiency. It would solve the problem faster in many cases, but that doesn't mean it would use less of your time. Both you and the customer can multitask much more effectively in chat. You're off helping someone else while they reboot, instead of just racking up minutes of dead air. I consider that to be more efficient, even if it takes longer.
It's also much more efficient when you have a rambley customer. Instead of cutting him off continuously or waiting it out, you do something else while he types up his whole story, then you skim it to find the bits you wanted to know.
I personally find it much more enjoyable to use chat as a customer. I'll call in if I need something fixed RIGHT NOW, but most of the time chat is much less frustrating than waiting on hold.
A technically-savvy (eg.: Bob McHacker) user should be a lot easier to communicate with via chat than a non-technical user (eg.: Joe Sixpack).
To start with, expert users typically type almost as fast as they speak (seriously: if any of you out there work in IT for a living and cannot touch-type, it is an investment well worth it). As others have pointed out above, both user and helper can multitask; and many computer tasks end up involving huge amounts of staring at a progress bar. You can copy&paste error messages and links back and forth. You can actually think your answers through while you type them, and not waste anyone's time with errr, uhh, yeah, and other "are you alive/i am alive" on-the-phone protocol overhead.
In TFA, there is no coherent explanation of the type of support / users that this "Pro" is addressing. The article is less than a screenful of general ranting against not having the undivided attention of a user. Nothing to see here, move along.
I'm one of those stereotype geeks who doesn't like talking to people, outside a small circle of friends (and I find talking to them stressful at times). I'd rather just e-mail support with details and get an answer "whenever". If they need more information, they can ask for it.
I do not need everything in my life to happen *now*. I am perfectly content for things to take a little time, so long as no-one is taking the piss. Which is just as well, because IT at work will get round to dealing with your problem whenever they feel like it and you can't actually phone them anyway, you have to submit support tickets.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
The word "professional" just as much applies to a 1st level helpdesk tech just as much as it applies to anyone in the higher tiers. Perhaps you would like to consult a dictionary?
Not sure why you feel like you need to be a condescending and demeaning asshole about it.
Probably because they did NOT approach it from a "We analysed our support procedures, and came up with a new, more effective system using live chat" angle, but did a "I hear live chat is the next hip thing to to, let's do it" while keeping the process itself exactly the same as it was on the phone.
And NOTHING is worse in IT than changing the tools just for the sake of changing the tools. New Tools should be chosen because they fit the process.
It's plain text. Click it all you like, nothing will happen.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
. . . chat is better.
It takes just as long on the phone, when you have to decipher a bizarre accent. Like, finally figuring out after a minute, that "aaatsch" or "hatch" means "eight."
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I don't know about that, I'm a fan of live-chat support when I need help. Depending upon how it's implemented it can make things a lot easier as there's less repetition and it's a lot less likely that I'll mishear something or they'll mishear something and have to repeat it.
It also means that I don't have to have a phone which can make a difference sometimes. Now for things that are directly related to the computer that doesn't really apply.
I've never had any "live chat" calls where the agent was swift at responding, asking the right question, using the information I just typed or not helping at least 3 other people (they admitted that nonsense answers/requests from them were supposed to be typed in another customers window) or even fast at typing.
Bottom line is, either be good at your work and like it, or go flip burgers. Being an "IT Support Pro" isn't for everybody and if you blame your problems on the user, you don't have the right attitude. I know I just described 95% of the help desk staffers, but that is the sad truth, it's a dirty job and good staff is hard to find for that.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Why do you say something tells you he hasn't tried writing a chat bot, ELIZA style?
There is a lot of difference in support desks, some actually have more hard then easy questions. When I call to my helpdesk, almost every time a chat screen is opened as well, it keeps me from stating error codes, and the other side from typing them out (both would have more errors then a simple copy-paste). I do not consider myself a particulary stupid user, but I prefer the combination of speech and chat to chat alone. Interpretation of written speech is harder, and it is easier to say "I get the error code in the chat, when I use program A and Program B under circumstance A. In the chat are the event logs of both programs, bolded are some things I find odd. I suspect this is the error, but can't look at the serverside, could you check if I am correct?." Another client here started chat sessions with end users, which is less of a success, mainly due to underestimations of the staffing it'd cost, but also because and users will type exactly what they'd say, but more slowly. Chat sessions are a nice tool, if used correctly, which is not for first line work.
Funny that I read this, when I have the total opposite experience. I found that it's cool to use the chat, so that people can actually type their domain names, account names, or whatever. I found restful that people aren't on the phone and expect you to fix in the second, or find their account immediately. It's also very nice that I can cut/past URL, like for example the one explaining what a glue record is on wikipedia and so on. It's also quite cool if a customer types slowly, that way, I can continue to do what I was doing at the same time, but anyway, it's very rare that our customers are typing that slow.
Maybe this has to do with the type of customers you get on the other side of the line (ours might know more).
Live chat support is one of the best things ever invented. When you type, I can't hear your accent, which removes a huge barrier to communication for most phone support call centre's i've had to deal with. And I can type faster than I can speak (which is slowly for the benefit of the english-is-not-my-first-language person on the other end of the line). And after i've typed the person on the other end can take their time to digest what i've written, and I can look back over what i've written and amend anything I might have missed, and they can cut & pasted into their own internal knowledgebase.
As for the submitter, I have these questions:
. In what stupid world is account verification information not submitted via a web form before the chat session is initiated? Sure, there might be some people who don't have the required information and it has to be done in the chat session itself, but that should be a rare exception.
. As above, why isn't a summary of the problem also provided via web form before the chat session begins? Most chat support web site's i've seen make you enter a description of your problem, and then offer a few possible resolutions based on a keyword search, alongside the "begin chat now" button, which is a huge timesaver for when people haven't checked the FAQ's first.
. If seeing the users screen is a requirement to do your job, then there is _plenty_ of software available to fill that need. Is something like gotomeeting or teamviewer really out of the question? (i'd never let a remote tech that I didn't know into _my_ screen, but that's not the point :)
Way back when companies started live chat I thought it might be a good idea, since you can save the transcript and be sure you didn't forget to write anything down. But all I ever get back when I ask a question is the closest canned answer to my question. Not, mind you, an answer to my question, just an answer to a common question that has roughly the same words. For all I can tell there's just a primitive program on the other end which picks out the first four words from my query and then gives the FAQ response based on a simple match.
The elephant in the room with regards to support is that THERE IS NOT A SINGLE WAY TO PROVIDE SUPPORT THAT DOES NOT HAVE DRAWBACKS.
Take on-site visits. Tech shows up. Problem is intermittent and doesn't occur while the tech is there. Tech's time is wasted. User's time is wasted. No one is happy. Or tech shows up to find that user doesn't have database/network/etc. rights and there is nothing tech can do. Techs have to take extra steps to document what was going on during the visit.
Take phone calls. Hold times. Bad accents. VOIP over spotty networks. The phone call doesn't exist unless the tech properly logs it with an accurate description of the call.
Take email. You've got most of the defects mentioned in TFA that apply to chat combined with a gap between messages that could span days or even weeks.
The closest thing to a solution is TO PICK THE METHOD THAT WORKS BEST FOR A GIVEN SITUATION.
Depending on the environment, some of the defects mentioned above might be a deal breaker. Which defects are the most critical will vary depending on what sort of support is being offered. Moreover, each of the methods above also have different advantages.
Take chat, since the TFA was about chat. Many vertical software vendors are starting to build chat into their apps in a way that is an incredible aid to support teams. If a user can click the chat button and drag a problem record to the chat window, the support analyst now has access to a wealth of information that would take eons to get a user to properly describe over the phone or through email. More sophisticated tools might include a way for the analyst to access a log of actions the user took last to see what sequence of events triggered the problem or a way for the analyst to share the application screen of the user.
But, of course, there will still be times when a 60 second phone call can hash out something that would take 10 minutes in a chat session or trading 15 or 20 emails. It all depends on what kind of support is needed and the people on either end of the communications link.
Sometimes a conversation will involve a lot of things that copy and paste is critical for. It also allows one to be a bit more multitasking on either end of the conversation. Particularly if you are using the interaction largely as a pass-through for concrete error-messages/codes and commands to execute on a cli, chat is best.
Frequently in a conversation, I arrange to actually talk to the person (regardless of which end of the conversation I'm on). This happens when a situation is a bit more murky so there is no concrete place to gather failure data, or if a solution warrants an explanation of how things are the way they are and the intent embodied in the steps to resolution. This could be because the fix process is involved and will require a bit of adaptability on the problematic side or just a way to have the person afflicted learn and avoid/fix similar sorts of situations in the future.
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Fixed the headline. Carry on.
I've never actually been on the "support staff" of a live chat feature, but at my client, their live chat support thingy collects all kinds of important information about the user (browser/OS/cookies/login/session/IP/godknowswhatelse). Saves the user from having to type all that in and saves the support tech from having to explain where to find it all.
On the customer end, I really like the live chat support because then I can continue what I was doing while the CSR researches whatever it is that needs researching and I don't have a phone glued to my ear.
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I also found it funny, because my assistance by chat was ALWAYS several times better than phone support. Try for example dictate your full name or an email address by telephone.
I've found that it's also a lot easier to deal with foreign CSRs via chat than it is via phone. I think most Indians are better at reading/writing English than in speaking. Also, there is little concern over trying to understand each other's accents.
Definitely a big fan of the "live chat".
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock