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."

Comments

Is this a journal entry?

[SeaFox]

No seriously, this reads like a random rant than an actual article. What are we here to discuss again?

Re:Is this a journal entry?

[Canazza]

I could rant all day about how terrible phone-based chat is - having worked on a tech support line - and how often people assume that just because you're on the phone to them you can magically see what's on their screen. How reading from a list of required questions (ie, to figure out what system they're running) exasperates people who expect you to already know this because they've been on your site/using your application and they MUST have entered their own phone number for a reason, if it's not to identify who you are when you phone for help then what's it for?

I certainly wouldn't submit it as a /. article though.

I'd probably leave it as a comment.

Re:Is this a journal entry?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not even a well thought rant, all of his complaints are either true of phone chat or easily overcome by a proper chat system. My favourite part is:

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.

Yeah, because my phone gives me a magic window onto the other user's computer - whereas no text chat system ever invented has been integrated into a remote desktop solution.

Absolutely pathetic.

Re:Is this a journal entry?

[fiannaFailMan]

You know what really grinds my gears? Bank of America customer support.

You go into their system when you call them up, you enter your credentials to prove that you are who you say you are, fight your way through the menu system to a human being, and when you finally speak to someone you have to verbally repeat what you just did through the automated system. What's the point of a machine asking you to enter your information if they're not going to use it? Then every time you get passed to another person you have to start from the top, prove that you are who you say you are, and begin your story from the beginning again. I had one nightmare call where I had to go through this about five different times, including two with the same department because they kept passing me around like a soccer ball because they hadn't a clue who in their corporation does what.

Contrast that with HSBC bank in the UK.

Call them up, enter your account number, it then asks for two digits from your security number (sometimes it's the first and last, sometimes it's the second and third, and so on). The menu is easy to use, and you get through to a person very quickly. As soon as they pick up (within seconds) the first thing the say is "Hi Mr G______ how can I help?" They know my name because my details popped up on their screen before they picked up. If they do need to pass me on to someone else, they put me on hold, contact the other department, explain the situation to them, and then they come back to me saying "Okay Mr G_______, I'm now going to pass you on to Kevin who's going to take it from here." Kevin then says "Hi Mr G_______ I understand that you're trying to do x, y and z, so here we go..."

What can take an hour with BoA can be a five minute job with HSBC. No repeated re-entering of my details, no starting the story from the top with every person I speak to, and people who actually know not only what they're doing, but also know what other people in the company are doing. And that was my experience with HSBC over 10 years ago when I lived in the UK.

The user is saving his time - not yours

[icebike]

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.

Re:The user is saving his time - not yours

[93 Escort Wagon]

I don't really disagree with your overall point - but I must point out:

The user doesn't have to put up with surly condescending attitude on a chat call.

A person can be a condescending jerk just as easily over chat as on the telephone.

The user doesn't have to put up with poor language skills or a heavy accent, or a shitty phone connection.

Yes, yes they do. I've had a live support chat with a tech who barely understood English. And I've had live support chat sessions die for no apparent reason.

The user doesn't have to give out a telephone number, and be monitored and recorded for quality control purposes.

A text chat can be monitored and/or recorded quite easily, and it can be easily tied to an IP address.

Chat has its place, but shouldnt be primary

[toygeek]

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.

Re:Chat has its place, but shouldnt be primary

[Dan541]

If they're a VoIP customer get them to reboot their router while on phone support. The result is 5 minutes of peace until their phones start to work again.

It depends on who you are

[zaphod777]

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.

Efficient how?

[subreality]

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.

Depends heavily on user type

[tucuxi]

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 dislike both...

[_Shad0w_]

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.

Re:IT Pro =! working via chat desk

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:good post

[Kalriath]

It's plain text. Click it all you like, nothing will happen.

you just described the agent

[dutchwhizzman]

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.

Re:Eliza

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you say something tells you he hasn't tried writing a chat bot, ELIZA style?

Opposite experience

[GPLHost-Thomas]

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).

Re:Opposite experience

[SJHillman]

We've had several hard drive failures in the last few months and I've used HP's online chat every time to get them replaced. When I call HP, I'm usually on the phone for a t least 15 minutes listening to on-hold music. On the Chat, my wait is rarely more than two minutes. On the downside, I'm often waiting for them to respond, but it's easier for me to do other things while waiting on the chat than it would be on the phone.

Re:Opposite experience

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It also seems like some of the problems described are a result of a badly designed support-chat system, or a properly designed one with bad policies in place, attempting to shoehorn the phone-based workflow into a rather different environment.

Sure, if I call you, you need to confirm some sort of account/service tag/serial number/customer ID/something because I might be calling you from just about any phone number and automated phone mechanisms are a pretty painful way of entering anything nontrivial. But if I'm starting a text chat over the internet, you can just have a form that requests that information before setting up the chat(and hey, why not send me directly to the right subsection of your support apparatus based on the answers I provide, just for fun?) and then not waste everybody's time by having me re-type it unless there is some specific point of confusion/uncertainty/disagreement with the database.

Similarly, 'I can't see your screen' is one of those problems that can be solved by technology... Your internet chat system doesn't have a way for me to upload screenshots, diagnostic logs, etc. to your support people why exactly? Yeah, you can't do that in phone support, so people make do; but you could do better in chat support.

Obviously, none of this is the poor support guy's fault, it isn't his system; but a chat-support system that is more painful than a phone support system, despite vastly greater ancillary capabilities, is just plain broken.

Re:Opposite experience

[TheDarkMaster]

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.

Re:Opposite experience

[EvilIdler]

I have good experiences from both ends. But that required a login system where identification is already handled. When the customer is logged in, the chat presents all the details the tech needs. Free for all chat is only useful for sales, and shouldn't be used for tech-support.

Re:Opposite experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I too have had the opposte experience. Fed up of having to call to premium rate phone number and being on hold for 10 minutes before getting someone who can barely speak English, asks me to repeat my name several times, etc, I now see these support phone numbers as another way for the company to make money. I've started using the web chat whenever possible now, and my experience has been great.

Re:Opposite experience

[ewanm89]

From the support end, fielding multiple chats simultaneously is possible, while waiting for one person to reply one can start to help the next person, this can not be done on the phone. Miscommunication is less, names aren't misspelled so easily or just not quite heard right, you don't need to be sat their going through a sequence of numbers or characters and checking it is correct character by character. Finally if you give a set of instructions, it can all be given at once and they are left to get on with it, they can reread the message to check the next step, they don't need to bother you again 'till there is an actual problem or it solves the issue.

Re:Opposite experience

[jafiwam]

This would work if the CRM database allows more than one instance of accounts to be opened up and worked. The two or three CRM suites I have used (including recently created ones) do not do this. For purely technical questions it would work though. Like, interior tier 2 support for the tier 1 folks.

Re:Opposite experience

[Deep Esophagus]

That's exactly why my daughter prefers chat/email over phone support. She's a CSR for a retailer, not IT, but the process is similar. Get the relevant customer info, get the question, look up the answer, lather, rinse, repeat. And yes, she has hotkeys out the wazoo for the routine responses.

She says with chat, she can keep 4 or 5 conversations going at once -- sometimes in different languages, thanks to her college Spanish and Google Translate -- and close out far more calls than her peers.

The other advantage from her point of view is, the online CSRs aren't required to upsell like they have to on the phone. "Would you like a nice parka to go with those skis?" She really hates that.

Re:Opposite experience

[Deep Esophagus]

You'd think that the login system would eliminate the initial exchange of information, but in my experience with tech support that's rarely the case. Put in my name, my product info, a brief summary of the problem, and invariably it's "Hello, my name is Mary. How can I help you today?" Well, "Mary", you could help me by reading the information I just took five minutes to look up and type into the login page before I got here.

Re:Opposite experience

[DeDmeTe]

We've had several hard drive failures in the last few months and I've used HP's online chat every time to get them replaced. When I call HP, I'm usually on the phone for a t least 15 minutes listening to on-hold music. On the Chat, my wait is rarely more than two minutes. On the downside, I'm often waiting for them to respond, but it's easier for me to do other things while waiting on the chat than it would be on the phone.

I agree. I use Dell's support chat every week. I hate calling them but for a different reason, I always seem to have a hard time understanding the person on the other end of the line.

Re:Opposite experience

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is you already know you have a failed drive. You did the troubleshooting already and you are just trying to get a new one. That is a piece of cake. Anyone can do that with a few emails as well. Try chatting with them when you need someone to actually trouablshoot. Like a HP SAN fiber link goes down at random, a firmware update has hung, you have a raid group that is reporting errors or the vscrub is failing or you have a troublesome NC375 embedded NIC and you are getting TCP errors in Windows and the link keep going down. For those, the online chat is useless. At that point, they will convert it to a regular ticket and now you have to wait for a call back or email and then basically start over with someone else. There is little to no integration between the chat support and the non chat support pipeline.

I like the way EMC does chat support. I've done many advanced troublshooting sessions with them that started with a chat. If the troublshooting involves anything more than basic instructions, they will immediately offer you a webex session and you are still talking to the same person in that webex. If that proves to difficult or further escalation is needed, the notes and existing troublshooting effort are transfererd over to phone and or ground on site support. It flows up the support ladder very well.

Love it

[jamesh]

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 :)

Same Here

[Slashdot Parent]

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.

Easier to deal with foreign CSRs

[Slashdot Parent]

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".