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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."
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.
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.
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).
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.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
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.