IT Support Pro Tells Why He Hates Live Chat 228
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."
It depends on who you are (Score:5, Interesting)
Efficient how? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Short-term thinking (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Opposite experience (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
Right. If a rep is sitting around just waiting for the customer to finish typing, then that is very inefficient. I would think they should be handling multiple chats at the same time.
His responses should require minimal interaction. His first couple responses should either be completely automated, or at least copy/pasted. He should also have multiple troubleshooting steps and solutions ready to be pasted into the chat window. And, hopefully, his chat application should be able to at least paste images, which would really help guide the customer through the steps.
Further, the OP seems to forget how many times that either he or the customer has to repeat himself on the phone because he couldn't understand. Plus, you can't just fire off 5 steps for the customer to take at once while on the phone, like you can in chat. You have to wait until the customer is done with each step before moving on the next. And, of course, you can only talk to one customer at a time on the phone. A chat rep should be handling multiple cases at a time.
Re:Opposite experience (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Is this a journal entry? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.