Tech Support Getting Even Worse 529
ehiris writes: "Came across an article on CNN about tech support falling out of the useful category. The interesting quote: 'In part, the problem can be blamed on tech companies' attempts to cope with shrinking profit margins and a bad business environment.' Bad tech support makes life hard and new technology becomes undesirable to the general public. Which company has the best support? What are they doing well? What would you like to see improve about tech support?"
sigh... (Score:2, Troll)
Re:sigh... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure that Microsoft has poor tech support, but I'm also very sure that Microsoft is not the only company that does. There are probably dozens, hundreds maybe, of companies with even worse tech support.
To blame only Microsoft for industry-wide poor tech support is rather biased and narrowminded, IMHO.
Just my 2.55861 JPY.
Re:sigh... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:sigh... (Score:2, Insightful)
My original post was not intending to be funny or a troll; I was completely serious.
As they say (Score:2, Funny)
Those who almost can, support
Those who can't, teach
Those who really can't, manage.
Re:As they say (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who can't, teach
As a university professor, I can assure you that there are a large number of folks in academia who could, but prefer the freedom of not having to. Personally, I'm pretty happy about being able to get up at 9am, go for a nice long bike ride, take a shower, wander in to the office, work on a grant proposal for the afternoon, kick around a few ideas with my graduate students, lecture, and then wrap up the day with a glass of wine and a few eager to please co-eds. How can you beat a life like that?.. Did I forget to mention that consulting gigs pay $75 - $150 an hour.. What a life..
Re:As they say (Score:5, Informative)
Grin... Oops, I guess the adolescent, or dirty old man, in me got loose for a second there..
The truth is, you're generally correct.. There are a lot of academics who've never bothered to try. They spend their days in the library or their offices trying to prove that when the stars align just right, there might be a chance that some phenomena will occur. On the other hand, there are a lot of professors that I've had the pleasure of working with who were very productive in industrial positions and returned to the academic world simple to improve the quality of life for their families.
A good friend of mine was an up-and-comer at Boeing and decided that the money wasn't worth it if he missed watching his two daughters grow up.. Another colleague has recently decided to return to academia. He has headed successful projects for the government and is currently running a successful business but feels that it's time to help prepare the next round of engineers.
Those are just two examples.. My choice was a little different. I looked around and interviewed a little as I finished up my degree, but decided that I would be a lot happier in an environment that is driven by the pursuit of crazy ideas.. Yes, the results of those pursuits have to be published, and you'll never achieve tenure without obtaining a sizable chunk of external funding, but the university doesn't really care what you study as long as you meet the above requirements.. That freedom allows me to study topics ranging from neuro-physiology to turbulent fluid dynamics..
I still may not meet your definition of someone who tries, but whoop-dee-doo.. To each their own, right?
Re:As they say (Score:2)
Those who almost can, support
This comment really hits the nail on the head. You shouldn't be so surprised that J. Random Support-Tech is a bit clueless. If he knew so much about how to keep your systems running, he'd probably have your job instead of working in some godforsaken cubicle farm call center.
Cheers,
IT
Re:As they say (Score:3, Interesting)
If you got me randomly you would get 240+ undergraduate college hours (Poli Sci/History/Comp Sci), and a varied computer history: DOS, Windows, OS/2, Macintosh, Unix, Linux, mainframes, Novell, TCP/IP, PHP, Perl, C/C++, Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Oracle, MySQL.
I actually have enough "clue" where I was able to help one of our students fix the damage Gator did to her machine BEFORE I read in CNET about Gator using pop-up downloads on unsuspecting users. You have sinned by overgeneralizing, which requires some mighty big assumptions on your part and you know what they say about assumptions... What is so great about your job? Are you a system/network admin who lives in a data center or NOC? Or a programmer who is chained to his cubicle cranking out code? Or some IT manager, ruining dreams and aspirations of the programmers, admins and techs alike?
I am a hardware/software tech at a large community college. The job has its ups and downs but the best part is a varying routine and casual atmosphere (jeans and Hawaiian shirts are what I usually wear).
Early in the semester you spend a lot of time supporting students and as the semester progresses those calls go down then instructor calls go up. Later in the semester you start doing other projects in between prepping for the next semester.
Some days (like today) happen to suck -- WindowsUpdate/Symantec: lather, rinse, repeat. Other days rule -- coding dynamic pages using PHP/MySQL and going to Slashdot to do a little IT "research"
Some days you get to set up the LCD projector for a presentation for some event. Other days you drive to one of the other campuses to train one of the instructors how to effectively use a piece of software. Other days you download and install the newest SSH or PHP to prevent a potential exploit from bringing down your server.
Sure I get paid less, but I don't have to specialize so much I do the same thing day in and day out. I like the flexibility of my current position so much that I know that I would have to make substantially more money to work in many other IT jobs out there.
Besides, I like two weeks off *PAID* during Xmas break and one week off *PAID* during Spring break...
Sure not Verizon! (Score:5, Funny)
Last year I had a data T1 fail, so I called the Business Support Group. Got a tech on the line and explained the trouble. He asked if he could put me on hold and look into it; I agreed and he put me on hold.
After 5 minutes or so, my phone rings, so I park the line on hold and pick up the second call.
It's the same tech from Verizon calling to let us know that our circuit was down! I explained that *I* was the one who just called him and he became extremely confused (as if he wasn't before).
That was something else, lemme tell ya!
Re:Sure not Verizon! (Score:2)
Re:Sure not Verizon! (Score:3, Insightful)
ambitious people with vision
pulling a check clockwatchers
morons who non-technical management hired with the learning capacity of anesthetized anchovies
Those that fell into the former category worked hard to get out of the repetitive work of support. They stuided and built the bridges to get out. Why? Because being a support person simply does not pay enough. If corporate america thought it important to keep their customers in contact with proficient people they would do things to help make sure they kept the best in those jobs!
Some Advice
Catapulting youself from Tech Support upwards is only possible within a corporate IT department.
If you are at a Big Ass Call center (IBM owns many in Colorado) and you don't want to be a sell-out service lever manager corporate dicksnot, your best strategy is to get into the highest level of technical support and then join another corporation.
At Big Ass Call Centers they focus on metrics and business jack-off garbage. In a corporate IT environment (generally) they care about quality solutions.
Re: Tech Support and beyond.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's frustrating to see truly talented and superior tech. support people slowly burn out underneath a system that doesn't recognize their value.
One of my good friends did phone support for a large financial firm for 6 or 7 months, and all of his co-workers quickly figured out he was the sharpest one there when it came to difficult-to-solve problems.
Unfortunately, the call-center manager was under strict order not to pay anyone more than a fixed salary cap that was unreasonably low. Therefore, he had no way to reward my friend for his hard work. He tried doing everything he could think of, including taking him out for Friday night happy hour and buying all the drinks and food - but let's face it -- that doesn't exactly pay the bills.
Then, management changed, and the new call center manager wasn't even made aware that my friend was doing an above-average job. Even if raises were eventually offered to the group, he would have been stuck in a rut for another 6+ months just to re-prove his value to the new boss! (The new guy wasn't even technically minded. He said many times that he "really had no clue about any of this technical, computer stuff". He was simply a "people person".)
It's because solving technical problems is hard (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting those resources online to let you solve your own problems really is the better solution.
Re:It's because solving technical problems is hard (Score:2)
Putting those resources online to let you solve your own problems really is the better solution.
Oooooh, don't say that, don't even whisper that. The only way for OSS to make money is via support, remember?
Re:It's because solving technical problems is hard (Score:2, Funny)
This reminds me of som hilarious Dilbert cartoons
Manager: We're discontinuing technical support for all our products. A recorded message will explain it to the caller this way: "In Order to serve customers better, we've discontinued technical support."
Dilbert: How does that serve customers better?
Manager: We'll redirect those resources to other areas.
Dilbert: What other areas?
Manager: Profits. That makes your bonus larger. Any other questions?
Dilbert: Apparently I'm engulfed in evil.
Manager: That's the spirit!
And here's an even better one:
PHB: Our new strategy is to make defective products and charge for technical support.
PHB (wicked grin): Heh-heh...our user manual is totally incomprehensible. We didn't plan it that way - we were LUCKY!
Dilbert: I'm so proud to be here.
PHB: It all came together when I realised I hate our customers.
Re:It's because solving technical problems is hard (Score:3, Interesting)
That's what I throught at first. Then after 6 months of working in a convenience store to try to pay back my student loans and do things like eat, I got a call back from the local telco. So now I'm a T1 tech support guy. It's not what I want to be doing and I'd like to think I am very overqualified for the position, along with half of the people there. But I'm in an area with a an IT slump and it's the only job vaguely related to IT that I was able to get after finishing school. It beats working in a convenience store for a couple dollars above minimum wage.
Putting those resources online to let you solve your own problems really is the better solution.
The place I work for has made a big push to get most of the information online. The website has most of the stuff we go through on the phone, but a lot of customers (picture your computer-illiterate grandmother type) prefer to speak with somebody rather than go through the 'net. That and if your connection's down, it's kinda hard to look it up online.
Good Support != Support for end users (Score:4, Informative)
If the tech support line is set up so end users can call in when they have trouble, the people on the other end of the line will be the clueless idiots we all know and love. This is because the average customer calling in will have their problem solved by one of the following manners:
- reboot the machine and/or redial
- reinstall the software or drivers
- fix the configuration (i.e. RTFM)
These are certainly the vast majority of the issues and so when non-clueless people phone with a real issue, the chance of getting it solved by people who only know how to fix the above three is very low.
On the other hand, for support that is designed for vendors, it is a different world. When a vendor phones a supplier for support, you can be fairly certain that a tech from the vendor will be phoning and that this tech has eliminated the obvious problems already. Because of this, support for vendors tends to be very good. Having dealt with supplier tech support myself, I can say that wait times are low (usually less than 2 minutes) and the competency of the person you talk to is high.
The bottom line is that unless the end user gets smarter (highly unlikely) we cannot expect much help from the front line mainstream tech support personnel.
Re:Good Support != Support for end users (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, guy calls in and says, "the internet is down." That can be so many differen things it's all but impossible to troubleshoot. Especially if they don't know what a modem is and they think their computer is a CPU.
Marketing Eats Support (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember when I used to buy computers from DEC in the mid-80s. You would get a genuinely impressive series of well-indexed and comprehensive manuals. When you couldn't find the answer there, you could call technical support and talk to a technically capable person. If that person could not help you, they would put you through to an engineer.
I also remember the first day that I got put through to a clueless, script reading, customer support representative at some anonymous call center when I called DEC. After that, I bought PC clones from Gateway or PCs Unlimited (eventually Dell). The only point of ponying up the big bucks was for the extensive documentation and support.
DEC tried to become a different company via changed marketing and survive. It died. You cannot abandon your customers and survive.
Re:Marketing Eats Support (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Marketing Eats Support (Score:5, Interesting)
I once worked for a company where the Tech Support organization reported to Sales/Marketing. I thought it was odd at first, but there were a lot of advantages. If you put Tech Support under an Engineering organization then the best Tech Support people always get moved into Engineering before long, leaving only script readers manning the phones.
The Marketing/Sales organization always had access to Technicians who really understood the product. Engineers tend to blow smoke about the capabilities and shortcomings of the products. Sales could also tap the best Tech Support people for pre-sales technical support.
Sales/Marketing in this organization also had the Technical Services arm. People from Tech Support could be called upon for custom programming, configuration and consultation with customers for hire. Sales/Marketing was intensely interested in these areas as it helped them design products. It may have led to some products being in somewhat of a kit form, with the real capabilities being revealed through programming, but that was actually a plus. Everybody benefits from having programmable, flexible products.
Sales/Marketing has the most stake in Tech Support, as Tech Support works with the same customers that Sales/Marketing does. A customer who is unhappy with Tech Support is going to take it out on his Salesman. You might as well put the Sales organization into a position to actually do something about bad Tech Support. I've seen many companies where the Salespeople implicitly air the internal dirty laundry about Tech Support, complaining about how they can't get anything out of them, but promising to take it to the highest levels. Better to have the Sales people working together with Tech Support rather than as finger pointers.
Finally, if you think about it, it made Sales/Marketing realize that supportable products was the best way to get and keep customers. There was less Sales/Marketing blaming and rushing Engineering and more working together to get out a product that could be supported.
I've not seen that hierarchy elsewhere. This company had other problems, but that was one of thier highlights.
Re:Marketing Eats Support (Score:2)
A collection of stories before you post them here (Score:2)
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_stuptech.shtml [rinkworks.com]
Of course, most of the Computer stupidities [rinkworks.com] deal with stupid users (and they have some really funny stories), but the above page is about "role reversal" and stupid tech support being a pain for a computer-literate user seeking help.
There is a section about stupid salespeople as well
Improvements. (Score:5, Informative)
How about some training and a fair wage for the poor bastards that work in the call centers?
I used to work as a support whore for Verizon DSL -- that is, until my entire call center was laid off. The jobs were moved to another center in Canada, where Customer Service employees were handed a database full of canned answers and told that they had to start handling tech support calls.
In the meantime, the actual trained techs like myself were all out of a job. And the other center that was on the same level as us - same training, same subcontractor, same call queues - took a savage pay cut.
The technology economy of today is based on some seriously thin margins - and frankly, once a company has your money, they are happy to screw you out of decent support to save a few bucks.
--saint
Re:Improvements. (Score:3, Funny)
> How about some training and a fair wage for the poor bastards that work in the call centers?
Heh. I could rant for several thousand words about the 18 months I did at Stream. (It started out as a fairly humane place to work at, & slowly degenerated into a sweatshop.)
But since we're supposed to talk about suggestions for improving things, here's mine: I'd like to submit a list of management-types from Stream who should die a long, painful death. Mebbe that won't improve tech support, but those of us who had to work for these morons at least would believe that there is a God & some justice in the world.
Geoff
Re:Improvements. (Score:3, Funny)
("Yes [hold] you f*cking moron [/hold] your network does seem to be down. However, [hold] if you didn't have it shoved so far up your a$$ [/hold] I should be able to fix it.)
The other one was a complete moron, and just read of the script. I seem to remember one of the managers thinking that she was the best employee they had.
If you're willing to pay a little, (Score:2, Interesting)
Another advantage of Google Answers is that you get to vent your frustration publicly instead of to a poor tech support worker.
Is this an Ask Slashdot by the industry? (Score:2)
IT Hiring standards change? (Score:2, Informative)
The Reason Tech Support Sucks ... (Score:4, Informative)
Case in point: Here in Winnipeg is a company called "Convergys" -- they do tech support for several ISPs throughout North America. One of my friends recently got a job there doing phone-based technical support for Shaw. Now, this individual knows computer basics, but has NO clue what a router is, what IP tables are, DNS servers...
Most places hire people based on "can you read from this script?", which simply isn't adequate.
The Real Reason Tech Support Sucks ... (Score:2)
More job fulfillment (Score:2)
The REAL Reason Tech Support Sucks ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it - everyone thinks short-term, and buys on price. Does ANYONE buy a PC because of the excellent support anymore?
Look at the cheapest Dell desktop you can buy. What was cut out? The support. They only offer 90 days. How many people buy no-name crap at computer fairs and the like, or questionable goods from Ebay, since it has the cheapest price, and then attempt to get Microsoft to answer the phone when it doesn't work?
Why are companies outsourcing to crap outfits? Product support has become something that is a checklist item that never turns up in reviews, for the most part... which is not surprising, since companies like Dell and Gateway pay the bills at the reviewer's magazines. Ever wonder why the biggest advertisers always get the best reviews? Has PC Mag ever said a negative thing about Dell or Microsoft?
So companies find the cheapest way to pay tech-support "lip service" to their customers. This means that some half-asleep foreigner with a good American accent is going to answer the phone call... after a half hour on hold.
Fact is that if you want good support, you pay for it - either in the product's price, or afterwards. Well, no one wants to pay for it the product price anymore.
Tech support should be an option that people have to pay for - either the screwdriver guy in the neighborhood, a local third-party, or as an add-on from the company that sold you the gear in the first place.
Re:The Reason Tech Support Sucks ... (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience is not comprehensive, but I do have a few insights.
Don't make your first line customer support center into a profit center. I know, it costs money to run a fl customer support center, especially when you consider the hardware involved, but also payroll. Consider that a help desk generally hires temporary employees at $10-15/hr, (I suspect that they are paying the temp companies $20-30 per hour for these people) and for a large PC vendor, there are between 100 and 200 people taking calls 24 hours a day. It does add up quickly. On the other hand I have seen fl techs bill people for 10 different incidents in a single 20 min call, each incident costing $35 or more.
Scripts (when written correctly) should help a fl either help you solve the problem, or get you to the right people. Howerver these scripts are written by people, who generally get their information by talking to the engineer of whatever project installed the piece that is to be supported. As a result, they are specific to that component, and rarely take into considerations interactions with other system components or even other software that a user may be working with. A good tech will recognize this, and be flexible enough to come up with his or her own set of questions to add to those in the scripts. However it is a rare tech support organization that will set up tools that such a tech support person can use in this way. On top of that if the tech is good, he or she is often promoted out of the tech pool to manage the lesser techs, or occasionally teach them. What happens when you pull the cream of the crop out of the interface to your customers? Your customers get the dregs as their first contact.
Let your tech support become name recognized by your customers. Note that is not a "force" that is a 'Let'. Customers generally feel better when they "know" who will be at the other end of the line. As a customer, I am far more forgiving of my tech support person not knowing the answere to a problem I have if I can identify with them. If you have a policy that allows your tech support people to be asked for by name, or who are assigned to your customer's ticket while they are on shift, customers will not feel like they are getting the run around.
I have yet to see a ticketing system that has built in data mining tools that will help a tech support person find similar problems and what their solutions were. In almost every case I have ever seen, a ticketing system has been a management tool used to see who is taking the most calls, and who is closing their tickets in the least amount of time. If you mean for the tool to be useful to the tech, on an other than individual ticket by ticket basis, that tool has got to have some built in help for the tech.
Lastly follow through on support. Just because the customer claims that the problem appears to be solved, does not mean that it has been resolved. Schedule some time, or some people to follow up on a high percentage of tickets, and find out if the customer is satisfied. You don't have to ask page of questions on how the problem was handled. Start with the question, "Is the problem you encountered solved to your satisfaction?". Listen to the response. If the response is anything less than a hearty and happy "Yes." then you should start asking how the process can be improved, and so on.
One problem when it comes to problem tickets, and escalations, is that no-one in a tech support queue types as fast as the customer speaks. If you recite off an error message, or a dozen field headers that are coming back with garbage, your tech support person will probably not be able to include them in the ticket. As a result, if the ticket is escalated to second level support, they probably will not have the data. If it is important to you that the data get into the ticket, take your time and make sure that the fl tech gets the informaiton completely in the ticket.
This should be the tech support mantra I think:
"I understand that for you, this problem is very important. It is preventing you from doing your job right now, and very well may be preventing your company from earning the revenue that is paying me. I also understand that not everyone that you have spoken with in the past has held this view. I also understand that the fact that you were on hold for one or more hours has made you feel that we do not take your problem seriously. I want you to know that the perceptions you have had in the past are not the perceptions I would like you to have going forward."
Then again, I could be wrong.
-Rusty
Tell me about it (Score:2)
Couldn't get ahold of anybody who spoke sufficent english who was able to understand that I wanted anything outside of the regular RMA. . . .
d*mn fucking offshore tech banks. . . . >: |
MS Tech's (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, I have an ongoing issue with a client that is bordering on insane. They're running Windows 2000 Small Business Server, and twice they've had a blue screen of death while rebooting the server.
Having talked over the issue with 7 different technicians, not only do we not have a solution, but there's conflicting advice. Also there are patches that are not available to the public because they're still not "prime time" (took 7 months for a hot fix to be made available for another problem with licensing. Seems that if Windows 2000 Pro workstations connect to SBS 2000 server, the licenses get gobbled up until no one else can connect, even though there's only 7 computers connecting to a 10-licensed server. The patch still doesn't work properly).
It's a scary thing when a client is afraid to reboot the server in fear that they will be down an entire day. Thankfully in North America Microsoft will fix business servers that are down for free (MS Business Critical Support 10888-455-7422), so at least their weakening support is on their dime.
Maybe we'll solve the problem next time the server BSOD's (8th tech's a charm!?!?) Or maybe the customer will let me move them to Linux.
A true story from me and my DSL provider (Score:4, Funny)
Me: "Hi, I'm having problems getting online here. The router WAN lamp flashes, it can't connect"
Her: "Do you have the correct settings?"
Me: "What kind of settings, it comes with a Cisco router, shouldn't it be preconfigured?"
Her: "Yes, but you have to do some adjustments on you computer as well."
Me: "Yeah, the TCP settings, I know".
Her: "Amongst others, yes. Now click on the start button, and go to Settings.."
Me: (interrupting) "Uh, wait, I don't use Windows."
Her: "What.. Do you have a Macintosh?!"
Me: "No, I use another operating system.. OpenBSD."
Her: "Huh!" (silence)
Me: "UNIX."
Her: "Well, then I can't help. You must send our support group an email describing your problems in detail."
Me: "I would if I could, but I can't get online!"
Her: "Oh, yeah.. that's right.."
Later on I discovered that the problem was their fault: The didn't have enough capacity for all the new users, so I had to wait 14 days (felt like ten thousand years) before my ping requests finally received some echoes.
Maybe a bit OT, but I had to get it out.
-skurk
Re:A true story from me and my DSL provider (Score:3, Insightful)
I presume you're tech-savvy: if you're calling them, it's because there's a problem on their end, right? Your goal is to convince them to fix it. But their goal is to pester you and do nothing to help, mistakenly assuming the problem is on your end. They are your enemy. If their questions are irrelevant, don't be afraid to lie to them. Give them the "standard" answer they want to hear.
Remember: no matter what your network really looks like, you are running Windows 98 on a single PC. You do *not* run Unix. You have never run Unix. In fact you have never ever heard of it. Don't be afraid to feed them as much BS as necessary, if it will persuade them to move their asses and fix the problem with their network.
Re:A true story from me and my DSL provider (Score:2)
What if they start asking you to read from your screen very Windows-specific things?
Lies sometimes backfire and make the problem worse, unless you are in sales and really experienced at covering your sneaky little rump.
I can do THAT from memory... (Score:2)
Re:A true story from me and my ANTIVIRUS provider (Score:2)
I'd rather preffer using free solutions. I'd have contributed back if the haven't charged us $900 for 1 year use of this product.
From: Byron Go (TS-PH)
To: Federico
Subject: RE: InterScan VirusWall
Date: 03 Mar 2002 12:47:34 +0800
Dear Federico,
Greetings.
I know that this may sound inappropriate but is it possible for you to send me the sendmail.cf, submit.cf, sendmail.cf.delivery and submit.cf.delivery?
I have been trying some things out but I am not sure what I'm missing. I am hoping that your 'assistance' could help me create the appropriate sandwich configuration for VirusWall with Sendmail 8.12.
Thank you very.
Sincerely,
Sincerely,
Byron James Go
Trend Product Support
Gateway Team
TrendLabs
-----Original Message-----
From: Byron Go (TS-PH)
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2002 10:37 AM
To: Federico
Subject: RE: InterScan VirusWall
Dear Federico,
Thank you for the reply. I will have to be honest with you.. We have been encountering the 8.12 problem since the sandwich config is only for the
8.9 to 8.11. The startup for the 8.12 is different and so far, only linux consultants and gurus have been able to let it start correctly. I will personally study the startup scripts for 8.12 and work out a sandwich configuration document that can properly start sendmail 8.12 to be disseminated in trend.
Regarding SSL, this is a current limitation in the v3.6 of VirusWall. v3.6 doesn't have
the 'internal' capability of supporting SSL. However, I will make a feature request for that. Whether it is already be implemented to v3.7, which will be released in a month or two, or will be implemented in the future, I'll let you know.
I hope this reflects a positive action for trend.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Byron James Go
Trend Product Support
Gateway Team
TrendLabs
These are called "support boundaries" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A true story from me and my DSL provider (Score:4, Flamebait)
Seriously, having worked tech support, there are things that will get you thrown off the line pretty immediately. That's because we could be fired for supporting an unsupported issue (and there's always the possibility my manager has tapped the call). If you're knowledgeable, I could care less if you're lying to me. As a matter of fact, it's easier for me. I can just tell you to make sure you're set for DHCP instead of leading you thru each click of the mouse. But, once you tell me (for instance) that you're running Linux, I have to let you go. Not my choice, bud.
Besides, bandwidth caps aren't a tech support question. That's a question for customer service. Tech support can't lift your bandwidth caps, nor do they care to hear you complain about them. While I'm at it, here's a few other things that should go to tech support.
If you're pissed off and angry at the company, call customer service. Not tech support. I'm paid to fix things, not listen to you complain.
If you're too busy to work with me on the phone, call a 3rd party tech, or get your secretary to call.
If you're not in front of your computer, don't bother calling me at all.
If you're too smart to listen to me and my steps, then fix it yourself.
If you're pissed because you don't get onsite tech support until I say so, call customer service. I didn't sell you the thing, nor did I promise you onsite service.
If you're missing something from your order, call customer service.
If you're just going to bitch about hold times (thereby ensuring higher hold times for everyone behind you), call at 3am.
If you're just calling to let us know a router/server/etc. is down, rest assured that as a multimillion dollar corporation, we have monitoring systems in place and someone already knows.
If you want to know about spare or replacement parts, or want to order something, call sales.
If you just want an RMA, tell me all the steps you've already tried so I can mark them off the checklist. And if you're BSing me, then you better not get caught, or else I have to make you go theough the whole damn thing again. Oh, and if you missed a step, don't be pissed when I insist you try it.
Guess that sort of turned into a rant, eh?
Online Forums (Score:2)
I think that it's better than waiting on hold on the phone!
Tech Support Outsourcing (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked for Dell, and we had a 17 minute Average Handle Time (AHT) goal. If we spent more than 15 minutes with a customer, a flag would go off up at the Supervisor on Duty's desk, and someone would come by and have us put the customer on hold. Several techs were not knowledgable at all, but were so frustrating for the customer to deal with that they would give up. Thus, the worst techs had the best call times. Other techs would focus on getting the cust off the phone by dispatching parts.
One man, about 70 years old, would call in about once or twice a week (looking back through the call logs), and he was simply inept at using the computer. This man had been sent a video card, sound card and motherboard. This was a simple case of techs not wanting to deal with this guy and his lack of aptitude.
ClientLogic is just one outsourcer, there are others. Some companies, like Dell outsource to multiple companies, while maintaining their own base of techs, usually for their more valuable customers. We were given home and small business. Laptops, Servers and larger companies were handled by Dell directly.
Sounds sweet!!! (Score:3, Funny)
you mean that if i just pretend to be a true computer illiterate i can get enough free hardware to build additional box's for no cost?
woohoo where do i sign up!
Intra-company tech support (Score:2)
Being tech oriented, I try to avoid calling tech support like the PLAUGE. However, some times I have to and it drives me bonkos. There needs to be a code word that lets the person know, "Okay, he doesnt need to hear: Click Start, Settings, Control Panel."
Examining the tech support issue (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder why..
On the company side:
Chopping Block Gods are hired to find where the fat in the company lies. Mr/Mrs. Chopping Block plugs a couple of numbers into his/her overpriced calculator and finds that the tech support people are working only 80% of the time and therefore 20% can be cut.
Mr/Mrs. Chopping Block tells management this and says they can probably save the biggest money by getting rid of the more experienced (read: overpaid) techs since everyone is reading from a script anyway.
3 months later you have an overworked call centre with clueless staff. The place is no longer fun to work at and the turnover rate goes up. Big surprise. As morale goes down you find staff taking longer breaks, more sick days, etc. The cycle continues.
On the consumer side:
Mr/Mrs "Informed" Consumer scans all ads in the newspaper looking for the absolute cheapest price for their pocket computer. He/she first finds the cheapest company that offers a pocket computer since they're all the same, then finds the cheapest model made by that company, then the cheapest store to buy it from.
Mr/Mrs "Informed" Consumer does not consider how the prices got so low and may not ever have to as long as a) they don't need tech support, b) their product doesn't break. If either of these happens, they are in for a nightmare experience.
I'm not necessarily saying that the cheapest products have the worst tech support/warranty scams running (some save money on big ad campaigns), but the cuts DO have to come from somewhere. Unfortunately, some of the cuts come from the quality of life for people who have the misfortune of working at one of these companies.
my recent experiences... (Score:2)
At&t: poor
Qwest: criminal
Re:my recent experiences... (Score:3, Interesting)
Gotta tell us which one.
I've been working for AT&T Wireless for about 6 months and it's the first call center that I've worked in that did *not* bitch at us about call times. The goal is to get the problem resolved on the first call. It's refreshing to *not* have a manager over your shoulder saying "You've been on that call for over 9 minutes. What the hell is going on?" They also do try to keep us with up to date training, which is another thing that's cool for a call center to do.
The only people that are a pain in the ass are the ones that worked for MCI.
Anybody that's ever worked for Worldcom/MCI is a total pain in the ass.
Per-incident support is the only kind that counts (Score:2, Insightful)
The decline in tech support is nothing new. For quite some time, I've argued to management and coworkers that the only kind of technical support worth having is per-incident support, where the company providing support gets paid only if the issue is resolved successfully. "Gold" and "Platinum" support contracts (where you can get help as much as you want) still send you through the same tedious process of explaining your problem, receiving instructions whereby you, the customer, spend even more time diagnosing the problem, following up to the company, receiving still more diagnosis instructions, ad nauseam. Personally, I'm sick of bothering to isolate a test case, telling the company the version of their software I'm using, only to be told to mindlessly upgrade to a newer version that allegedly fixes the problem. The last time I was told this, I asked the company in question if they could try my problem scenario in their environment with the proposed new version. They said "no". Their expectation is that I will take half a day setting up an environment, installing a new version of their software, setting up my test case, and making a determination. Paugh!
I'm willing to bet that if the support vendor got paid when and only when my problem was resolved that I'd have received very different answers and a willingness to actually solve my problem.
The idea that only big companies with high-priced products can offer good support is stupid. The company I've spoken of sells a very expensive database product with even more expensive support. If the support isn't per-incident, there's simply no incentive to do better.
IBM, HP, Cisco (Score:5, Informative)
I had purchased a copy of OS/2 3.0 from a friend. It was a boxed copy, still had all of the registration cards, manuals, etc. OS/2 did not like my sound card, which was a cheap SB16 clone. I called IBM tech support, and was rather horrified to know that I was a known OS/2 custoemr in their records (despite never using it before, not telling them about it, and my friend never tellng them about me. Odd) Anyway, the support person that I spoke with actually had a clue, and ironically shared a story about how he promised himself he'd never buy IBM again because of bad tech support in the past. Anyway, it two phone calls over two days, but IBM eventually had me download an experiemntal driver from their website and said that if that did not work, they would conference to determine whether they had to fly a tech to my home to solve it, or if there were a way to solve the problem more quickly. All this over a $50 copy of OS/2!
My new HP USB scanner (4100C, I think it was) didn't work in my computer because there were two basic types of USB controller: The Intel one and everyone else. I had everyone else. I called HP tech support who, after about an hour, could not solve it. The tech eventually spoke with someone else and found that it was a known problem with my USB controller. Now, the company that I purchased the scanner from, Future Shop in Boise, ID. (USA), had gone out of business so I was pretty convinced I was SOL and out of $200.
The HP tech then asked me if I had a working parallel port or SCSI controller. I did, so he offered to send next HIGHER scanner to me provided I sent the old one back, and that it would take 6-8 weeks to deliver.
Well, 5 weeks later I called (6-8 weeks is usually a BS figure they give for safety so you don't bug them) and asked where the scanner was. Apparently the last guy had forgotten to ask for my credit card for collateral in case I did not send back the old scanner... So he sent the next higher up scanner after the one they already offered to send. A 6100Cse. So, I was getting a $400 scanner as a replacement for a $200 scanner. Not bad.
The next day the scanner arrived, sent priority overnight and with documents explaining who to call to have my scanner picked up on HP's bill.
That pretty much won me over to HP, other than their crappy PCs. I was very impressed at how far they went to solve the problem.
Cisco:
I have a friend that works for a telco in Pocatello, ID, USA. To make my point clear, let me give you some quick background: Pocatello has a population of about 45,000 people. It is in Idaho, one of the physically largest states in the USA with one of the smallest populations. The total population of the whole state barely exceeds 1 million and there are zero major cities within several hours.
There was a problem with a Cisco router and my friend's work. Bad power supply, IIRC. He called Cisco about it and they had a replacement part to him TWO HOURS LATER! They had actually hired a taxi cab to deliver it that much faster. How they got a part to such a podunk little backwater town in two hours amazes me to this day. The have no offices anywhere near.
DirecTV also has great support (the support guys get in trouble if they don't solve your problem--if they don't, ask to speak to a supervisor).
Re:IBM, HP, Cisco (Score:2)
My mom has an HP Pavillion sitting on her desk. For its day the little "look at me" sticker on the front was pretty impressive- most notably the quite fast at the time 366Mhz processor.
Now, they had problems with the PC. A few calls to HP finally got a tech out here to get it fixed. Tech came, found it was the CPU, and replaced it.
Now that I'm home, I notice when I use that PC that the POST reports a 300Mhz CPU. Damn tech after being a pain in the ass to get out here to fix the PC that was still under warranty, put the wrong CPU in the system. If I had been home when that happened, I would have badgered HP until they fixed it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
You can't get good support guys (Score:2)
I would take a guy in a call center. That job stinks. It's an entry level job that tries to serve senior level people. It's not a surprise that it doesn't work out well. The only way to fix it is to pay very well.
That model works in consulting. You give some comforts when you travel (the job is worse) but you get paid better. In support, you have to deal with more crap but if you get paid better you'll take the job.
Being in the industry for a few years... (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Too many companies emphasize quantity over quality. By quantity, I mean the number of calls you take in a day, or average call times. At some places, if you can't resolve an issue within 15 minutes, you're required to end the call, even if you could fix it with a little more time. This is stupid, because customers will call back, get someone else, and have to explain their problem again, which wastes time and costs the company money. Companies need to be less afraid to let go of techs who can answer a lot of calls in a day, but rarely actually solve anything, and more afraid to lose good techs who know what they're doing.
2) Interdepartment communication in most large companies is terrible. Very often, the only way to get something done is to make friends with people in other departments, and ask them personal favors, because following procedure might get the issue brought up at the next manager meeting, but it won't go anywhere from there, because it's not important enough to make a big deal over.
3) Immediate supervisors of tech support agents usually know how to encourage and motivate their teams, because those people were probably promoted from tech support themselves. The manager one level above them may have a general idea what's going on. Anyone above that is absolutely clueless, and has no concept of what's happening on the floor. Immediate supervisors are powerless, and their managers have little actual power. This means the people in power don't know anything about tech support, and people who know about tech support have no power. It's a direct inverse proportion.
4) Management assumes that tech support should be in an isolated box; they don't need to know about what's going on in the rest of the company. Thus, marketing comes up with a new advertising strategy, and tech support doesn't know about it. Engineering releases a new software version that works differently, and tech support doesn't find out until customers tell them. This goes back to the communication issue above, but it's more than just different departments not talking to each other - it never occurs to anybody that tech support needs to know about anything happening outside of tech support. Tech support needs to be given a little more respect - if you respect them, they'll respond to that.
5) What's up with long hold times? If a hold time of over five minutes for any department is not an unusual thing, you need to hire more people! The company is losing customers (or just losing money, as customer service gives away free service to bribe customers so they won't leave) just because the hold times are so long. Sure, you need to take steps to ensure that techs aren't needlessly wasting time, but once those steps have been taken, it's time to increase headcount. Sure, it costs money, but how many customers can you afford to lose? You don't want techs sitting around waiting for a call, but usually there's something productive they could be doing. How about cross-training people so they can be moved between a couple departments as needed, as call volume demands? That way you don't have to keep hiring and firing.
6) Many companies throw techs out on the floor with inadequate training. Usually they'll get a training class, but it's not enough to absorb everything they'll need. As long as it's clear who they can go to for help, this may be OK - it only takes about a month on the floor to figure out what's going on, and as long as the tech isn't spreading misinformation or causing problems, that's fine. New techs should not be held to the same expectations as seasoned techs, though - they should be held to the same standards of quality, but if it takes them longer to get an issue resolved because they have to ask three people for help along the way, there's nothing wrong with that.
7) Monopolies don't have to care about any of this.
Re:Being in the industry for a few years... (Score:5, Interesting)
The best tech support I know of (Score:5, Informative)
As a rule, they offer no telephone support. All of their support is via email, or a web form in case your email is down. They usually respond within an hour, and always within 24 hours. The people who respond are actual techs, and they actually have the power to fix things if they're broken.
One of the nicest features about their support web form, though is that after you ask your question, there's a little choice control, with the question: "Please select your general expertise in the area of this request:", with options ranging from "Please explain everything to me carefully" to "I have a good understanding of this stuff" and even "Not to be rude, but I probably know more about this than you!".
What a difference it makes! They don't waste their time reminding me to check my caps lock key when typing in my password, and similarly they don't confuse a newbie by talking about IMAP vs. POP3 (they support both, BTW, which rocks!).
I really like this model - I would be willing to give up phone support from any company if their email support worked this well.
And I highly recommend DreamHost for all of your web-hosting needs. And that's not just because if you say that "dmazzoni" referred you, I'll get a discount!
Re:The best tech support I know of (Score:2)
Re:The best tech support I know of (Score:2)
They look particularly good for more complex Perl CGI systems, e.g. TWiki, a web collaboration system I'm working on (see http://twiki.org).
Let's recap (Score:2)
2. Tech support: largely useless
3. Marketing: too expensive
4. Clue factor at 90% of tech companies: 0
5. Experienced IT staff: laid off
6. Salaries: down
7. Benefits: gone
8. Investment: way down
9. New ideas: not approved, obstructed, suppressed
10. Average workday: 80% meetings, 20% e-mail
11. Profit margins: thinning
12. Search for new qualified staff: failed
13. Money spent: incalculable
14. Projections: bleak
15. Likelihood of reaching anyone except a receptionist at any company: 0
Now, how do we know this is directly and completely the fault of management? They are the only people STILL EMPLOYED.
When was the last announcement of several thousand managers being laid off? BZZZT Time's up!
Each of these things is NOT happening in a vaccuum. At some point, these problems have to be fixed or all businesses are going to have problems.
(and here come the apologists... sigh...)
Here is the real problem (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article "We're still looking for the cheapest way to answer the stupidest questions," he said. "If you go out of the script, they have no idea how to react."
This quote exemplifies the real problem that tech support faces. People computting beyond their means. I used to work tech support for an ISP. Our install software was good, Our POPs were fairly stable. Yet we still had a large call volume. The problem was the LUSERs that kept calling, and calling, and calling. Some of these people had call history logs that contained thirty to forty entrys, none of them due to anything we had done. I literally spent 15 minutes one night trying to get a woman to type her password in the same way twice.
Why this is important, These people cost money. Every minute they are on the phone money leaving the company. We had a 800 number and of course I was getting payed. We figured it out one night that if a customer was on the phone with use for 10 minutes that wiped out our profit on them for the month. With aditional months getting wiped out ever 11 minutes. Some of these customers had call logs that indicated 15 to 20 HOURS of time on the phones with us. They had wiped out their profits for the next ten years and the profits of thrity of forty other poeple also.
What tech companies have woken up to is the fact that these people make up, at worst 10% of your customer base, yet they burn up 50 to 60% of the profits a company makes.
In a defensive measure companies are trying to ditch them. Unfotunatly people with a real issue of need are ditched with them also. This is a sad state of affairs, yes, but then the level of support required to maintain this level of helpfullness is destructive to the company.
No other industry in america is expected to provide this level of support. Not car manufactures, VCR manfacturers, nobody. They are expected to replace defective product, which everyone should do, but GM does not have to have a help line to explain to idiot customers that the reason their car stopped after 300 miles is that they did not put any more gas in it.
The level of support we see now is due to the tech companies brutally shedding this dead weight. It's harsh, and unforgiving, but it needs to be done. The tech recovery cannot begin while we struggle with all the dead weight we must carry
As a further note, if you think these comments harsh go work a hell desk position. You will develope an abiding hate for human kind quickly. I am still puzzled myself on how most people managed to have ancestors smart enough to evolve to come down from the trees, let alone learn to walk upright.
Re:Here is the real problem (Score:3, Interesting)
About 50 years ago, my Dad was running an auto shop. One customer got so irate when his nearly new car wouldn't start, he pounded on it with a sledge hammer. It was out of gas. He knew his car needed gasoline, (and religiously bought Shell gas from Dad), but that morning he forgot to check for the basics....
Cars have a reasonably simple user interface, and the biggest change in it since the 1920's was the automatic transmission. Still, every car comes with a manual that explains all about running the car, for instance how to put gas in it. Software is much more complex and lacks a standard well-known user interface, and yet too often nowadays it is shipped without a manual! Yes, there is on-line help, if you can get enough of the product installed to reach it, and if it's any help. Too often it's so badly indexed you cannot find the right page unless you know exactly what the programmer called the function (which is not what it's called on error messages referring to it), or the help page is just plain wrong.
But the software is usually marketed as being installable and usable by anyone at all. Even the guy who calls the help desk because his screen is dark during a power failure... If the company is going to come anywhere near fulfilling what it promised when it sold the software, it's going to need a help desk that is capable of dealing with morons and ignoramuses, and teaching them to use the product. It really takes more than script bunnies, but attitude and communications skills are a lot more important at this level than technical knowledge.
Of course, the second problem is what happens when it's a knowledgeable caller with a real bug. Do you put him through an inquisition starting with "Is there power on the wall socket", and then chop it off at the 15 minute timer? Or does the front line person quickly recognize that here is a problem beyond his scripts and escalate it to a real tech? Does the company even have good techs available?
Third, sometimes the clueless have actually run into the serious bugs that are hard to solve even with skilled geeks on both ends of the line. Not much chance of solving that short of a house call, until some skilled geek calls with the same problem. But after it's been solved once, how do the other reps find out about it? And does the company discourage the frontliners from admitting to the known problems?
Being knowledgable is good... (Score:2)
A good tech support person ought to be able to fix common problems by ad libbing. If they don't know the answer, then they shouldn't give up, but rather should begin researching what they need to know in order to solve the problem (or determine what the problem is for that matter).
A good call center would collect and organize this research and put it in a format that is easy for everyone working there to search.
The only other thing they'd need to do is pay the tech support personnel well and not overwork them. Then people will actually want the jobs and you'll have no shortage of quality employees.
Reverse that Logic (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe, in part, the shrinking profits are because of bad tech support. Nothing makes me want to drop a product faster than bad tech support. On several occaisions I've called Oracle GOLD Support with a problem and the gotten the response: "Oh, that would be a known OS problem. You'll have to take this up with the OS vendor." Who, of course, blames it on the RDBMS software.
Another problem might be the propensity for PHBs to demand that you call for Tech Support on problems you could solve for yourself with a bit of time. This would tend to flood Tech Support with fairly trivial questions and tempt those who manage Tech Support to man the front line support with less skilled techs.
Maybe it's a good thing (Score:2)
Hmm, there's probably some money to be made in a service that would match new-users-with-a-problem up with knowledgable-users-who-know-how-to-solve-that-pro
Unofficial Tech Support much better (Score:2)
The school provides tech support in the form of "Residential Computer Consultants". These are students, one per dorm, that other students can call if they have problems. Sounds great, right? It would be, except that they're a bunch of clueless dolts. Case in point: last month, a friend of mine's girlfriend was having troubles with her HP box. Seems there was a hell of a lot of noise coming from the back of the machine. The RCC had been and gone, reluctant to open the case and having no theories as to the problem. Upon arriving, things became apparent:
The noise started when the machine booted.
If one actually listened close, the sound seemed to come from the graphics card.
She doesn't have an onboard graphics card. Ergo, her card probably has a fan. Hmm, that noise reminds me of when the fan died on my old 133.
Taking things to their logical conclusion, I opened the case and observed that the fan was vibrating (removing the card killed the noise, hmmm).
Some tightening of the screws later, things were fine. It took me maybe 10 minutes at most.
Moral of the story? Don't call tech support. Call some geek buddy. Chances are, they're had your problem before or worked with someone who has. They'll probably fix it for free out of pity, hell, they might even donate excess parts they might have lying around. I have before. Even better, for the geeks, it's a great way to pick up girls...
~Chazzf
Re:Unofficial Tech Support much better (Score:2)
7 Habits of Highly Effective Tech Support Orgs (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Managers must EITHER know the product being supported, OR at least have the mental capacity to understand what the product is used for and slowly learn the product itself. (The best tech manager I ever had started off as an analyst, and knew the software inside and out. She knew what could and couldn't be done, and kept up as new modules were written. It was a dream to work for her.) If you're hiring a manager of techies and they can't do the job of the people they're managing, they aren't qualified.
2. Hire intelligence not flash. If a guy is a moron but speaks well on the phone, there's no way he's going to be a good analyst. There are classes at community college to teach public speaking and diction to your "nerdy quiet types" (not to mention clubs like Toastmasters), but nobody can make you smarter than you really are. In these situations, I would refer the flashy not-smart guy's resume to the SALES department.
3. Pay a good salary. Not a "competitive" salary, a good salary. Just because Joe Blow is paying $27k in a slow economy doesn't make people happy to be offered $27,500. In six months when the economy is all the way back, the $27k (and $27.5k) people will simply quit for more money elsewhere.
4. Train your people. Yes, you should be hiring people with experience and brains, but that doesn't neccessarily tranlsate to instant productivity on what your company is selling and supporting. (ESPECIALLY if you're talking about specialized proprietary software.) Effective training is the difference between success and failure for software support folks.
5. Tell the truth. Don't layoff 30% of the staff due to "economic hardships", then anounce record-breaking profits the next week. Besides being ethically questionable, it's in poor taste, and kills your team's morale faster than a 44 magnum.
6. Recognize achievements. This seems trivial, but I worked for a guy for about 7 months who didn't say ANYTHING positive to me, ever. Not once. People are VANE. When they feel like they've done something special, they need recognition for it. It's a simple fact of human existence.
Oh, and last but not least:
7. MORALE, your greatest friend or worst enemy. If your team is feeling low, they're going to do shitty work. (Or, rather, perform at just high enough level not to get fired.) Don't let them get low! If you live by rules 1-6, you'll always be maintaining high morale, not "turning around" low morale. (Three guesses which is easier, the first two don't count.)
In defense of the support people... (Score:2, Interesting)
Lots of people don't seem to understand this. And this is how it is all through the industry. People call in and expect to speak to someone who knows every detail of their system and network inside and out, from 3rd party hardware to BIOS switches to operating system specifics to IP addressing to client/server configuration, etc. I don't know everything about Windows because I don't support it, I support the specific piece of hardware with our name on it. Ditto your router, switch, service provider, etc. You want somebody who knows everything there is to know about your network and systems and will configure anything and everything for you, fine, go hire one. Their hourly rates are 5-10 times what mine is.
And if you have a question on some obscure technical detail of the product, it may not get answered right away, because I'm not an engineer. If you're trying to do something unsupported and are nice about it, I'll try to help you, but if you call up and act like a dickhead from the get-go, you aren't gonna get crap, as I'm under no obligation to help you. Being a condescending jackass isn't going to get you anywhere.
And of course, there's the customer that's angry because no XP drivers are going to be developed for a product that was discontinued 3 years and he picked up on eBay for $10. And the customer who is upset because when he talked to his service provider or OEM, they told him everything was fine, or that the problem is with our product, and won't listen to any instructions as a result.
Yeah, there're customers who are unhappy with the support they receive. But this isn't because I'm incompetent or we're trying to screw them. We support what we support, and we do it well. 95% of the people I deal with on a day-to-day basis understand where our boundaries lie and are quite happy with the support provided. Yeah, it's not like that with a lot of other companies, but the fact is, a lot of the people bitching about bad support wouldn't know good support if it bit them in the ass.
(Of course, I make an exception for cable companies, as they generally have horrible technical support, but I wouldn't really expect the billing guy to know how to push a firmware update anyway.)
I still think the best is... (Score:2, Funny)
I once called their developer support hotline for assistance:
MS: What options did you choose in the AppWizard?
Myself: I don't use the AppWizard. I code everything by hand.
MS: (long pause) You can do that?!!
British Telecom - 18 days down on my ADSL line. (Score:2)
The problem was at their exchange despite their *repeated* insistence that it was on my end.
Quality Support Drives ROI and Increases Revenue (Score:2)
Our support is paid for. Our customers don't get any help without a Maintenance contract. We try to make the contract's (a yearly fee) ROI worthwhile, by allowing free access to the newest version of our software to all customers who are on maintenance. The other half of that ROI rests upon our performance as techs when someone needs help.
An added rub: Because of the nature of our product, we often find ourselves providing support to our customers' customers, many times without OUR customer being involved in the first place.
This means that the best way for us to maintain business with our current customers is to make sure all of their customers' support questions are taken care of (and that they are notified of any problem with their server proactively). Over time quality support will attract new seat licenses and grow existing sites.
This coincidentally allows us to initiate contact with customers who may have decided not to renew their support contracts. Since we never turn down a customer's customer who calls asking for help (whether our customer is paid up or not), we can help the caller reach a successful resolution.
The idea goes like this: The caller (a customer's customer) now knows about us, and our quality "free" support that we gave them. Any negative word-of-mouth based around problems found with our software will be largely negated by effective support. Since we notify our customer that someone's had a problem with their server, whether the support contract is paid up or not, we've also got an opportunity to start a conversation up with the lapsed-contract customer, which gives us an in to possibly get them to catch up their support contract.
All of this rambling is to prove the point the quality support drives revenue. The key to turning customers from a one-time sale into a repeat revenue stream over time is to provide a service that's worth paying for, and a quality service can drive sales of licenses and other one-time purchases. Companies without quality support lose my business the first time I encounter ineptitude. Other, smaller underdogs (such as the fine folks at Watchguard [watchguard.com]) who have incredibly clueful and proactive support teams have held on to my business over the long haul. I do everything I can to make sure my employer falls into the second camp.
More coverage by PC World (Score:2)
"In fact, of the thousands of readers who said that they had e-mailed questions to manufacturers about their malfunctioning computers, only 25 percent reported that the answer they got back actually solved their problem."
It's simple cost cutting. (Score:2)
Gateway Support Is Terrible (Score:2, Troll)
http://www.fahrvergnugen.net/journal/index.php?
(be gentle, it's only a K6-3)
The real problem (Score:2, Interesting)
I find these days, companies are either outsourcing, or completely dropping the tech support call centers, or merging tech support with customer service (which in the past really only handled billing and non technical related problems) Todays support/customer service groups are almost completely useless, their call volume gets higher, while companies are either cutting back on staff, or no longer hiring as their customer base increases.
What this does, is put increased pressure on support staff to resolve a problem, or dump it off on someone else as fast as possible. When I say dump it off on someone else.. I mean blame say MS (if your an ISP), or anyone other then youself to get them off the call.
Hell, even back in the day, as a senior support person who dealt with escalated issues, I was repeatably bitched at for taking too long to resolve an issue since I tend to go that extra mile to make sure a problem was resolved before finishing the call. But the company would rather I give a customer a solution, and tell them to try it and end the call, if that did not work the customer had to call back, and sometimes wait for hours on hold in the queue.
Alot of bad tech support is from clueless people having the job dumped on them, but I suspect most of the problems come from teh fact, that the company VP's see tech support as something that they can live without, and would rather pump cash into sales and marketting, and deal with problems later. Which results in low support salleries, which in turn results in very high employee turnover, as no one wants to sit in a very high stress job and get paid peanuts. This in turn results in a knowledge base drain, where the people who actually did know something leave for greener pastures, and the only people left are those who are not as knowledgable but can read from scripted solutions, which rarely work.
Anyways, enough of my ranting, I'm no longer in tech support due to the crappy pay, companies not willing to train their support people so they could possibly further their career within that company. I personally think that if companies invested in their employees (specifically support), those people would stay within that company in most cases, and that would result in better service.
But VP's only see the bottom line, and to them tech support is a drain on their funds, so they will always try to cut corners there, which is why support will always suck
Tech support burnout. (Score:5, Interesting)
Raise your hand anyone out there who's worked some form of tech support/help desk in the past. I have. And just about anyone who has will tell you that 1) It's HARD WORK. even for those who know what they're doing. 2) it's DRAINING work, especially emotionally. Hours upon hours of abuse from some moron who put in his own phone number instead of the phone number he's supposed to dial, and being told you HAVE to fix problem X with program Y because its YOUR FAULT that it broke wears on a person.
The stress leads to burnout. the burnout leads to quitting. The quitting leads to massive overturn, which leads to a scramble for new employees, who are rushed out with improper training, etc etc. It's a vicious cycle.
Here's another reason:
Any call centre type environment works on a lowest common denominator level. The tech support workers who DO know what they're doing are lumped in with joe blow who wouldn't know a modem from his ass; extremely disgruntled knowledgeable employees desert in droves for a job that will actually get them some respect ASAP. The low pay and high stress means that for the most part, only people desperate to hold down jobs apply. Call centres are desperate nowadays and take just about anyone who can fill out an application.
No, i'm not saying that every tech support agent is like that. there are SOME who enjoy this work, and all the more power to them. But it's not easy, and it's not going to get any better. Career advancement potential is limited and so are the pay and benefits.
I think I've ranted enough for now so i'll just leave off there and let someone else pick it up later
Tech support has no clue about.... (Score:2)
There's also the fact that tech support is perceived like a receptionnist, Executives point of view: We need them, but they aren't "valuable assets". So who, that is competent enough and knows his stuff very well (and wants to help) will settle for a low-pay and crappy condition job with no gratification?
Usually they take some interns or people that just finished school to do this, Most of these people don't have real job experience and they take 3 months to a year or two to realize that they have a crappy job. Most that stays are doing so because they don't know better, but the real competent people soon realize that they can do better, have better conditions, job and pay. Executives don't acknoledge that and they loose all their competent people (minus one or two that will be kept as group leader or trainers and will get ok conditions). And by the time the employee knows his stuff very well and knows how to answer most problems and get the "feeling" of the problem and not just looking up questions/answers sheets, they switch jobs because of what I just mentionned before, so basically they have a high cycle rate and almost no knowledge from the start.
To sum it up: You get what you pay for.
And to answer the question, one place you get very good support and tools is with National Instrument. I use their labview software and the tech support are knowledgable staff with CS degree or similar. Why are they doing this? I have no clue, but at least these people knows their stuff.
Offshore Call Center (Score:2)
Re:Offshore Call Center (Score:2)
Tech support is for RMAs only !!!! (Score:2)
It's a simple equation (Score:2)
When times are tight, a middle management hit squad is set up to look for dead wood (by definition "the other guy"). If you've got a bunch of 20 year veterans on customer support, it looks like a real smart move to lay them off and outsource it the lowest third party call centre bidder.
My employer did that about a year ago. As I said, it looked real smart - at the time. Something that occurred to me was that the same management cadre that laid off the guys with 20 year relationships with our most valuable customers were probably not the same clique in charge of tracking customer churn, or listening to the wails of the sales guys as word of mouth kills them before they get a foot through the door.
Demon (Score:2, Interesting)
Last time I was talking to them, it was because of problems connecting from my Ericsson R380 smart phone, and Zaurus PDA. About as unsupported a combination as you could get, but the guy on the end still tried his best to support me (as it turned out, we tracked it down to a problem with my phone, which still persists, which gives a good excuse to get a P800 to replace it).
Reminds me one time I called dell... (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a dell laptop (Latitude), and I called dell for tech support. I got the usual run around where I tried to convince them I am a technically competent person. Naturally, they percedded not to take me at face value and asked me irrelevent questions that had nothing to do with my problem (my com port was literally dead, I needed a new motherboard, and no Windows setting was going to fix that.)
One of the many questions they asked me was if I had ever dropped my laptop. I foolishly answered yes, since sometimes I would pick up the front about a quarter an inch to release the cd-rom drive or battary and then let it drop.
They told me that my warentee was void because I *dropped* my laptop! I said bullshit. After some intense arguing, they went back to their taped copy of the conversation, where I specifically admitted to dropping the laptop "half an inch", and the dell support policy said that anything up to a full inch was ok. They gave me such a hard time about it. That soured me against dell tech support for a long time.
I still own a dell laptop (good machine), and every once in a while I have to call them because of some obscure problem. They still ask me all the standard questions. So annoying. Sometimes, I wish I could just yell "Look, here is the problem. Fix it.", but my mom taught me to be polite, so I usually have to go thru 5 good minutes of crap before we can actually talk about the problem.
Good experience (Score:3, Insightful)
Needless to say, I kept offering to hang up and call back.. (Some of the steps took 15 minutes for the sat to sync up and stuff..) She said, no thats fine.. your satisfaction is more important than our call times.
Needless to say I was very impressed they were will to deal with me.
Re:Dell isn't all that great (Score:2)
The only good thing I've heard from any tech support was from IBM. Another pal has a Thinkpad, and when he had a problem, IBM just sent him an empty padded box with shipping paid for, he sent off his Thinkpad, and within 4 days he was working on his repaired laptop.
Apple will do this too. I have a colleague with a Powerbook. The poor guy's kind of a clumsy dolt and only marginally computer literate. Anyway, he ran into a hardware problem (a bad ribbon-cable connection to the monitor) and Apple had his machine back to him within a week..
Re:Dell isn't all that great (Score:2)
Support likes to say it "must be a software problem."
3 OSes later, I don't think so. I ended up pulling one of the DIMMs, and that got rid of a lot of my segfaults (I was having a TON), but it still locks up.
Just gimme hardware that works.
Re:Dell isn't all that great (Score:2)
Compaq hasn't been too bad either, we don't have onsite service with them, but when we did have an Armada m700 power problem (IIRC, the batteries wouldn't charge in the device) they sent a prepaid box to ship the laptop off to a service center. Then after about 3 days, we got the box back and the laptop had been fixed. The turnaround time was so quick that I thought that there was some kind of shipping problem
Re:It's the comsumer's fault (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's the comsumer's fault (Score:2, Offtopic)
The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.
For transmission, the chip offers a series of four TX descriptor registers. Each transmit frame must be in a contiguous buffer, aligned on a longword (32-bit) boundary. This means we almost always have to do mbuf copies in order to transmit a frame, except in the unlikely case where a) the packet fits into a single mbuf, and b) the packet is 32-bit aligned within the mbuf's data area. The presence of only four descriptor registers means that we can never have more than four packets queued for transmission at any one time.
Reception is not much better. The driver has to allocate a single large buffer area (up to 64K in size) into which the chip will DMA received frames. Because we don't know where within this region received packets will begin or end, we have no choice but to copy data from the buffer area into mbufs in order to pass the packets up to the higher protocol levels.
It's impossible given this rotten design to really achieve decent performance at 100Mbps, unless you happen to have a 400Mhz PII or some equally overmuscled CPU to drive it.
On the bright side, the 8139 does have a built-in PHY, although rather than using an MDIO serial interface like most other NICs, the PHY registers are directly accessible through the 8139's register space. The 8139 supports autonegotiation, as well as a 64-bit multicast filter.
The 8129 chip is an older version of the 8139 that uses an external PHY chip. The 8129 has a serial MDIO interface for accessing the MII where the 8139 lets you directly access the on-board PHY registers. We need to select which interface to use depending on the chip type. ~
Re:as a Computer Supporter (Score:5, Insightful)
Be kind, courteous and respectful of the tech support person with whom you are dealing.
It's a really simple thing but it does a few things...first, it makes the tech support person actually feel like a person and that gives them more incentive to help you or help you find someone who can help you. Second, and this is often overlooked, if you are nice to the person on the other end of the phone it will often make the experience less stressful and less negative for you, as the caller.
I know these are simple things and most everyone would realize them on their own, but I also know it's easy to forget these when dealing with tech support that in general sucks and is difficult to get in touch with.
Re:Main Problems of tech Support. (Score:2)
Everyone who calls into a call center has an "important" problem. Trying to play the "this is important" card is the surest way to get your issue slammed to the back of the queue to rot. I hear five dozen times a day how important someone's problem is (and only take about 15 calls). Have enough sense to realize that the people in the queue ahead of you have problems that are important to them as well.
Re:Tech support for dummies (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Expect it to get better soon (Score:2)
Nah. What surprises me is that they aren't already using prison labor. Its dirt cheap, the prisoners can speak better English than someone from a foreign country, and what are they going to do if they get fed up with their job, quit?
Re:Expect it to get better soon (Score:2)
Re:Expect it to get better soon (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see what you've just barfed out shall we?
Wrong! Every single company I know of who has outsourced support has dropped support levels to the lowest humanly possible. What happens if my problem is not on the flow chart? What happens if god forbid it's unusual and actually needs to be fixed too? What happens if I need to talk to a developer or an engineer? where are those in the outsource company?
When support gets outsourced the customer looses bigtime. When they call all they get is scripts read at them. How useless is that? Do a search on google and try to find the story of ex-employees who worked as these outsourced workers. Read them. It's so pathetic it's hillarious. Until you're forced to talk to someone like them.
On the other hand, I know which companies don't outsource because when I call, they know about the product very well, they don't read scripts at me and they can always just walk over to a developer and ask a question.
No affiliation... My arse! Their website doesn't even work yet. This falls in the shameless plug for obscure and evil company dept.
In other words... Now we're gonna get scripts read at us by a person who we can hardly understand and is getting paid much less than minimum wage here; doing a job they can't do well because they're not part of the group who designed our product. Nice.
Oh! How cheery you are. How jovial this issue is.
I hope the parent get's modded down. It's crap and sleezy. If it comes to that, I hope we have no person-person support at all, fuck it I can read scripts myself, I don't need to have them read at me.
Re:What I hate: (Score:2)
Re:RTFM? (Score:2)
How anyone can claim to support their product on "linux" when what they really mean is "if you're not running RH5.2 or 6.0 with a Gnome desktop environment, we don't want to know", I dunno. I guess it's because manglement think "this will mean we can program a monkey to do Support", when what they should really do is train their internal staff in the product set and have folks knowlegeable about the OS as well; thereafter, a good escalation process back into Development where they can research these things at source level.
At the first job, we had a puppet micro-manager, whose sole line seemed to be to get crib-sheets that you could "just press a button" and send to the customer... those of us running support for both the US and UK offices single-handedly for a week were less than impressed...