Customers Treated as Culprits in Support Calls? 245
ApolloX asks: "I've worked in the software industry for a number of years and I understand how volatile large computer and database systems can be. Most of the time, I'm only called in when something breaks. I know first hand that issues such as a lack of concurrency control, or just a bad database optimization, can lead to corrupted or even lost data. What I don't know is, why most customer support representatives, in the event there is a data error, will treat the customer as if they are liars or are trying to scam them. I can recall many similar support calls to other companies over the years in which the phrase 'our computer system is never wrong' was repeatedly used as justification for an issue the representative knew little about. Since when did computers become so infallible such that the customer is always wrong? Why does it take multiple escalations of support calls before anyone starts believing that maybe the computer made a mistake?"
"On a recent call to a company, let's call it Givo, my account number was accidentally wiped from the system. Throughout the process, I spoke with half a dozen representatives who claimed I had never had their service before and at each step I was 'guilty until proven innocent'. What's worse was that at some moments, even when presented with evidence of my case history in their system, representatives would disregard it because the system told them my account did not exist and had never existed."
Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:5, Insightful)
So unfortunately, unless you want your company to go bankrupt, you can't take what the customer say at face value: they will, and DO abuse it. But at the same time, if you screw over too many innocents, you will go out of business too... so its a matter of finding a balance, unfortunately.
Re: (Score:2)
90% of the people are lying. Period. From trying to lay blame to a supplier to seriously being tooo stupid to realize that they did broke something.
Re:Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:5, Funny)
> ...to realize that they did broke something.
Like grammar.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As an aside, the usual issue is the user/client borked something, doesn't know it, and has no reason to think they did it.
Last night I'm at the in-law's house and I'm asked to call DirecTV (Dish? I dunno what they've got). The preview channel wasn't working and they'd "tried everything" but did not want to call customer support, because they were "largely unhelpful and rude".
I fiddled with the setup for about 5 minutes and bingo, all was well. The receiver had coughed up a hairball and lost
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
> ...to realize that they did broke something.
Like grammar.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never worked in support (thank god) but I find if you're perfectly clear about the problem you're experiencing and treat them with respect (hey, THEY didn't cause the problem) then it generally gets worked out. If you let them run through their idiot scrips and are polite the whole time they're much more likely to just escalate your problem to someone that can actually help you. Screaming at them or telling them you know better (even if you really do) pretty much flips a switch that makes them view you as an idiot. Just be nice and play their game and they'll come to the conclusion on their own that you're not.
Also I've found if you call support during the graveyard shift you'll get much more friendly and intelligent people on the other end. I figure they don't get nearly as many calls so they're a lot less frazzled and a lot more willing to help.
As a CSR, I say "hear, hear!" (Score:3, Informative)
I know a lot of you out there are going to be "but we often know better than the CSR anyway", but if that is the case, then wtf are you doing calling the support line? You obviously need help, so -let- them help you in the way that they know will be best. Yes, they'll walk you through a stupid flowchart on their screen - but t
Re:As a CSR, I say "hear, hear!" (Score:4, Insightful)
Intelligent, informed tech-support specialists (which I like to think I am) will listen to your basic exposition of information, then ask specific, targeted questions to help them better understand the issue, and then attempt to fix the problem. Good tech support personnel doesn't use flowcharts.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They told me there weren't any outages in my area, and then we began the "20 questions" system of solving the problem
1. Can you bring up X webpage on your browser.
A. No.
2. Are you receiving an IP address via DHCP from the DSL modem/router?
A. No.
3. Can you bring up your DSL modem/router's admin page in your browser.
A. No.
4. Is your ethernet cab
Re: (Score:2)
I spent 3 hours on the phone with Dell trying to get them to replace my battery that had died prematurely (this was before the recall). At the beginning of the call, I told the support person that I had pressed the self-test button and I told her the code that it returned. I also told her that I had done research on the internet and knew that that specific code meant that the battery was dead. She took me through 3 hours of flowchart tests that were all useless. We ended up getting disconnect
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When I call tech support, 90% of the time it's because something is wrong outside of my control, if it was in my control I would have fixed it already.
Seconded; it's also sometimes the case that it's dead hardware. The problem is when the script reader tries to force an "almost" situation into the flowchart, or when the script writer faces a situation not in the flowchart. ("Not using Windows" is the classic.)
Here's an example that recently unnecessarily pissed me off. The product was not this [thinkgeek.com] flash
Re:Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:4, Insightful)
Charming attitude. You may want to remember that being wrong does not imply lying, because lying requires intend. So while I completely believe that 90% of the people are wrong (or at least grossly clueless), I guess that much fewer are actually intentionally lying.
Re: (Score:2)
That partially was comical ("hey, i tuned the modem - by solderingg a new chip in - and now your dial in system is down") and sometimes idiotic ("i know how that softwar eworks - i wrote it").
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Bought a Dell a few years back for my daughter. The on-board ethernet failed. Hell, the Dell-provided Broadcom diagnostics said that the ethernet failed. But the fscking script monkey wouldn't believe me until the Dell diagnostics partition said that the ethernet failed (which it didn't, not being as thorough a
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I know why. She was scared of your script. Most scripts include things like this:
"Are you using Outlook Express?"
"No, I'm using Mail.app on a Mac."
"We can only support OE on Windows. Thank you for your continued bus
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
csr: can you turn off the modem, wait 30 seconds and turn it back on.
... click on "Repair Connection"
me: plays gnometris for about 45 seconds, 'cuz I already did that
me: mumble mumble mumble, "okay yeah its back up now. "
csr: okay, now reboot your computer.
me: plays some more gnometris while muttering "come on... god I hate how long this takes..."
me: type ifdown eth2 && ifup eth2 just to make sure... nope, no connection. click over to modem diagnostics page, note that signal levels are still crap, play some more gnometris "okay, computer's back up. umm..." wait, wait wait "yeah, no connection. "
csr: okay, please click on the start menu, settings, control panel... blah blah blah
me: ooh that must be some "magic" button, types ifdown eth2 && ifup eth2, check signal levels again, play some more gnometris "nope, no luck still no ip address."
csr: okay, we'll have to schedule a tech to come take a look at that. We can have them come between 4:00AM next thursday and 11:00PM the thris following Saturday, will that be alright...
So, yeah, I lie to csr's.
Re: (Score:2)
Allrighty then, got
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I signed up to Orange when I was 17, which was to young to own a credit card so my dad was the credit card gu
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but I have to call this one. Unless we are only going to allow computer professionals with the skills to AND common sense to diagnose their own computer issues before calling the ISP to have internet access, ISPs are always going to get calls like this. That's what happens when you let some techonophobe grandparent who wants to get emailed pictures of their grandkids buy a computer and get an interne
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
When trying to solve a problem in Technical support we teach the tech
Rule 1. They are lying.
Rule 2. They don't know that they are lying.
Just trying to find out what they really want to do is often the biggest problem. Combine that with they don't want to look like an idiot so if you ask them a question about their settings they will often give you the answer they think you want to hear.
And yes my company has been scammed by people without support using other peoples names or other wise breaking their li
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let me give you an example. A new tech was just on a call. The customer said she wanted to number the documents with letters instead of numbers. She went to senior tech and he knew that that wasn't want the customer meant but the new tech kept saying that is what the customer said. Finally she went back and asked the customer, "do you mean you want to number the pages with letters and numbers, like a1, a2?" That is what the customer did
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, sometimes customers do lie. I don't believe that most do however.
You are better off teaching that most, but not all, customers are uninformed novices who frequently tell you things that are different than reality. Teach that they should verify information.
It's about attitude. You are setting your techs up to be adversarial by default. I'm just sayi
Re: (Score:2)
I would have to agree... I don't mind the lying as much as the withholding of information since that is vital to actually solving the issue.
After all, how can you fix something if you don't know what happened to cause it?
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but that is your job. If the customer knew what information is relevant, they could use the knowledge base and figure it out. But how should a granny know what is relevant? The new game the nephew installed, the sun outside, or the new coffeemaker in the kitchen? It is up to you to ask the right questions.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of them never said a peep. I dutifully went through the troubleshooting, wasting everybody's time, when things would have been a lot simpler if they said "My house flooded and my soggy device doesn't work."
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, no.
But to be fair, I don't talk to grannies and people who call in should know these things because it is part of their job description.
But to humor you... Here is a ficticious example.
Client: Hello, I'm looking for a file but I can't find it.
Tech: Do you know you saved it as? We can search for it.
Client: No.
Tech: Do you know when you saved it?
Client: No.
Tech: Do you know when you last saw it?
Client: No.
Tech: Well... Lets just search all your files and see if anything l
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course we do. You won't even talk to us if we tell you we're running linux.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:5, Funny)
A few years ago I was working as a Tech Support Engineer (... well... technically, I was the entire IT support team!) when I encountered this little gem.
We (a medium sized secondary school in the UK) had 2 buildings, about 1km apart. I had a call from a teacher in our English dept one morning asking me to come over and refill the paper in their printer. Not really in the mood for a 2km round trip when I already had plenty to do that day, I simply gave the relevant instructions (pull out paper tray, put paper in, make sure it doesn't go above red line and slide the tray back in), thinking this would be well within the capabilities of someone who teaches English Literature.
Ten minutes later, I get another call from the same department, to say it's still not printing.
What do I find when I get there? They had followed my instructions to the letter and had therefore ommitted the step I thought didn't need stating (take the paper OUT OF THE PLASTIC WRAPPER!!!).
A couple of weeks later, the same initial request presented itself. This time, I repeated the instructions from before, but included the missing step.
When I heard nothing for about an hour, I assumed they'd figured it all out. BIG mistake. I get a cal saying they have a paper jam.
When I get there, the printer is telling me there is a jam in the paper tray. When I try to remove the tray, however, it doesn't budge... at all!
I ask the teacher who'd called what EXACTLY they'd done when re-filling it.
With a VERY sheepish look, she informs me that there had only been about 50 sheets left in the ream, and it was no-where near reaching the red line in the tray, so they'd put a hard-back dictionary into the drive under the paper to bring it up to the red line. 50 sheets later, the printer tries to load a hardback disctionary into a paper path designed for paper of a maximum weight of 110gsm and jams up so badly I had to dismantle pretty much the entire printer to remove it.
The moral of the story... for every idiot-proof system, there is AT LEAST one system-proof idiot!
The other little gem was when I caught the head of our maths dept trying desperately to get a eCommerce website to accept his credit card details on the machine in the staff lounge by repeatedly sliding his credit card in and out of the floppy drive, faster and faster, wiping it, trying again, blowing the drive (I assume to try to dislodge any dust). Eventually he went to phone me only to notice I was already in the room and asked why I'd disabled the ability to read credit cards on ALL computers, not just those in the student labs?!?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Try working as a CSR, first... (Score:5, Interesting)
You realize the problem is with the trash can... (Score:2)
A favorite support anecdote (Score:3, Interesting)
So this call comes in, and this lady says our "software" is causing her screen to go solid yellow every time she dials the modem. Fair enough, the tech decides, we'll have her uninstall and reinsta
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
See that is the problem with modern thinking about businesses.
Companies should encourage employees to feel that "it is their business" to promote company loyalty and treat them like part of the owners of the company. You are less likely to quit or do something bad if the company treats their employees this way.
Re: (Score:2)
Companies should encourage employees to feel that "it is their business" to promote company loyalty and treat them like part of the owners of the company. You are less likely to quit or do something bad if the company treats their employees this way.
Sure they do, but how is that better for the employee? He works harder because he has some weird emotional connection with the team. He won't get paid better, that's the point of that mind fuck. There is only one way to get a great raise, job hop or demonstra
Poor Training (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Level 1 support is always lax - they're the trained monkeys who know how to say "did you reboot your windows box yet" when you tell them your TV crashed. They really only exist to filter the morons from the peopl
Paging Dr. House (Score:5, Insightful)
People drop their iPods and claim that they 'died'.
People hotplug drives that aren't hotplug and RMA them to Newegg.
People push GPOs to servers, then claim "I didn't change anything" to everyone else.
Combine this with the fact that on the other hand, the customers are frequently more knowledgeable than the front line support, and you're bound to have an antagonistic relationship. How many times have you called about a PC problem, and had to wade through the "ok, lets reboot in Safe Mode" or "please click Start, then Run, then "C M D -dot - E X E".... just to fix a farking bad video card?
Re: (Score:2)
The problem i have with most tech supports is that they often know less about the product than you do. ISPs and telcos are good examples. "please plug the modem directly into your windows PC..." etc is bullshit when the modem is just a standard cable modem that does DHCP over ethernet, etc. But they try the "scripts" on folk and ass
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes, the problem *REALLY* is on their end, and if they had an ounce of respect for customers who actually know a thing or two about computers things would go a lot smoother.
I'd rather be told "the gateway for your
Re: (Score:2)
The truth of the matter is most L1 support folk are retarded script monkeys who know about as much about computers as they do about open heart surgery (that is to say
Re: (Score:2)
HAL9000 (Score:2, Offtopic)
Not exactly a cash cow... (Score:2)
Because so many customers who call up are wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why many companies separate the customers into groups. One group who are usually right (or pay extra to be treated that way
Even companies like Dell have an Engineer-to-Engineer support, and at that level if a customer says the CDROM drive is broken it's not because it was used as a cup-holder
Now if companies could semi-automatically sort long-term customers into separate groups that'll be good.
It'll be good for me and _them_ when I tell them that they've screwed up their routing config, and no I do not need to reboot my ADSL modem - they don't go uh "that's not in the script" and keep asking me to do pointless stuff.
Re:Because so many customers who call up are wrong (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is (Score:2)
This will come across as a troll but it's unfortunately the truth about people.
Re: (Score:2)
Just because they don't have the training, education, and experience to conceptualize and solve problems doesn't mean that they do not have the intellect to do so. If you take that attitude of "You are dumb because I know more than you about X." with customer service, you are not going to get a good response. Remember, many of them are college students, many of them are taking temp work between jobs, and many o
Re: (Score:2)
And remember, most of them are not. Many people take those jobs because it's better than walmart or burger king - and who would blame them? When I call Verizon DSL support, I usually do not get a smart person. They usually don't have the ability to understand and fairly simple logic such as "None of the lights of the DSL modem come on (such as the Power indicator), so it either
Re:The problem is (Score:4, Insightful)
I work as a tier 1 support person on a scripted help desk. I have 25 years of computer experience- no formal training, but I can build a PC from scratch in my sleep, configure a wireless network with my eyes closed, and recite from memory most of the common scripts we use. We support 40000 users who use some subset of approximately 1200 applications ranging from Microsoft products to custom applications written by our own developers. My colleagues don't all have the same skill set I have, but we were all trained to the same basic standards. I've seen people fail the training and not be able to work in my department- I owe my job to one. Also, we are expected to reach customer satisfaction goals as well as call resolution goals.
For reasons I do not wish to discuss publicly, this job suits me very well. I'm motivated each day to come in, do my job, and when my shift ends, I go home and live my life without worrying about being on call, managing people, or other job related issues.
I get paid very well to spend my day resetting passwords, explaining to people how to archive their email, and creating tickets for printer jams. I deal with secretaries, executives, developers, and sales people, so I encounter end users of all skill levels. I also encounter problems not covered in our knowledgebase (the scripts). In every case, I do my best to resolve my caller's issues, scripted or not. Sometimes I do solve them. If not, I will pass them along to the appropriate Level 2 (or above) support team.
I find that some callers lie, some provide more information than I need, some won't provide any information. In short, they run the gamut of human experience, just like my colleagues do. The best callers are the ones who say "I don't know much about computers", because I can tell them that they don't need to be, they just need to answer my questions and follow the steps I give them. It's up to me to extract the information that I need to solve their problem from the things they say.
The bottom line, for me, is that if they knew the answers to their questions, I would not have a job. I treat each call as unique, and each customer with respect. I can't say the same for my treatment by the callers, but it doesn't bother me, because I do my best.
It's people like the parent poster that I have the hardest time dealing with- arrogance cloaked in superiority leads to more foolish mistakes than the people who call and say "I don't know much about computers", who tend to make more honest mistakes.
Two kinds of lies (Score:2)
Software doesn't do a lot generally to track down what is happening when a failure happens. The bug reports help, but that is only on some software. Dr Wa
Approach. (Score:2)
If you say 'Givo, my box doesn't work. Why?' and they say you need an account and THEN you say 'I have an account. No really. Look it up. No I don't have the account number, or a billing stub, or...' They're going to mark you as 'scammer.'
If you call up with all that info in hand, and demand to know why your box stopped working, and that you can prove you paid
Re: (Score:2)
But what if my name is Rick James?
Re: (Score:2)
Did you bother to read the post? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do you know what pretexting is? It's providing enough information to pretend you're someone or something you're not, like a valid customer. We have no idea what this 'evidence' is, but picking a support ticket number isn't all that hard if you've any idea what the format is. The 'evidence' was obviously not associated with his account, as the account information on the
Re: (Score:2)
Because the customer IS the culprit (Score:2)
(I stopped working in tech support when I realized I hated most of my customers. And the software I supported was high-end enough and buggy enough that the problem should have been our fault fare more often than it was.)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but your post is spoken like someone who has never had a logical thought.
The single "No" rule (Score:2)
Technical problems, services, banking, whatever it doesn't matter.
I don't want people to say no. I want them to fix me problem and give me what I want.
But I also realise some customer service people, especially those on the front line do not have the authority to say "yes". It is their job to say "no".
So as soon as they refuse something I insist on being esclated, either to the next level of support up or to their supervisor/manager. I'm not rude
You don't get my full name [Re:The single "No"...] (Score:2)
Sorry, but you don't get to have my full name -- make a note of that. The only possible reason you'd need my full name is if you wanted to look me up in the phone book and harass me (or worse) outside of work. To reach me at work, you only need my first name, and either an ID number or extension number. There's too many creepy stalker types and vengeful insan
Re:You don't get my full name [Re:The single "No". (Score:2)
What I want is a way to be able to uniquely identify that person within the company that I have contacted, having a company policy of not giving o
Re: (Score:2)
So they can track you down? Sorry but thats horrible advice to give a CSR. First name, PERHAPS last initial. Thats all you should ever resonably expect.
Ah so your that asshole. You should know though that a CSR NOT escalating every self righteous jackwad that asks to be is actually commended by superiors right? The next line where you threaten t
Never mind the bollocks, here's customer support (Score:3, Funny)
"Lie lie lie lie liar you lie lie lie lie lie
Tell me why tell me why why d'you have to lie
Should've realised that you should've
Told the truth should've realised you know what
I'll do
You're in suspension...
You're a liar!"
What I have learned working as a CSR in the past (Score:3, Interesting)
People will have something break, try to fix it themselves, then call for help, then lie about what they did.
People will do really stupid things then lie about it.
People will do things that obviously void their warranty and then lie about it.
"It was broken before I opened it, so why won't you fix it under the warranty?"
"My baby likes to play with my cell phone, so I let her play with it. It stopped working after she put it in her mouth. You mean that isn't covered under the warranty?!? My husband is a doctor and we are going to sue you!"
"You mean the salesman lied to me? I am going to sue your company. What do you mean I can't sue your company, he was your salesman! What to you mean he doesn't work for your company, he sold me your product!"
What I have learned dealing with CSRs in the past (Score:2)
Me: The proxy server with IP address [XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] in your cluster is broken. It returns the Microsoft IIS page to everything that connects.
Them: OK, go to start, settings, control panel...
Me: I'm running Linux and I'm trying to hit Google. There are no Microsoft boxes of any description involved except for yours.
Them: We don't support Linux
Me: I'm not asking you to support Linux, I'm asking you to support your own proxy.
Them: Well, we still don't support...
Me
Re:What I have learned dealing with CSRs in the pa (Score:2)
They usually are. (Score:4, Interesting)
Many participants planned to do this. The couple of people who suggested it might be unethical were laughed at.
My help desk experience with this (Score:3, Funny)
Many of the callers seemed to have a guilty conscience: they would say things like "Is it something I did wrong?"
My standard answer: "This probably wasn't your fault, but I'm looking for a way to blame you."
It's a matter of tact. (Score:2, Insightful)
Aside from "The customer IS wrong" argument (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly, this would likely anger the customer even more than trying to blame them. "We believe you may have done x, y, and z wrong" (when the customer doesn't even understand the technical issues behind x, y, and z) is a LOT more effective than "We screwed you." In the first instance, the customer starts thinking to themselves "Well, maybe is WAS my fault." With the second response, he starts screaming at the rep and threatening legal action.
It's a lot cheaper to have one customer suspicious of you (and reluctant to use you again) than to be besieged by lawyers or having to pay for serious damages done.
Correction in your language (Score:2)
People do.
The computer did not make the mistake. Either the person using it did, or the person who wrote the software for it did. The computer itself did not make a mistake, it just did what it was told.
Re: (Score:2)
Computer's don't make mistakes (with the exception of the f00f bug, random alpha particles et. al of course... ).
*improved*
2 reasons (Score:2)
Second, and less obvious (unless you worked in the field), people lie. People lie a lot. A damn lot. For pretty much the same reason, they want to avoid the cost of a new system. So they won'
That pretty much explains why... (Score:2)
Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, customer *do* lie... particularly when they're embarassed about either what they did
Patrick McKenzie on Customer Support (Score:2)
I would suggest reading some of the posts by Patrick McKenzie [wordpress.com] on his blog. He has some great ideas on how to handle customer support and why you should treat your customers with the upmost respect.
One good post is this one [wordpress.com] in response to a rant from Ryan Carson @ Dropsend.
Patrick runs a small ISV selling bingo card software [bingocardcreator.com], so he has some experience dealing with non-technical customers. Definately worth subscribing to his RSS feed.
Be polite? After listening to "hold" drivel??! (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently, it never occurs to the jelloheads who put these things together that you've just come off an extremely frustrating couple of hours on a badly designed website.
By the time the poor first-line CSR gets someone like me, I'm loaded for bear and ready to kill. I try to be polite. Honest, I do. At the other end, it probably feels like a merry-go-round on a minefield.
So here's an idea for corporations: STOP WASTING MY TIME. If you have to put me on hold, just send out a slow, pleasant, monotone beep every ten seconds or so to let me know the connection is working. No music, no ads, no drivel. Let me get on with my life till the rep shows up.
If there's some useful information you can put at the beginning, by all means do it before the slow beep starts. But remember, I'm talking about useful to *me*, not you. For instance, the "real" support requests probably center around real faults in the product, and (hopefully!) that's a limited list. The top three real issues could be enumerated, possibly with extensions to go to a pool of CSRs used to dealing with that issue.
I know. Users are idiots and the system will never work. People will just push buttons. Sure, I've done it on occasion myself in fits of berserk fury. The reason it happens is because the goddamn choices are goddamn useless. Psych 101 will tell you that people tend to behave according to other people's expectations of them. So, just maybe, if companies stopped treating users like idiots, at least some of them would stop behaving that way. If it worked on only 25%, that would still save a lot of money.
Just use good music. (Score:2)
Actually, we could both be happy:
"You are now on hold. At any time while on hold you can choose from the following options:
Press 1 to listen to some music.
Press 2 to turn off all sound.
Press 3 to hear our top ten common issues and troubleshooting tips.
Press 9 to re
It's because they usually are. (Score:2)
They only ever ring up for telephone support when they have actually broken something (admittedly not hard if they're running Windows); and when you ask them to do something, they outright lie to you that they have when they haven't. Best thing I ever did was advise a customer (who was having trouble with something simple -- like doing what they were told and typing their name, NOT their e-mail addre
our computer system is never wrong (Score:2)
Yeah, it's not quite that simple. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem comes earlier than that. 95% of the people who call in are on the war-path. It wasn't really so bad for me, because the ISP only had about ten thousand customers, meaning we had a few dozen regular callers and a few hundred occasional callers. It wasn't long until the problem users (and there are a suprising lot of them) were all being shipped straight to me, presumably because I have a deep voice, careful use of the language, I'm polite on the job and I'll put up with a lot of crap on the job.
I'm not going to say we had the cup-holder CD guy, but there's a lot of that kind of stuff to go around. The problem is, it's not funny, good natured or any of that. It's really sometimes quite bitter and acrimonious. I'll give you the example of Dave, who called in just after he moved; he wasn't able to dial in, and he was "certain it was [the ISP]'s low quality hardware tripping him up again." The problem was that he had forgotten to put a phone cable in place between the computer and the new wall.
Thing is, he had a teenage son, and that son would go screwing with his settings on a weekly basis. It wasn't long before he was asking for me by name to just go through the settings and roll them back one by one. He'd get furious if I didn't help with non-ISP stuff, and any suggestion that he just discipline the child or lock the machine down got met with a tantrum about how he paid his twenty dollars a month and that meant we had to come change the oil in his car if he wanted us to and rah rah rah.
They aren't treating you as a culprit. It's just that the chances you're going to be tolerable are miniscule, and it's almost certain that the person they just talked to completely screwed them off.
It's one of the paradoxes inherent in reliable systems: the more reliable your system, the fewer of your tech support calls will be from reasonable people who didn't cause their own problems. The more reliable the system, the lower the likelihood you're not a moron, and the higher the likelihood you're a jerk.
Given that Tivo's internal system is likely to be exceedingly simple, it seems to me quite likely that the rate of defects in their system is so low and the rate of assholes on the telephone so high that nearly everyone you talked to really has never seen a fault in the system, nor has met anyone else at work who has. They probably really believe what they're saying.
Going on the stuff I put up with at work ten years ago, I figure there's a good chance that the employee thought you had just misremembered the data you were trying to get them to look up by. About eleven times in ten, that's what's going on, and humoring the customer means they'll keep flogging the mistake, instead of trying to figure it out.
Not to mention these people are adults making nine bucks an hour without benefits, dealing with angry people on the phone all day. Wouldn't you assume the worst, if that was your life?
The answer is very simple.... (Score:2)
They've also been trained not to waste time on calls that the data doesn't support.
If you want to blame someone, blame the corporate mindset and those that only look for that stock price to go up by doing things that will only drive the stock price down.
*Customer* is the culprit?! (Score:2)
When service was restored, I wro
Pay CSRs better. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pay an extra $5 a month for your service.
Pay CSRs better to retain them for longer so that they become more and more skilled.
Call centers have massive turnover rates because frankly, the job kind of sucks. Bizarre shifts, sometimes extremely long shifts, and crap pay, depending on where you work. Customer service is something everyone complains about. A little more respect for reps would help a lot. Make it into a worthy career, and maybe people will stick around. Provide break time and ample vacation. Provide benefits. Encourage people to stay in the position for several years and become skilled at whatever it is they are supporting, rather than using the job as a stepping stone to other things. One skilled, experienced rep is probably better than 3 or 4 clueless new hires. In time, these reps should become coaches to new hires. People with generic management skills are *not*, simply by nature of having managed people, qualified to be a team leader in a call center. Handling even the most technical of technical support calls can be 50% psychology. It's not necessarily even that your problem is fixed, but that you leave happy and maintain your service.
But if you want bargain basement prices, that's where they're going to cut corners. It is where they have always cut corners. They're not going to cut the salaries and benefits of the executive officers in the company to save cash; that's for sure.
Don't take your frustration out on the reps. They've been dealing with upset, and sometimes childishly rude customers all day. As reps are bottom on the corporate totem pole, they have little influence over anything. Perhaps they are lucky and have a progressive management that listens to them. Probably not. They are probably underpaid or outright exploited contractors whose performance is based on metrics that have little to do with how happy you actually are, except to the extent that you affect the bottom line in some significant way.
If you get poor service, complain to the top. If a CSR is downright rude, mention them by name. They need to be disciplined or terminated. If you're ticked off about the service, spare the CSR, because it will be easier to fire the CSR than make systemic changes to the way the call center is managed (which may include things like training.)
I assume the Slashdot crowd here uses online "self servicing" before calling. Know that many people don't. Know that many people choose to engage in a 45 minute call (including hold time and navigating VRUs) rather than take 5 minutes to do a search on the website. The hold times you are experiencing may be a result of customers like this (and obviously, yes, if you're talking about an ISP, some people can't get online to use self-servicing, but you'd be surprised how many people are simply lazy).
10% of customers are simply unprofitable due to the havoc they wreak on their own computers, and the number of times they call technical support. Many customers will attempt to disguise problems they themselves caused, as a problem with the service whose tech support line they are calling. For example, a customer downloads malware which screws their system up. They will call and say that "your software" did this to their system and you damn well better help. Or it's Microsoft's problem, or some other piece of software they insist on running is interfering with your product.
Customers expect reps to be experts on every piece of software, OS, and possible configuration. I've seen people call reps "morons" because they don't know how to support FreeBSD or obscure desktop-altering applications on their $7.50 an hour salaries.
Sometimes CSRs are bastards because they've been dealing with childish jerks all day. Some CSRs are incompetent, or ill-tempered and don't belong on a company's front lines, but this is probably the exception rather than the rule. There are many reasons for bad customer service, but most of it has to do with shortcuts take
Re: (Score:2)
The really, really last thing you want to hear is that you missed something, then fixed it, then hear about it again because the latest version isn't in your customers hands, yet. Or better yet -- your customer finds out that the problem is fixed in the next version, which was shipped to him las
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Usually tells you whoes blocking you and some sort of link to whatever RBL is doing it. Some of the lists even give you a copy of the email with full headers. Ive had some compromised machines that were tracked down using headers.