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Bug Communications Technology

Customers Treated as Culprits in Support Calls? 245

Posted by Cliff from the computers-aren't-infallible-tho dept.
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."
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Customers Treated as Culprits in Support Calls? More

Customers Treated as Culprits in Support Calls?

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  • Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Shados ( 741919 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:06AM (#18765545)
    The problem, having worked for a time as customer support for an extremely large company, is simply how many people actually DO lie. It is excessively rare (relatively speaking) that a customer, in most fields, has a problem and its not their fault. Think retail: how many people will try to trade in something they broke? Think an ISP: How many people will claim their internet service is down, when they actually screwed up their PCs? By far, far, the majority. From my experience, its pushing 10 to 1.

    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)

      by thona ( 556334 )
      Seconded.

      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)

        by fstanchina ( 564024 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:18AM (#18765639) Homepage

        > ...to realize that they did broke something.

        Like grammar.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by networkBoy ( 774728 )
          That was funny.

          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)

          by bcattwoo ( 737354 )

          > ...to realize that they did broke something.

          Like grammar.

          It looks OK at my end. Must be a user problem at your end.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by miyako ( 632510 )
        Not only that, but often times you run into a situation where there is a legitimate problem, but the user thinks that it's problem foo, when the problem is actually problem bar. Of course, the user, convinced that the problem is foo, will tell you whatever they think you need to hear in order to fix foo. Often times foo is simply a set of the most disasterious and unlikely problems, because those are the only ones big enough for the user to take notice of, and more subtle problems which can be easily fixe

        • Re:Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:5, Insightful)

          by twistedsymphony ( 956982 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @09:07AM (#18766051) Homepage
          Even if I think I know what the problem is I find it best to let tech support decide...

          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.
          • By far the most pleasant customers are those who will read/listen to what you're saying, and will give you accurate information back. Their problem also gets resolved -much- faster.

            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
            • Too often, flowchart junkies don't know shit in my experience. They follow the flow-chart because that's all their training actually covered and they really don't know shit about what you're talking about. I mean, if your stupid ADSL modem has no power light, don't tell me to reboot my computer...

              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)

                by CokeBear ( 16811 )
                Unfortunately, good technical support costs money, and companies in a race to the bottom don't want to spend it.
            • There was one time my internet was down. Being the generous person I was, I watched a movie assuming it would come back up on its own. When it didn't, I called my ISP.

              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:Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:4, Insightful)

        by thsths ( 31372 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @09:02AM (#18766005)
        > 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.

        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)

          by thona ( 556334 )
          No attitude. Data. I ran an ISP some years ago and our statistics indicated that 90% of the calls included wrong information given by the user.

          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)

      by Stevecrox ( 962208 )
      Yeah but they hold this line to stupid levels, I work in Woolworths and we are told to use our best judgement we are taught different ways to spot a someone trying to take the company for a ride, even when you miss it the boss will point it out and you learn from that. I've come across two organisations and three banks which held the view that the computer must be right and will give a few examples :

      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
    • How many people will claim their internet service is down, when they actually screwed up their PCs?

      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
      • Most of ISP support time isn't dealing with ISP problems, it's dealing with the customer's Windows configuration. ISP's can test the connection to the cable / DSL modem and verify connectivity that far which is trivial. The PC config part is the hard part, and the best way is via the support scripts we all hate. The problem is that many ISP don't check modem connectivity first, and assume it's a customer config problem and force you through the scripts before checking the database to see, indeed, that the D

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by teflaime ( 738532 )
          Exactly. If the ISP doesn't want to be in that business, they need to quit offering service to people who are not technically qualified to handle all of the config issues themselves. Now, since they aren't doing that, they have taken it upon themselves to desktop trouble shooting when a user can't access the internet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      Yep.
      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
      • A competent tech can usually spot that the person on the other end of the phone is competent too. Unfortunately, most support techs (that I have run into anyway) are not competent and wouldn't know the difference between a Cisco router and a Porter-Cable router. For example, when I call Verizon DSL, it is normal to get a "tech" (and I use that term loosely) that doesn't know what ping does or how it works, what DNS is, or anything even remotely basic. Rarely (like 1 in 20 calls) you find someone who may be

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
          I guess you didn't read rule 2. The customers don't know they are lying.
          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
          • I guess you still don't understand that a false statement that wasn't made with intent to deceive isn't a lie, therefore the "rule 2" is bogus by definition.

            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
    • The problem, having worked for a time as customer support for an extremely large company, is simply how many people actually DO lie.

      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)

        by thsths ( 31372 )
        > I don't mind the lying as much as the withholding of information since that is vital to actually solving the issue.

        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.
        • When I did support I had numerous customers who had lightening damage, flood damage, serious physical damage, beverage accidents, insect infestations, burning equipment, and so forth.

          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."
        • Sorry, but that is your job.

          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)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )
      The problem, having worked for a time as customer support for an extremely large company, is simply how many people actually DO lie.

      Of course we do. You won't even talk to us if we tell you we're running linux.

    • Re:Its simply an issue with filtering out "noise" (Score:5, Funny)

      by KevReedUK ( 1066760 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @11:20AM (#18767919)
      I would also second that (third it, if you will...).

      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?!?

  • Try working as a CSR, first... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by djones101 ( 1021277 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:07AM (#18765553)
    Have you ever had to work as a CSR? Have you ever had to take multiple calls per hour assisting users with various computing tasks? Have you ever had to spend hours out in the field diagnosing a problem with someone's machine, only to have them point out (once you finally find the problem) that they "tried doing this or that" with the computer? I spent 8 years as a CSR at a small ISP. We had a saying around the office. "The customer is always right, and the source of 95% of the problems." While the court system may describe someone as innocent until proven guilty, it's futile to apply that to a real-world application. No matter how an application "should" work (it bears noting that "should" is a curse word in the industry), there will always be a user that finds a way to royally screw something up and then blame it on the software (or hardware) not doing what the user thinks it "should" do. Remember the old adage, "make something idiot proof and God will make a better idiot".
    • When in doubt, tell the callers to move the trash can [worsethanfailure.com].
    • One of my favorite calls was when I was the junior network admin at a largish (40k customers) ISP. The phone techs would ask my advice if they were stumped. Our techs were all trained to reason through things instead of using a set script. It worked pretty well for the techs who actually stayed after the training.

      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
    • I have, it caused me to become a better communicator to others who had not yet learned the ways of their product. The documentation can be wrong, the product may not work, and never underestimate the power of semantics for being an excellent confusion generator. Since my tenure as a customer service person, I have learned the value of walking a client through the product to do what the client wanted. I have since then learned to understand that all software, or hardware is not without fault. And that it
  • Customer support representatives rarely know enough about how computers work to properly answer questions like that. If they were, they'd probably be working in a position where they repair such problems instead of fielding calls. Yes, there are some that are qualified, but normally companies will just take anyone willing to answer phones for $8 an hour and train them how to answer phones. I think many people don't know that data can become corrupt, and that anyone saying the data is wrong is trying to tell
    • It's not just poor training. If the representative cannot find a record of your account in the computer they have to assume your account never existed. There's probably a paper trail and backups that will verify things, but you will need to ask to have your call escalated to the person's manager.

      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)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:10AM (#18765585)
    EVERYONE LIES.

    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?
    • Um while I agree that people will tend to minimalize their responsibility for something going awry, I've had hardware and software that just plain didn't work out of the box.

      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

  • HAL9000 (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by thebdj ( 768618 )
    HAL: It can only be attributable to human error.
  • The truth of the matter is that customer service departments lose money. The only one that I've heard of that has not at some period is Apple, and that is when their (well-trained, fluent, located in Texas) reps were selling things during the calls. In the eyes of the company, the first goal of the rep isn't necessarily to help, it is simply to make you disappear without complaining too much.

  • Because so many customers who call up are wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheLink ( 130905 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:17AM (#18765631) Journal
    Because so many customers who call up are wrong?

    That's why many companies separate the customers into groups. One group who are usually right (or pay extra to be treated that way :) ). And another group who are clueless.

    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.
    • The local cable company where I live is a great example of this. If you call as a residential customer with a problem, you wait on hold for several minutes, and then it's: reboot your PC, reboot your modem, "we don't support routers", check your network settings... Even if you tell them the "Sync" light is off indicating there is no upstream link. They seem to have a culture of assuming their network is infallible and the problem is always the customer (and Ok, it's residential ISP support - I can understan

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cortana ( 588495 )
        When you sign on to your ISP's service there should be a question, "how much do you know about computers/networking?" and if the customer answers "a little bit" then they get automatically escalated to second line tech support in the future. :)
  • The kind of people who work 1st line support aren't really able to do more than follow a script. They have neither the motivation, nor the intellect to conceptualise or actually solve problems. They make up the majority of humanity. When your problem falls outside the scope of their limited understanding, they deny it exists.

    This will come across as a troll but it's unfortunately the truth about people.

     
    • "They have neither the motivation, nor the intellect to conceptualise or actually solve problems."

      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
      • Remember, many of them are college students, many of them are taking temp work between jobs, and many of them are smarter than you.

        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)

      by Cavedragon ( 179024 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @03:06PM (#18771469) Homepage
      Thanks for the generalization. I resent the statement that I lack the "motivation, nor the intellect to conceptualise or actually solve problems"

      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.
  • There are lies, the normal kind, and there are lies of omission. Leaving something out is often not the fault of the user. When tech support asks what happened, they might often not actually know. Like (here comes the car analogy) taking your car to the mechanic. The mechanic asks what's wrong with it. You tell him you don't know, its making a funny noise.

    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
  • I think it depends largely upon how you approach the situation. If you SOUND like you are trying to scam them, they are going to assume you are.

    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
    • If you just keep saying 'I'm Rick James, bitch! Look it up!' then you'll get nowhere.

      But what if my name is Rick James?
    • Probably not, even though you managed to get Givo out of it some how... If you had, you'd realize (please pretend the rest is at all caps, the filter doesn't like it) he had the number, their database had lost it however. He even provided proof of other, prior accessions and transactions that they could verify.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Aladrin ( 926209 )
        No, actually, he never said he had the number. He only said that there was 'evidence in their system' that he had dealt with them before.

        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
        • OK, maybe he didn't /say/ it straight out, but given a couple of lines in the comment, I'm willing to bet pretty good money he did actually give it...

          "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 cas

  • Spoken like someone who has never worked in tech support. Most of the time, the customer did do something to screw up the software, and most customers show no qualms about lying to you to try to make it your fault.

    (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.)
    • Yes, he must have accidentally logged into their database and deleted his account number.

      Sorry, but your post is spoken like someone who has never had a logical thought.
  • Its a rule I follow when dealing with customer service people.

    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

    • "I also make sure that I have the persons name at the start of the conversation (full name, and if they won't give it I make a note of that)..."

      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

      • I'll accept "I'm John and I'm the only John in the office", or "I'm John and my extension is xxxx" quite happily. In fact I did the exact same when I worked in sales they are free to have my first name, (and it was rather obvious since I wore a name badge saying so), and since I was the only male staff member in the store it wasn't going to be hard to identify me.

        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

    • "(full name, and if they won't give it I make a note of that)

      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.

      "inform them if they don't escalate me I will be mentioning that when I do get through to higher up."

      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)

    by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:45AM (#18765863) Homepage
    I knew that their customer support sucked when they put me on hold and I got a Sex Pistols tune:-

    "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)

    by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @08:47AM (#18765885) Journal
    People lie, people are stupid, and people think we are stupid.

    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!"

    I have model X and it won't do this thing I want it to do.

    Model X doesn't have that feature.
    What do you mean it doesn't have that feature? Everything can do that.
    Only models Y and Z support that.
    You are LYING! Let me talk to your supervisor!

    • Particularly the clueless-ISP-type ones:

      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

  • They usually are. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by seebs ( 15766 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @09:03AM (#18766023) Homepage
    I was hanging out on a playstation-related forum. There was a thread there discussing the importance of getting an extended warranty on your PS3, so that when a new and improved model comes out, you can take the old one into the shop, claim it doesn't work, and demand a replacement.

    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)

    by spywhere ( 824072 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @09:04AM (#18766031)
    I was the alpha geek on the Help Desk for a multi-state corporation.
    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."
  • I agree 100% that most customer support calls are because of something stupid the customer did, but customer support reps often seem to forget that they are literally there to support the customer. If I have my techie friend fix my computer for free, he can condescend and make me feel stupid all he wants. That sort of attitude is not appropriate in a business relationship. If I'm paying for electronics, software, and in some cases the customer suppport itself, the person on the phone could have the courtesy

  • Aside from "The customer IS wrong" argument (Score:3, Interesting)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @09:14AM (#18766119)
    Even if the rep realizes that the customer is not at fault, they would be crazy to openly admit it without trying to blame them first. First of all, admitting that the software/hardware company screwed up would open themselves up to a huge liability (no small consideration in an age when class action lawyers are circling like vultures).

    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.

  • Computer's don't make mistakes (with the exception of the f00f bug et. al of course... ).

    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.

    • Computer's don't make mistakes (with the exception of the f00f bug, random alpha particles et. al of course... ).

      *improved*

  • First, and obvious, one: It costs money if you, the customer, are right. You're doing something that certainly won't get them a dime but might cost a fortune. Any chance to blame you and avoid the cost will be taken. Call center agents who do approve too many returns, refunds or even only repairs will not last for long.

    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'
  • ... I started my webcomic.

  • Well... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fitten ( 521191 )
    First, most/many customers don't necessarily lie as much as simply being ignorant of what may be going on. My mother, for example, wouldn't be able to tell you anything more than "when I click on this web page, it doesn't do what it used to do". It's the responsibility of the CSR to ask questions to lead the customer to the point of describing what's going on so that some clue might pop out to identify the problem.

    Second, customer *do* lie... particularly when they're embarassed about either what they did

  • 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)

    by quixote9 ( 999874 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @11:03AM (#18767683) Homepage
    I feel for CSRs. They get to listen to people after the bad music, company ads, and all the other drivel. By that time, I'm already right round the bend. And I start out irritated because I wouldn't be calling if there was no problem. I can't even tune the drivel out. I hear a voice break into the bad music, I think "Ah!" and then it's some perky twit saying, "Visit our website at jelloforbrains.com! There's a big support section! It answers your questions! See new features! Order new products! Jelloforbrains.com!"

    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.
    • A monotone beep would really piss me off. Just make sure it's not quite elevator music, and don't EVER interrupt the hold music with a voice unless it's a real human being. Only exception would be if something actually changed at that very moment.

      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
  • My personal experience suggests that 50% of whatever customers say is bull, and the other half is shit.

    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
  • Then why is there a multi-billion dollar a year industry to repair comptuers?
  • When I was just out of college, I did tech support for a local ISP for about two years. I managed to net a promotion or raise every other month by not succumbing to the tendencies you're describing. It's a lot harder to not to that than it sounds.

    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 CSR's and managers that deal with the calls have been trained that the system is infallible.

    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.
  • I once had to call my ISP's "support" line for an issue at their end that had persisted over a couple of days. I'd gone through all the checks and knew, for certain, that it was their fault. But I still had to go through the script. All billed at premium rate, of course. (Did I mention that my ISP was also my cellphone operator?) I had to demand a supervisor before I got any sense out of them - and the supervisor confirmed within two minutes that the problem was at their end.

    When service was restored, I wro

  • Pay CSRs better. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by quag7 ( 462196 ) on Tuesday April 17, 2007 @03:13PM (#18771587) Homepage
    Want better support?

    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

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