Orwellian Tech Support 853
alteran writes "Here's a very well-written piece on what goes on inside a tech-support call center. Makes working for Initech seem good. Sorry about the forced ad-viewing - it only last about 10 seconds, and the article is worth it."
A disgruntled worker!? (Score:0, Insightful)
Oversea tech support (Score:-1, Insightful)
The scripting is bad, the fact that they can't operate outside the script is abhorrant. But what really ticks me off is when they keep trying to trick people into stating something that would void their warranty. When I had to get the LCD for the laptop replaced I was asked no less than 10 times if I had dropped the notebook. The question was varied from "did you drop it even a little bit" to "now, you said you recently dropped it, right".
The reason they got so much hell from corporate customers is that they have dedicated IT professionals who've already done all the testing and can't afford two hours on the phone to get some replacement hardware sent out. The IT dept will simply switch to a new vendor if that kind of crap persists.
Since the call center people work for the call center, and not the company, they have no incentive or access to institutional knowledge - you know when you tell someone about a certain model and they don't have to look everything up? The Indian support centers also pretend to be located in America, practice American accents, have sports teams they pretend to watch, and otherwise try to fool you into thinking they are in the US. All of which to get around the issue of supporting local jobs. If we farm all of our jobs out to India, who will be left to buy anything?
Salon's ads (Score:-1, Insightful)
Orwellian? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd have said Kafka-esque, perhaps.
Never had bad tech support calls... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ok, so maybe it's be cause I'm technically competent so I don't phone up with the usual cup-holder problems, I only phone up when I know something's broken, and I can usually get fasttracked to a higher level of tech support by telling them I know what I'm talking about. Dell were incredibly good about this and even flagged it as a note on my record.
On a sidenote: Format and reinstall is the biggest cop-out ever. Guy that do this are the biggest muppets I know in tech support - McDonalds staff usually have a better handle on what they're dealing with...
Violation of copyright laws (Score:4, Insightful)
sPh
Re:Orwellian? (Score:1, Insightful)
Nothing new...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see Salon and the NYT removed from the "special pass" list.
Re:You can't get parts from India... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are looking at the whole situation from a very narrow perspective. Even though you consider yourself a knowledgable person (which btw I highly doubt), there are lots of american people who are losing their bread and butter because of call center jobs being transfered to India.
And just because the job doesn't require toomuch knowledge doesn't make it any less important. The jobs and the money they generate contribute to the american economy. So your argument that it's not a worrying factor, is mute.
The irony is I am an indian. The sad fact is quite a lot of the indians who work at call centers in india are in fact technology graduates and masters, and quite knowledgable. But they choose those jobs, simply because it pays their rent. And the lack of a familiar accent to american consumers is bring them a bad name.
So the situation is not working in anybody's favour, neither the american worker's who lost the jobs,nor the indian techies who gained them. I guess the only winner is corporate america.
Support is demanding and expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
I came up through an original support staff of under 6 all the way through a 100+ org with sophisticated call tracking and metrics and high levels of customer satisfaction. Our customers were deploying and implementing production manufacturing systems. They simply could not get up and running without our support. And they were paying 5-figures + just for support, so there was a real incentive and resource base to make quality support happen. Despite that there were times when our customers got less than the best level of support. I'd hate to think what support is like in low margin, high volume businesses.
For the technically adept, support becomes a physiological challenge. Customers yell and curse at you. Jobs are on the line. Halted production runs can stop an entire shop floor. Big money is on the line. Even when you know what you are doing, it's hard not to take this personally. It is no longer a technical challenge, but a psychological one. Those that can't cope with this reality burn out, those that can become rich as consultants.
Even in the best of support orgs, with all the financial resources, support is still the bottom of the totem poll in most companies. Too little respect is afforded the support staff by other departments (but those few in the know, actually find the broad knowledge from the support group). Support is seen as a beginning, not an endgame for their most talented people. The writing is on the wall once you start to become an internal consultant to the sales and development departments. You will be leaving support and taking your knowledge and mentoring skills to greener pastures.
In my experience, for complicated software I've found that a support group can utilize as many resources as the sales or development group. How many companies do you know that put as much resources into support as into the other groups? In support, like everything else, you get what you pay for. Even when a company realizes the value of support, the best people eventually go elsewhere. Until these issues get resolved, support will remain in its generally shabby shape.
What the REAL measure should be (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps I am nieve or just old fashioned but whatever happened to CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. Support like this is an abuse of customers, how much are customers willing to take before they simply go elsewhere?
If I receive bad support from a company when I need it - I will remember that incident when it comes time to make my next purchase. If I receive good support, then I am not only going to likely be a repeat buyer, but I am also likely to recommend that company's product to others.
Re:2 cents (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, Salon needs the money and they do get some for each advertisement shown. On the other hand the site does seem kind of slow at the moment though, so even Salon gets slowed down by slashdotting. Anyway, I read the article yesterday, so I already watched my ad (sorry Salon, I'm a cheap, poor, bastard).
They're not all this bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, they weren't all hardcore geeks, but they were all computer literate, the guys in my induction group. The instructor was a distinctly non-techie type of chap, but they called in the real techies for some sessions. The suit was only to educate us in the fine art of customer service, and company policy. Don't judge all call centres by this article, please. T
I remember when... (Score:5, Insightful)
What I wouldn't give for those days....
Re:You can't get parts from India... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't understand that people are so against those ten-second adds : Seriously : Afterwards, you can read the article, free of costs : And it only 'costed' you ten seconds (the ten seconds i most of the times use to empty my trashcan, close all remainder tabs, or whatever comes close to not having to stare at a commercial message for the whole ten seconds.
Seriously, if you're so against 'jumping through these hoops' : We have not told you to actually click every link that gets posted on here.
Same goes, for the NY Times : THey have great articles at times, and registering with my register/spam-email account is totally worth it.
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
I figured punter was refering to football. As in 4th down and 70 yards. Time to fall back and punt.
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:3, Insightful)
I think most of us are up to enduring an ad or two for something of this quality. If not, the story warned you and you're not forced to follow the link.
Re:Clueless? No surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oversea tech support (Score:5, Insightful)
Indians, of course.
Globalization will balance everything out in the long run, but the first few hundred years are going to piss a lot of people off.
The USA is increasingly catering to companies and those that own them, at the expense of the individual. Taken to an extreme perspective, the USA might be seen as a land of corporations surrounded by a sea of poverty, an extreme polarization of wealth.
Fortunately there are a few things that can't really be moved overseas (today, at least). Things like person-to-person service, sales, government, construction. Well, and lawyers. And crime. As other jobs dry up and move to less wealthy nations, these industries will probably boom. But in the end salaries will balance out just about everywhere. The only way you might outperform local salary averages is if your position requires physical proximity, and many don't, nowadays.
What can you do? Buy some stock.
It's NOT only overseas (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got news for all of you. It's not just overseas tech support who are "not knowledgeable" and rely strictly on pre-written steps and scripts to resolve problems. It's just about every tech support of a large company I've dealt with, in Canada and the US.
My ISP "Sympatico" has this problem. My dealings with McAfee tech support results in the same thing. No matter what you tell them, they step you through the same ridiculous "newbie" steps regardless of what you tell them you've done or discovered already. In fact, McAfee described to me 5 or 6 steps to take which basically could have been summarized as "completely uninstall the software and then re-install it"--Somethign I had already done and told them so!
Re:A good experience with Dell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Using the wrong metric (Score:1, Insightful)
Support is being paid for by manufacturers as a necessary cost of doing business so that customer satisfaction remains high enough to:
- prevent them from being sued
- get repeat business from satisfied customers
So they have to balance costs with customer satisfaction.
Rather than allowing their support contractors to use strict call times as measurement, they should be doing follow-up customer satisfaction surveying in some percentage (1%?) of the cases, and weighting that more heavily than call time.
In fact, quite a bit of this follow-up surveying is done, but apparently not by whomever this author was working for (unless he was distorting the facts to make a punchier article, heavens forbid).
If this is in fact going on, it's clear that the fault is with the managers who are using the wrong metric to determine success. This is easily changed.
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here. I pay for Salon - I find it worthwhile, I read it every day, and it comes with an insane number of additional freebies - like a subscription to Wired. And it's not as if you're locked out of reading for free what I pay for. You just have to pay by watching an ad.
I don't have the mod points I had yesterday, or I'd have modded the parent down. Sorry, but that's just not right. And it makes Slashdot readers look like a mob of freeloaders.
Re:What the REAL measure should be (Score:1, Insightful)
In other words, people are not willing to pay for good service, so they don't get it. Unfortunately, this means that just because you as an individual may be willing to pay for this, you may not have the option if the majority of your peers are not.
pretty simple, huh?
How? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Something about this article said "bogus" to me most of the way through and this clinches it. Ken gave out his email address to the caller? Increasing his average call time by valuable seconds? Why?
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:3, Insightful)
i hope salon is happy, because even with the obvoius copyright infridgement, they just made a lot of money today. People see how good the articles are, and they pay for it. Before you go whining about copyrights, how bout you ask salon.com how many new accounts they had yesterday, and how many they had in the last hour.
Wow, this is the industry I helped create? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't get it. Dell is famous for crap support an (Score:4, Insightful)
I always hear it from people that tech support doesn't help at all. Then why do you buy from those companies and not from some local shop were you get support in person? Cause dell offers phone tech support. ARGH.
Personally I rarely use tech support in fact the only calls in a years time were to my isp to get a new password. Simple stuff and still it took a good ten minutes.
Outsourced tech support is known to be crap. They get paid per call not by satisfied customer. Anyone with a single braincell can then figure out what kinda personal they want. It is also easy to figure out the kinda callers they desire. Idiots that can be made to call time and time again but for short calls.
Until people start voting with their dollars and take their business elsewhere companies like dell will see nothing wrong and keep outsourcing their tech support with the same pay per call contracts.
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a good analogy - "I can't do anything with this, so you take it and get it as far away from me as possible".
Re:The not so simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, while I agree that this form of action is the only really effective way to make a change, most people (myself included) I doubt have the patience/time to coerce the company to change their policies. It's much easier to complain to the point where you get your answer/result, and then leave it at that. Sad, I know...
Anger rating system. (Score:3, Insightful)
A rating would help prevent readers like myself from getting this huge adrenaline rush right before going back to the lab and running experiments requiring patience, not the ability to throw large blunt objects at retarded management.
grumble grumble... i feel better now
Re:You can't get parts from India... (Score:5, Insightful)
The American economy may be expanding, but it's not expanding nearly as fast as India's or China's. The American economy is not creating jobs nearly as fast as it's loosing them.
* manufacturing is all but gone from this country, and services are also leaving. From IT (programming jobs and tech support) to accounting no job is safe from an Indian worker earning a 10th of what his american counterpart makes. There is only a need for so many doctor (even that they can do remotely these days) or burger flippers.
Re:Very, very familiar. (Score:2, Insightful)
If anyone is in this position, suggest to your upper management to call the support line and try to get help with something.
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:5, Insightful)
I watched ad, I done my time, now I want to read the article.
Or maybe I should have called Salon tech support????
Tech Support Experiences (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem, in my experience, and highlighted in this article, is the corporate love of outsourcing. Using my own experience as example, I started some years ago working for a particular linux based company doing tech support. At the time I started, the in-house support people handled phone support for corporate customers, and web-based support for non-corporate customers (i.e. those who didnt pay for a specific contract). The phone support was handled by an outsource "Partner" who had call centers on both coasts.
When I first started, the level of customer satisfaction for support was abyssmal. Being the "in house experts" we were drafted to monitor calls and offer critique to the outsource company. In the end, nothing we could do worked, and their treatment of our customers was so bad, we finally dropped them like a bad habit, and brought all support in-house.
Now, flash forward a year later, and the dirty word is mentioned again. So, in a nutshell, after the team I was on turned support completely around, from a low 30% satisfaction rate to nearly 95%, they turn around and ship our jobs off to another oursource company in a different country, and we were mostly out of jobs.
And same thing happened. Customer satisfaction fell through the floor.
So, the moral of this story is: outsourcing something that is customer facing like Support is a Bad Thing[tm]. Like the article stated, oursource techs dont really care one way or another (or those that do care are quickly replaced with ones who dont) and the company is just out for low call times and high volume. Techs who are actually employed by the company they represent are much better workers, and provide much better support to customers. Why? because for the most part, outsource techs are just hired guns who could care less about the company whose calls they are taking, while in-house techs have a certain pride in their work, knowing that when they look good, the company looks good, stays in business, gives chance for promotion, etc etc...
And again, thats just from my personal experience on both sides of the fence.
Re:Oversea tech support (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's recap this little transaction for our readers:
[1] Dell reduces costs by getting rid of first-tier support or moving it overseas
[2] Dell charges you or your company a fee to enroll in this program
[3] You do all the technical support (testing, troubleshooting, etc.) thus saving Dell on per-call communication costs
[4] Dell pockets the savings from #1, #2, and #3
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
-Alex
Re:You can't get parts from India... (Score:2, Insightful)
So we should take out MORE student loans, go deeper into debt, lose more years of our life to train for another job that can just be outsourced like the last? Whats more, if the job market is expanding, how come there are fewer jobs? I've not seen ONE source that claims there are more jobs now then there where four years ago that is not scewing the results. What few new jobs there are, are all in the service industry. These are not the types of jobs we need for a strong economy unless you want nothing but CEOs and janators.
"We, American consumers, can now purchase products cheaper."
No we cant. All this is doing is lowering the cost to the company, thus earning the CEO and other managment more money. Prices are NOT going down because of this, proffits are going up.
Re:Similar to my experiences... (Score:4, Insightful)
Could you please tell us who that client is?
We are getting *exactly* what we wanted... (Score:5, Insightful)
Our annual telephony costs are over 7 digits per year, easy... and getting any form of tech support, despite being a rather large account, is damned near impossible. The reason?
Everyone wanted 10 cents per minute. Then 9. Then 8. Then 5. Then 4. If a telco doesn't offer it, everybody dumps them.
Think they can offer any support at those rates? They can't - anyone with any experience costs too much, and is retired out. We get left with "script kiddie" tech supports, who don't understand what an T3 is, let alone know what the loss of one means. At this point, our tech support for AT&T now consists of a call to our sales rep, followed by a call to a VP - and let them deal with it, because it's the best they can do.
So, don't bitch - we're all getting *exactly* what we asked for.
The disbelief is simply astonishing (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm curious - from what well of wisdom does your disbelief spring?
I've worked for Wal-Mart, a tech-support firm, and for my state government. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the sort of business practices described in this article are not relegated simply to tech support; they permeate corporate culture. They are very, very real.
Considering the almost universally crappy service at McDonald's, transfer/machine hell on automated "help" lines, incomprehensible and unethical billing practices by phone companies, undisguised hostility and ingnorance in goverment offices, chronic understaffing and undertraining in department stores, spam, and a host of other noxious and common business practices . . . well, i'm just tempted to ask you, "What the hell kind of bubble have you been living in?"
Good service in any business arena is the exception and not the rule. If this is not the case where you live, please send me an application to your gated community. I want to move there as soon as possible.
Bad article, but here's the jist... (Score:2, Insightful)
why a drug screening? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pot smoking tech: "Whoa dude, that computer problem is totally bogusss!"
No skill clean tech: "What's a computer?"
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that I have blocked a pile of cookies from sites like "adclick.net," "clickseeker.net" etc. One of these random cookies is the one Salon uses to track their visitors. Damned if I'm going to sort thru my cookieblock file to figure out which one it is.
Re:Nothing new here... BULL*$@# ! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you put an idiot with a script in front of them on the phone, they may piss off people, but they are less likely to do any real damage.
I actually read the article and found it positively HORRIFYING. Since I am around sysadmins all the time, I forget what it's like to be some gullible consumer running Windows XP Home Edition.
How about some Hippocratic Oath action here? You know, "First, do no harm." The Formatters who fail to fully disclose that consumers are going to lose their family's digital photo albums, video clips of newborns, and contact information for friends and family worldwide are lacking in redeeming human value. If you are a Formatter, please find a new line of work- TODAY.
Call ME gullible, but given our reasonably wide-open markets for building, selling, and supporting PC's, I would think the companies using these "Support Centers" will suffer for their callous disregard for their customers. What's worse is that these practices end up staining all of us in Information Technology as uncaring a-holes. In the future, those PC customers will move on to technologies that they can handle on their own. Hell, they might just buy Apples or some extremely dumbed-down desktop Linux. Just try explaining where "Desktop" is located in Windows Explorer to the average consumer if you think Windows is "simple and intuitive". And the Desktop is the first thing seen after logon!
Plagarist (Score:4, Insightful)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=87052&cid=7
Plagarist. I don't mind being copied, translated and quoted, but you passed this off as your own, and that's plagarism. Have you ripped off anything else I've written?
One word... (Score:3, Insightful)
He'll interrupt with, "Tell them we can't support the system unless it's in its original condition."
Compaq.
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:3, Insightful)
Why the fuck am I paying for high-speed access if the idiots running the websites are gonna INTENTIONALLY slow them down?
I say fuck 'em: You wanna mess around with delays and forced viewing ads and other crap like that, deal with the fact that we are gonna find ways around it.
Even if that way is to shun your ad-ridden sites.
I used to check IGN everyday, then they sold their soul to the advertising and registration branch of hell, now I close down the window as soon as I realise that I've inadvertantly followed a link to their pages. It beats having to cope with whatever horrible advertising scheme they are about to spew at me. Will it be flash animations over the text? Forced full page ad views? Or the mother of all insults: Ads with FUCKING LOUD NOISES suddenly blasting out of my speakers? Don't know, don't wanna know.
Re:What the REAL measure should be (Score:3, Insightful)
That died when the stock market and big corporations became the norm and drove the local mom-and-pop stores out of business.
Companies exist to make money for their stock-holders. By and large, the stock holders really don't give a dirty rat tail as to the how that money is made. Ethics be damned and the last rat on the ship gets stuck holding the worthless stock when it all comes crashing down.
Oh, and since the mega-stores ran the local mom-and-pop places out of business - where is the "elsewhere" that the consumer is supposed to now turn to?
Definitely something to ponder as you do your daily shopping. Do I go to Wal*Mart / Lowe's / Home Depot and deal with the faceless corporation, or do I support a local mom-and-pop operation?
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:4, Insightful)
Where would that information you're whining about Salon "restricting" be if Salon hadn't been there to develop and publish it?
Re:The worst (Score:2, Insightful)
The likelihood of broken cable vs broken electron gun seems, from experience, to be weighted towards the cable in such instances of one colour failure.
Re:I call bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
compare it to the cheating that goes on with the seti client. They can only realisticly detect cheats that do the work in a ridiculusly shot period of time. The rest, that claims reasonable time for the work done. Beyond that your left with random sampling and statistics.
If you did no work, they know what's up instantly, if you do half assed work they have to get about 3-6 months worth of poor satisfation surveys before you have a trustworthy statistical analysis. Even then they'll usually give the client a chance to improve, so as not to incur the expense of switching to another provider.
Bottom line, statistical analysis of quality lags far behind that of quantity. The client doesn't know they're getting fleeced for at least a few months, as long as you'r doing something.
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
In an Orwellian world, you're damned no matter what. In a Heller-esque world, you're only damned so far as you follow the written rules -- if you trump those and follow the ACTUAL rules, you can succeed quite well. Loni is a Milo Minderbinder.
Blame the business model (Score:4, Insightful)
Coming out of it, I really think you need to blame the business model. I worked on several different contracts, and the one thing that struck me in common was that businesses all saw support as an afterthought. Something they have to provide, but rather wouldn't. One major OEM I worked for had as a mandatory part of our call script that we would direct people to online self help at the end of our call. Clearly they were trying to push people to less expensive support alternatives.
It's funny, because I worked for one of the "better" outsourcers (Sykes Enterprises). We were actually given fairly decent hands on training and had management that, while still definitely management, at least cared enough to put a human face to things, and to explain -why- we had to do things the way we did. And they were jerks on AHT (Average Handle Time) as long as you actually got issues resolved and kept the ACW (time between calls filling out notes) down. And for this, my company had difficulty holding onto contracts because we would be outbid by lower cost competitors promising higher callflow per buck. Businesses clearly cared a lot more for lowest price than highest quality. And even with a relatively decent employer, the job was still extremely high pressure.
I was fortunate because I came in already knowing a lot, but you can't possibly know enough in this industry. You have no idea just how -obscure- computer trouble can be until you've worked the phones, and this is exponentionally compounded by trying to piece together what's going on from customers who don't know the vocabularly of computerspeek, let alone how to construct sentances with it - all they know is it's broken, and they need it fixed yesterday so they can finish their master's thesis. It's a bit like trying to perform brain surgery blindfolded while wearing oven mits, except even then you can actually touch what you're working on.
As computers and electronics get more complicated -and- cheaper this is only going to get worse. Tech support -is- an expenditure - there is no direct profit involved to the manufacturers and service providers - only indirect benefits of customer retention/loyalty. We're already seeing this to a certain extent, and I forsee it becoming more prevalent - two tier support. You can get free support with underpayed, undertrained phone jockeys who may or may not fix the issue reading from their scripts, or you can call a fee based line, pay $2.00 a minute and get someone who actually knows what they're talking about. I think the days of high quality free support are numbered if they haven't passed already.
Like I said, I left, and I'm never looking back.
Absolutely (Score:5, Insightful)
His response was basically, "Yes, that's very nice and all, but you need to lower your average call time." The next day I was getting really frustrated about my call times and just said to myself "Fuck it, this job sucks." So I sat there for a couple minutes just hitting the hang-up button every time a call was routed to me until the queue was empty.
A week later I was called back into the manager's office. I thought to myself, "OK, this is it. Today I get fired." Instead I was congratulated on my much improved call times, given a cheesey award and told that I was being put in line for a minor promotion.
I quit and found another job a couple weeks later.
Don't disagree, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, with very limited exceptions such as Slashdot, I will not even go through a registration process. I have emailed the NYT to tell them that I did not find their content compelling enough to convince me to register to view it. (They were justifiably unimpressed, and offered to sell me a paper subscription. ;-)
I do read all kinds of sites with banner ads. Who knows, maybe someday one will look so interesting that I will click it!
Re:You can't get parts from India... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oversea tech support (Score:3, Insightful)
Dell should provide this service free of charge, and shouldn't require "training" costs for anyone involved if they're not going to bother paying for staff on their own end.
Dell does not generally pass savings on to customers. If anything, Dell's prices have remained as high as any other name-brand vendor, even in quantity. They are the largest PC vendor in the world, have the most efficient supply chain and should automatically be able to provide lower costs, service issues aside.
If you really want to feel cheated, think about how your employer is kicking back money to Dell (or whomever, for services that Dell should be paying for) and how that comes out of your paycheck.
Re:We are getting *exactly* what we wanted... (Score:4, Insightful)
Two questions:
Who needs support for long-distance phone service?
And how many "infrastructure improvements" did the Telcos make back when they were charging us 26 cents a minute?
I pay $23 a month, plus fee, plus charge, plus tax, plus levy, plus surcharge, just to have a dialtone on a phone I use MAYBE 15 times a month. The only reason I have it and don't go VOIP is that my DSL connection is contingent upon having a dialtone through the same carrier. Which sucks.
Re:Tech Support Nightmare Site for Compaq Computer (Score:2, Insightful)
It's an IT tech calling, not joe user.
When they call, they have their corp support contract info in front of them.
They didn't do something stupid to the machine, like, say, jam a pen in the power supply fan to get it to stop buzzing.
This makes it real easy to go "oh, ok, it broke, you need an RMA, did you do anything like drop it kick it spill water on it etc" they say "nope, just died", you go, ok rma. Thanks!
That's corp support, in a nutshell. Every once in a while you get a big issue, but it usually affects a lot more people than just one, so you fix 50 computers at once, not just joe user's screwed up mouse port.
Why does this obviously-bad situation persist? (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems that the root of the problem described in the article is that the contract with the company pays for calls completed, not problems solved. That company's customers are apparently enraged at their treatment. To the naive reader, it seems as though the contracting company could save money and improve customer relations at the same time by rewriting their phone-support contract to reward the call center based on actual problems solved.
All you guys from the real world, why doesn't this happen? Is it actually impossible to measure? Has anyone ever tried it?
Help the profitable callers, abuse the rest... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think there are a number of reasons for this. First of all, most people don't look at service when they buy, they just look at price. You can have the best support in the world, but if nobody buys your product because it costs more, the company dies.
Companies have also realized that some customers are way more profitable than others. That's why Dell gives consumer customers cheap outsourced Indian techs, and corporate Optiplex/Latitude customers US support. If Joe Smith decides not to buy his next $399 Dimension from you, big deal. If Fortune 500 company decides not to buy several million worth of servers from you, that's a problem.
Stores that sell extended warrenties also win when manufacturer warrenties suck. It seems worth an extra hundred or two hundred bucks to be able to walk into a store and walk out with a brand new PC instead of arguing with someone for 3 days so they can wait 2 weeks for them to send you out a part you have to replace yourself (which can be a big deal if you are an average user). These can be a big profit center for stores, so the stores kind of win when manufacturer support is suck.
Re:Today only, free access courtesy of Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Punting usually happens on fourth down. You have four downs to move the ball ten yards. If you cannot, the opposing team gets the ball where it lies. Also, typically the same players do not play offense and defense. So, by punting, you are essentially saying, "I've done all I can with it, this is no longer my problem." You are deliberately getting rid of the ball (problem) and handing it off to someone else.
Also, punting often puts you in a better situation, as it gives the other team a much less favorible field position than almost any other kind of turnover. If you simply must turn the ball over, or are seriously concerned that you will, this is the best way to do it.
Last, being American, I've never heard it used in the sense of "doing something completely random". It's almost always referred to in the sense of "getting rid of the problem by giving it to someone else", usually someone you don't like or don't know well or is in a different division (hence, not on "your team"). If you were giving it to a peer or co-worker, you'd probably use the term "hand off", which is how the quarterback (the player who initally takes possesion of the ball and controls the play) transfers the ball to the running back (usually a fast runner, used to move the ball forward by running it) on his team.
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:1, Insightful)
tech support personality mods (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually I got away from having to do so much tech support but to this day, I'm aware that my personality is affected by years of dealing with idiots who refused to even pay attention to the problem as it was clearly described to them.
If you're in this field, you need to be aware that this subtle personality mod can happen. It's driven home when you see skits like SNL's "Nick Burns, your company's computer guy."
Re:Nothing new here... BULL*$@# ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Most computer users that I know think computer mayhem is just normal. Most folks just want it to work and don't want to put in any more effort than the minimum to continue on with life.
Taking it a little further, most folks just want things to work in general. The less hassle, the better, and companies know this. At the end of the day, people take the path of least resistance.
I generally think people are too used to being screwed over to hold the company accountable or they're just too apathetic. That's why these draconian contracts and bad service are the norm. Until people stop giving these companies their money, this is the problem we'll have.
Cheers
Or you could actually subscribe... (Score:1, Insightful)
Uh, at Sykes they do! (Score:3, Insightful)
A company Sykes had a contract with paid for butts-in-seats, not calls taken so the rampant absenteeism was killing the eend of year totals for the account. Guess who had to do overtime to make it up?
A person who hasn't done this job before would say great, but that extra hour per day isn't worth it when you're almost homicidal at the end of the day on a normal schedule.
And yes, at one time I could recite the entire fdisk menu and the restore sequence from memory. Damn e-machiens.
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Fundamental problem for the "little guy": the way to the ears of the elected representatives usually leads through their pockets.
You can complain, or you can fix it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Rather than just whine about it, get yourself into a position to do something about it. I like digging into interesting calls, so I got a reputation for being kind of a Sherlock Holmes kind of character - the cool, interesting calls got conferenced to me. After a while, the "cool interesting calls" kept having the same questions over and over and over.
I made a webpage with the most frequent problems our users had, and easy tests to check for them, with links of what to do to fix them. One test, for instance, uses Javascript to display the user's system time in a window on the webpage. This actually checks 3 things - are we a "trusted site", do they have javascript enabled, and is their clock accurate (check that year, guys) - any of which being wrong will prevent the user from using our financial data site.
Make it easy - "Can you see the big red star? How about the small blue star?" First is served unencrypted, second has 128-bit or better encryption on it. If they can see one but not the other, "click here". If you can't see either, "click over here", that sort of thing.
The number of BS calls I got from the first & second-level folks has dropped dramatically since I set this up - every once in a while I add another test (it's up to 7 or 8 now), and it's used a lot.
Give the poor bastards in the call center the tools to fix it well _and_ quickly, and even the most pointy-haired of bosses should recognize that that's a good thing. Push it with a call-time reduction slant if they're that sort of boss, or if they actually give a spit about customers, use the customer-sat side of the argument. Or, you can just keep complaining about it...
Re:accents (Score:3, Insightful)
1)They are racist.
2)They hear a non-american answer the phone and think that an outsourced employee is less able than a non-outsourced one.
3)They hear a non-american answer the phone and think of the negative economic connotations associated with outsourcing.
4) I can't understand a goddamn word they're saying.
doesnt have anything to do with race or expertise. but if i can't understand what they say, how can they help me?
Promotion based on how unhelpful you are? (Score:2, Insightful)
To make an analogy, the way these help desks currently promote their operators is like some sort of military promotion based upon how many bulletes a soldier has fired. It simply does not make sense.
Why don't they add some sort of system where by the customer can rate the call? This could mean that unhelpful calls do not count towards your call statistics, and thus only useful people like Ken would get promotion.
Re:Nothing new here... BULL*$@# ! (Score:2, Insightful)
take off your blinders (Score:3, Insightful)
Just think, if I was blind and using a braille device, that kind person's effort would be the only think letting me read the article. Forced delay ads authored in a proprietary plugin environment are almost criminally stupid given the recent legislation regarding web accessibility.
Oh, and feel sorry for commercial entities trying to make old-tech biz models survive in the digital realm? Hahahahahaha. Fuck them and their cretinous, heavy-handed attempts to make the web like teevee. The net was such a nice place until the suits showed up to whore it out.
Re:You can't get parts from India... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Companies outsource to increase profitability.
2. Companies choose to layoff a majority of the workers, as re-education costs time and money.
3. The market becomes saturated with unemployed skilled workers, as most companies have outsourced their positions.
4. The unemployed skilled workers can not re-educate themselves, as they have little money to do so (most will try to keep their families fed instead).
5. As more and more jobs are outsourced, unemployment rises.
6. Consumer buying plummets as a result of less people earning money.
7. The US economy grinds to a halt.
This seems pretty obvious. The only way I see massive outsourcing being a benefit in the long term is if the cost of living in these countries rises faster than our economy slows down. Eventually a balance would be achieved, but at cost?
Companies, at least nowadays, really could care less about the workers. It's all about the cash flow. And they will take whatever steps to keep their pockets overflowing with green.
The American worker can not compete with someone who does the same job at a fraction of the cost. Even if the lower cost worker makes an occasional mistake, it is still worth it to the big company.
We need a level playing field. And a lot better referees.
~X
Random Quote: "It's easy to find an opening when your opponent is all asshole."
Re:Violation of copyright laws (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not, actually. Early last century, many US companies used Pinkerton's agents armed with pick handles as strike-breakers.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
I certainly encourage you and everyone else to focus your anger on the companies, corporate executives, and their stockholders, who are always trying to screw people over just for profits. Indians are just as much victims of this, if not more so. If these companies could find a way to do absolutely everything in a foreign country ultra cheap, or even on Mars, they would. And don't forget that Bush, Cheney, and many Republicans are in bed with these corporations. Use your vote in 2004 wisely.
Problem with tech support (Score:2, Insightful)
1. The people who call in, by and large, are not computer literate nor very good at troubleshooting. (Troubleshooting in this case being the ability to reduce the problem to "when I do X, Y happens") So they are frustrating to work with. Problems that, were you at their PC, would be solved in seconds take 12 minutes.
2. No one with any level of skill or communication ability wants to work on the phones, because users tend to not be computer literate nor good at troubleshooting.
3. Users with a level of technical ability and skill don't want to call in for support, because they know they'll hit a script reader who won't be able to solve their problem. So they check on the Internet or ask friends to solve their problems. So the only users who call are less experienced users, which brings us back to point 1.
How to break this cycle? I'm not sure. I will point out the computers seems to be a rare instance where an untrained person is expected to be able to perform sometimes complicated operations only by voice instruction. Would you call the manufacturer of your transmission for help "over the phone" in installing it in your car? Of course not - it's understood this is a complicated operation that needs to be performed by a professional in order for things to work correctly. At minimum someone who can actually touch and see the work that needs to be done.
I will also point out that the companies who have historically had good support (Cisco, among others) tend to have users that don't fall into category 1.
Re:You can't get parts from India... (Score:2, Insightful)
As for Boeing, when your major customer is the U.S. government, you tend to do whatever they say...
Cheers.