Tech Support Suggestion
My New Year’s wish: please will someone build a call centre scripting system for tech companies and ISPs that ALWAYS prompts the CSR to ask some simple qualifying questions at the top of the call? Something to establish the caller’s general level of competence before you start firing dumbass questions at them.
In just about every single tech support call I've ever had to make, there's always come a point at which I want to scream down the phone: "I know what I'm #$%#*! talking about!"
Spent 47 minutes on the phone to my ISP this afternoon. (Yes – I timed it. I really am that big a loser.)
I was trying to sort out a really stupid, non-fatal but very annoying email problem.
30 minutes on hold (“your call is important to us” - arrrrrgggggh). 17 minutes of actual discussion.
So by the time I got to speak to an actual warm body, I already had the steam of frustration pissing out of my ears.
And then I had to endure 10 minutes of intensely annoying low-level questions of the "is your modem switched on" variety, plus circular discussions about the Spam filtering options and folder settings in webmail and Outlook Express when I'm not, for the fifth freaking time, using your rotten webmail UI or Outlook brain-damaged Express. Grrrrrrrr...
All this, just to get to the point where the support dude (who sounded like he probably got online for the first time last week) finally realised that I probably had a better technical understanding of my own email set up than he did, and perhaps he should "escalate" my call to someone with a demi-clue.
3 minutes of discussion with support dude #2: problem solved.
The really depressing part is that I know that the next time I have to call them I’m doomed to endure the same enervating ordeal all over again.
I asked the last guy I spoke to today – couldn’t they flag my account or something? Put some kind of “this customer is not a knob” marker next to my user ID? Please? “Sorry, sir – the system’s not really set up for that.”
Every time I speak to them, I’m going to have to go back through the same exasperating process of establishing that yes: I know where the ON switch is, and yes: I have tried rebooting, and no: I haven’t been fiddling with my account settings.
Every time I speak to them, I’ll get a little more grey hair, slightly deeper frown lines, a stronger headache.
And every time they take me through this BOFH hazing ritual I'll get one more reason to switch ISP.
In just about every single tech support call I've ever had to make, there's always come a point at which I want to scream down the phone: "I know what I'm #$%#*! talking about!"
Spent 47 minutes on the phone to my ISP this afternoon. (Yes – I timed it. I really am that big a loser.)
I was trying to sort out a really stupid, non-fatal but very annoying email problem.
30 minutes on hold (“your call is important to us” - arrrrrgggggh). 17 minutes of actual discussion.
So by the time I got to speak to an actual warm body, I already had the steam of frustration pissing out of my ears.
And then I had to endure 10 minutes of intensely annoying low-level questions of the "is your modem switched on" variety, plus circular discussions about the Spam filtering options and folder settings in webmail and Outlook Express when I'm not, for the fifth freaking time, using your rotten webmail UI or Outlook brain-damaged Express. Grrrrrrrr...
All this, just to get to the point where the support dude (who sounded like he probably got online for the first time last week) finally realised that I probably had a better technical understanding of my own email set up than he did, and perhaps he should "escalate" my call to someone with a demi-clue.
3 minutes of discussion with support dude #2: problem solved.
The really depressing part is that I know that the next time I have to call them I’m doomed to endure the same enervating ordeal all over again.
I asked the last guy I spoke to today – couldn’t they flag my account or something? Put some kind of “this customer is not a knob” marker next to my user ID? Please? “Sorry, sir – the system’s not really set up for that.”
Every time I speak to them, I’m going to have to go back through the same exasperating process of establishing that yes: I know where the ON switch is, and yes: I have tried rebooting, and no: I haven’t been fiddling with my account settings.
Every time I speak to them, I’ll get a little more grey hair, slightly deeper frown lines, a stronger headache.
And every time they take me through this BOFH hazing ritual I'll get one more reason to switch ISP.
