List your pet peeves, technical support folks of the Dope

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, I’ll preface this by saying I have a fantastic job and most of my customers by far are reasonable and nice people. That said, I have a headache and my body’s all sore from moving so here comes the bitching.

  1. Please refrain from typing your message in all caps with lots of exclamation points. I go through the tickets in order; if the issue is urgent, why not give us a call since you’re in the States? I find it amazing that the international customers who do run into genuine issues outside of our office hours manage to restrain themselves a lot more than you and your completely non-urgent issue.

  2. Please do not send your ticket to every email address in the company. Look, we have a less-than-one-business-day turnaround time on emails. Heck, unless you’re writing first thing in the AM while I’m still doing the overnight tickets, you’re going to get a less than 10 minute ticket turnaround time during business hours. Why do you need to write 5 different email addresses at our company within 2 minutes? It just wastes both of our time, as you have to locate and resend the same email over and over, and I have to go through each one not knowing you’ve written before.

Heck, I think it’s fair game to contact a different email if you get no response. But, please, please, give us a chance to answer first. Email-bombing us basically makes you look like an asshole who can’t wait their turn.

  1. Please do not lie and say you talked to someone when you didn’t. We are a pretty good company in regards to customer policies, and frankly there are about 3 people here who you are likely to have talked with, and I will confirm with them. Just be honest and let us fix the problem. If you make me believe you are a liar, then I will check on you and catch you in other lies like that you’re actually pirating our software.

  2. Please do not leave all of the critical information on the technical support form blank. It’s not a long form and I’m going to have to ask you what your OS is if you fail to answer. It’s multiple-choice for God’s sake! If you do not know, please say that you don’t know. Otherwise, when I ask you, you will in turn have to write back saying that you don’t know, and then, bingo-bango, you are complaining that it took too many emails to resolve your problem.

  3. Please do not open a thirty-email ticket from three years ago for a completely new and different issue. It is just incredibly annoying and frankly the tech who you were corresponding with is not here anymore, and now I have to read through the whole ticket. Make a new ticket. Chances are your system specs (particularly your version of our software) have changed in three years. If they haven’t, I’d sure like to know rather than guessing.

  4. Do not threaten us with going to the BBB or disputing a charge because you are too stupid to use our software. Please try asking for help first rather than threatening us right off the bat. It’s really only common courtesy. Otherwise, why are you bothering to contact us in the first place?

  5. No, we are not in California. I know it’s incredible to think that technical support may be located in the Midwest. No, really, our office isn’t in a cornfield. No, it’s not snowing in freaking May. Why are you asking me this?! In addition, I do not care to hear the stories of long-lost friends and/or relatives who live in a three state radius. Believe it or not, we Midwesterners do not all shop at the same feed store and swap phone numbers.

  6. Please refrain from freaking the fuck out when it’s not called for. Look, if you bought the software at a store, and they won’t take it back, we will take it back from you. I cannot and will not call the store manager and yell at him to take it back for you because you are too dumb to read the system requirements right on the box. Swearing and flipping out will not change this.

  7. Some problems take more than one step to fix. Sorry, that is the way life works sometimes. I will do everything in my power to make sure that the troubleshooting is brief, relevant, and successful, but sometimes problems can have more than one cause.

  8. If you write back and refuse to do troubleshooting as requested and ask for an alternate solution because you can’t be arsed, do not expect further assistance. If you have a genuine problem as to why you can’t, I will try, but some problems can only be fixed one way. If you’re on a computer with no Administrator privileges and you can’t install/uninstall without your corporate techs being informed, I can provide limited assistance to you. If you are a wiseass who refuses to do it because it is “impossible” that it will fix it, even though we have tested it about eleventy billion times and it DOES fix it in about two minutes, and then you LIE that you did it, and we can’t resolve the problem until you admit it two weeks later and do it and it DOES fix the problem, may you be infested with itchy scabs unto eternity. Yes, I remember you, sir.

  9. If you pirate the software, do not contact technical support. If you do, and we refuse service, responding with profanities and demands for assistance will only make us laugh at you. Seriously, dude, if you can’t use the software on your own, how did you manage to find a pirate version anyway?

  10. Saying that you bought a burned CD off Craigslist, but that the owner swore up and down was the original copy, will not render your serial number any more valid. It is garbage and I can’t believe you have the nerve to try to get us to resolve this problem for you. Seriously, do you complain to the US Mint because the bank won’t take counterfeit bills and now you want real ones?!

  11. Do not call me Sir or Mr. Fluiddruid. In emails, I can understand (even though I have a very female first name, you never know who is from the US) but I am talking to you right now. I am clearly NOT A MAN.

  12. Do not be confused and disappointed that your call to technical support reached a woman. You punched the number for technical support and I say hello. Why are you saying, “Transfer me to technical support”, followed with an incredulous “YOU are technical support?” Is it 1955?

  13. Do not use the company name as if it is my name. If you want my name, I will be happy to tell you, more than once as necessary. But using the company name for my name makes me think, “You’re a total toolbox.” I don’t go shopping and say to the cashier, “Hey Wal-Mart, ring up this stuff!”

  14. Do not be shocked and appalled when I ask you to spell your 25 character last name. It may be very common in Lower Outerstan but I have no idea how to type it, and I’d like to be able to fix your freaking problem. Heck, I ask people with very common names how to spell them often, as there are so many variants.

  15. Please do not be offended when I do not perfectly know your skill level. I assume skill level to be slightly lower than the average user I have dealt with, just to make sure we’re on the same page. I will speed up but don’t be shocked that I assume you know where the Start menu is, or, conversely, that I ask you if you’ve used Add/Remove Programs when you claim you can’t uninstall even though you’re a certified genius of computing. I am not a freaking psychic.

  16. I do not expect you to always be nice, though I will endeavor to be nice to you. Sometimes problems are frustrating. However, the more you will work with me and the less you will resist me will only result in a more arduous resolution for both of us.

Feel free to add yours…

2

Did we just get done talking?

3

Please, at bare minimum, be AT the computer. It doesn’t even have to be on, that’d be too much to dream of! But don’t call from your cell phone when you’re performing plastic surgery* and expect me to be able to troubleshoot your problem.

*I don’t do much end user support anymore but sometimes I take support calls, and I actually did have a plastic surgeon call while he was in surgery. A nurse held his phone for him.

4

Different from your situation, I work tech support in an office setting where I’m right there with the users. If there is one concept that I wish I could get through people’s heads, it is:

When I ask you to describe the problem, please describe the problem, period. People call me up and say something like, “My computer’s on the fritz. The hard drive failed and I need you to replace it.”

Okay… Let me ask you some specific questions about the problem you’re experiencing (What were you doing right before the problem occured? Is there an error message on the screen? What happens when you try <Task>?), then I will be able to determine what caused it. Because that is my job.

Do not give me answers that are vague and/or purposely misleading. Do not keep trying to steer the conversation back to your original diagnosis. You are just wasting my time and yours.

I have had dozens of conversations like this:

“My password for <Third-Party Software> doesn’t work; my computer must have a virus.”

“When was the last time the system asked you to change your password?”

“Oh, that’s not the problem. I’m sure it’s a virus.”

“What does the software tell you when you try your password?”

“Look, my brother is really smart about computers, and he told me all about what viruses can do. I know that a virus could change my password without me knowing it. Why don’t you come over to my cube and run a virus scan.”

“Let me reset your password to 12345 right now, you can try logging in with that, and we’ll see what happens.”

“No, I don’t want to do that. It’s definitely a virus. I’m sure of it.”

“Are you absolutely sure you’re using the correct password, and that you don’t have Caps Lock enabled or something like that?”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it, I know there’s a virus on my computer… oh, wait. Yeah, I think Caps Lock might have been on. Okay, I turned Caps Lock off and it’s letting me in now.”

my head explodes

5

Does tech support for my Mom count?

Mom: I can’t get on the Internet.

Me: is the cable pugged in?

Mom: Yea, right here (shows me).

Me: Mom, that the AC power cable.

Mom: Yea, so?

Me: Well that’s just raw power. That’s house current. It’s just raw electricity, like lightning. There’s no digital information there.

Mom: Whatever.

Me: :rolleyes:

6

I can only imagine how irritating working tech support must be, but I anticipate a backlash in this thread or even a rebuttal thread.

My response to Tech Support is, “not everyone who has a problem has never used a computer before. Please don’t run me through 15 steps along the lines of “try restarting the computer” and “try unplugging the cable and plugging it back in.”” Of course I already tried those things before calling.

7

Not every technical support person has required scripts written by monkeys. I don’t ask customers to put up with stupid things, but I ask a little in return. :wink:

The problem of outsourced, massive call centers (particularly to India) has been Pitted at length; however, there are many people in support who aren’t in such working conditions.

Oh, I love this. I’ve gotten calls literally from people on their planes waiting to take off on a two-week business trip, and the computer’s back at home. :confused:

8

Now you’re just talking crazy.

9

I too work right alongside a relatively small number fo customers that I support. How about these?

  1. STOP the random key and menu pecking around and DO WHAT I TELL YOU. And don’t peck around with more random mouse clicks and keystrokes between my instructions. The time for your experimentation was before you called me or NEVER, since you’re a demonstrable idiot with computers.

I have a couple of customers who call me like I’m part of their stream-of-consciousness monolog; I get a wordy disjointed description of the problem, followed by a list of every conceived of solution and the odds of whether it will work or not. They can’t even stop long enough to listen and do what I tell them to fix it.

  1. REMEMBER! Jeez, how many times do I have to do the same fix for the same person, over and over again? We’ve written it down, I’ve watched you do it yourself as a part of fixing the problem that last time. And the time before that… And still, when the exact same problem happens again, it will somehow appear to be an entirely novel problem demanding my immediate attention.
10

She could have powerline internet. :smiley:

When we tell you Application X is offline, please believe us. I’m not sitting here thinking “Heh, I’ll screw with them and say the system is down today!”

If we say it’s down, it’s down. If Infrastructure Support has told us an ETR, we’ll happily advise you of the same. If they’ve not told us, we don’t know.

Special advice for those on the subcontinent - if you don’t like the answer one of our female staffers gave you, don’t hang up and call back, hoping a man answers. They’re just going to give you the same answer. I support the support desk, and I see this a lot. Between silently “plugging into” calls and listening, or the occasional “secret shopper” we know the desk is giving consistently good answers. The chance that an agent who’s been here for five years completely fluffed it is pretty low

11

(inside joke)

no matter how much I look at the OP, I can’t find the scum tell.

But I know she’s scum!

12

Good rant.

Just one response from the customer’s end (and i know this probably doesn’t apply to you):

When i call your tech support line, i have to go through an automated voice response system before i talk get to a person. That system asks me for my account number, phone number, and operating system. Why, then, does the human operator who answers the phone ask me again for exactly the same information?

I’ve never understood that. If my internet goes down, and i call Verizon tech support (it’s only happened a few times), i’m happy to hear that there’s an outage at their end, because it means that there’s not some unknown problem that i need to fix on my computer.

13

OK, so you clicked on that 95 page Word document with all the embedded pictures and it seemed to take a long time to open, so you clicked it again, and again, and again, maybe twelve or more times, and now your computer is going really slow and the taskbar is full up with instances of Word, and you want me to tell you why that happened?

Sorry, I mean and you want me to tell you why that happened again?

14

I’ve done my share of tech support in various capacities, and there’s even some crossover in what I’m doing now, so I’ll just lump them in.

  1. If I tell you to go somewhere else because we no longer have any dealings with the company you are asking for parts and/or technical support for as a result of them now being owned by another company, do not continue to ask me about them. We no longer have any vested interest in supporting them because it no longer makes us money. We don’t care of we lose you as a customer over this, because you aren’t our customer. Feel free to ask for my superior so youcan complain to them about my unwillingness to support you for a product we have nothing to do with. I’m the nice one.

  2. And don’t ask me questions about the other company. I don’t work for them, and they are not paying me for referrals. I only have their number, and I only have that because I want to get rid of you.

  3. You are not doing my job because you are not qualified to do so. When I explain something, make an assertion, or tell you to perform certain actions, therefore, it is because I am, I know what I’m doing, and there’s a good reason for anything I say, do, or ask you to do. Do not presume to question these things, and do not offer your own alternative theories and try and get me to diagnose those. You are a moron. Shut up.

  4. When I say it will take up to x days, I do not mean “call me incessantly every day, starting when you get back home, to see if it is done.” When I say “up to,” I mean “expect it to take.” I will call you when it is done, and if you piss me off, I might just wait the full x days. Yes, I know you need it yesterday. So does everyone else. The line starts over there.

  5. Do not expect me to repair the non-POSTing PC you built by hand under warranty from parts you bought from us. Especially when your first act was to bolt the motherboard directly to the case. Without risers. Would you like know what happens when you power up a motherboard where hundreds of solder joints have all come into contact with a sheet of aluminum simultaneously? Nothing. Nothing at all. That’ll be $50.

  6. Did you really think a technician wouldn’t notice you overclocked the living shit out of your new CPU? New ones are over there. Spend wisely and read the warranty sheet.

  7. See that sign? The one that says we will not service PCs with pirated copies of Windows on them? Don’t forget your power cord.

  8. Ha ha! Porn dialers. That’ll be $100. Next time, at least make the porn worth the trouble.

  9. No, I can’t tell you what’s wrong and how to fix it over the phone when the majority of our conversation involves me explaining what basic Windows controls are called. “Thingy,” “gadget,” and “box” are not conducive to maintaining the flow of troubleshooting.

  10. The life history of your machine and the fascinating things that you do with it will not help me figure out what’s wrong with it. I’m going to interrupt you before you start pulling out the family photos.

  11. I am not a salesman. I do not get paid to recommend good software. Ask Google.

15

<sigh> I am NOT in tech support. Still… I’m the only geek this office has. We do business/collaborate with academic institutions.

A bit after noon today, I got email (cc:ing the near universe) from a honcho at OtherInstitution because I had failed to respond to a problem at OtherInstitution. I replied that yes, I had been lax because, the day I got voicemail from their IT person, we we’d been up to our eyeballs preparing for a student/teacher/parent celebration – and recovering/cleaning up from it the day following – and that I’d call their IT person immediamento, today being the next work day.

I left voicemail for IT person. At 4 p.m., I left email for IT person (withOUT cc:ing the near universe – geeks gotta stick together!). At 5:30, I get email from IT person saying the problem was NOT mine, it was the censors on their end.

So… what is it you wanted from me, again?

</sigh>

16

I’m very sorry that your laptop crashed after you had been working on that PowerPoint presentation for three hours without saving it.* Yes, I agree it sucks. I understand that you did a lot of work that’s now gone, and you’re going to have to stay up all night redoing it for your meeting tomorrow. Yes, I’m sure there’s no way to recover everything you lost, as you’re looking at the document now and none of your changes are there. No, I’m afraid I don’t know of any tricks to get it back. Sorry.

  • Back in the Windows 3.1 era before Office implemented AutoSave.
17

Having just left an internal help desk position (laid off, c’est la vie), there are still a few issues that stick in my craw.

Agreeing with fluiddruid, don’t tell me what the problem is – you’re wrong – tell me what the symptoms are.

For example: assistant manager calls in from one of the Florida stores. The Internet is down! This is a Sev-1, scramble all the jets, drag sleeping network engineers out of their bed, take off and nuke it from orbit issue. The registers won’t take credit cards, the sales workstations can’t pull up stuff from the website, the tech shops can’t download their software. Run-in-circles-scream-and-shout time.

Except, I really don’t believe her. Because not two minutes previously, I heard one of our most laid-back and sweet tempered techs start snarling at you. I start pinging all the store servers. They answer back in less than 50 milliseconds.

Okay, so how many workstations are affected? All of them, you say? Funny, the sign tag machine just pinged, so did the sales managers machine, and the inventory clerk’s machine. And the first three registers. Oh, you don’t know because you’re in the cash office and you haven’t stepped out to check? Well, that’s a little different.

Oh, but it’s IMPORTANT! You’ve got WORK to do! So, why don’t you check the connections for me, sweetie pie. No? Refuse to follow instructions? That’s fine. Nothing more I can do for you. Your workstation isn’t on the network. Everyone else’s is. Port Security must have thrown it off because it has the plague. Dig a hole and bury the damn thing then.

Want to talk to my supervisor? Sure thing! I’ll hand you off to the second level who’s been standing by my shoulder the last five minutes after I IM’d her. Listening to her take you on was a real treat. Especially when our team manager asked me to email him with the ticket number and followed up with the store manager about appropriate behavior when calling in to the help desk. You didn’t call us for five months after that, and when you did, you behaved like a proper human. GOOD FOR YOU!

My other pet peeve is not so much the callers as it is the corporation.

Could we pretty please with chocolate sprinkles and dancing boys communicate adequately to the rest of the company exactly what it is we do? I have cashiers calling me wanting to get their customer’s credit limit raised. I have salespeople calling me saying they need a Net30 account unblocked. I have managers calling me wanting to know when Vista will be released.

I don’t do that stuff! None of my coworkers do. There are other departments that handle these requests, and we’re not it.

Speaking of which, could you - you know - give us the actual PHONE NUMBERS for those departments so we can direct our callers to the right place instead of making incoherent stupid noises at them? I’d feel better.

Thanks.

18

In my experience, (which is quite limited, I will admit) a lot of the time it’s the most obvious thing causing the issue. I think the tech guys need to run through the most obvious/common solutions first to eliminate.

You’d be surprised at the amount of people who don’t reboot, check cables etc. I don’t think you can fault the person who is trying to help you for asking you to check the most basic things.

And if you’ve already done them prior to calling for help, then tell them, nicely.

19

Call 1:
Yes Betty, I know you have no idea how xyz adware got on your computer. Let me see what I can do to get that cleaned up.

Call 23:
Your printer has been jamming all day and wrinkling the paper? So why are you putting in a high priority call at 5? Oh, so you didn’t want to have to deal with it and left it for the next shift. Tell you what, I’ll be in first thing in the morning to replace the fuser.

Call 24:
(3:00am) Hmmm. Sounds like the power supply has died. Tell you what, move 2 feet to your left or right and you will be in front of an identical workstation with the sole exception that they will have a good power supply. Yes, I know you always use this one but I promise the others will serve you equally as well. I’ll come swap out the power supply in the morning after I replace a fuser in a printer.

Next day:

Call 1:
Well Betty, it looks like xyz adware is back and you still don’t know where it came from? Hmmm, looks like it brought a friend, qwerty browser hijacker. I’m afraid the only cure for that one is a full format and system reload. I’ll get that going while I go replace a fuser and power supply.

Call 6:
You’re getting a dll error opening Word? I think I can fix that one with a quick reinstall. (legit call)

Call 7:
Gee Betty, you don’t have internet access any more? Have your supervisor call my supervisor.

20

Owner of an onsite repair service…

No sir, your internet, your email, and your website are all working fine. The fact that you changed your mind about wanting to set up all these services 11 days later does not mean we give you a refund on 6 hours of tech labor and $150 in hardware, and no we will not come “put it back the way it was” for free".
Extracting your files,Reloading windows, locating and reinstalling all of your drivers, and moving your files back to the new install of windows is not a 1 hour job, its often 3.
You don’t have to take my suggestions, but don’t expect me to fix it for free when your way flops miserably.
If I tell you it will take 2 hours and some unforseen issue makes it take 3 I will probably still charge you for 2, just don’t expect to kick me out at 2 hours an 1 minute and refuse to pay for my incomplete work.
I am more than happy to answer questions while things like windows reloads/virus scans/defrags/etc are running. I like to think it improves your value for your tech dollar to learn a few things from me while I wait for your computer to work.
However do not try to tell me I “Did nothing” for half the time I was here while I described to you:
The benefits of offsite backup and raid arrays
Demonstrated how to advertise your business via craigslist
How to set up targeted google ads for your area
Installed a copy of open office showing you office software does not have to cost $200.
Set up AVG anti virus to replace the expired copy of Norton AV 2004, yep, thats a freebie too.
while you stood in awe and thanked me profusely for such valuable and helpful information, and were amazed that I basically showed you how to get all this free stuff you would have paid $300 for elsewhere.

I did nothing? :confused:

Yes I can “Fix” a pirated windows install, the solution is to purchase a license.

If you cancel your cell phone service, I cannot tell you your computer is ready. (its like a $1100 machine sitting at my shop for about 4 weeks now…fixed…bill is $90…his phone is off…its gonna be my machine pretty damn quick.