Answer the question, jerk!

The BBQ Pit
1

I work for an IT help desk and I am sick and tired of talking to idiots who don’t listen to what I am saying.

We recently changed out ticket tracking system so that we now have to ask them for their login ID but almost every time I ask someone they act like I am speaking Dutch.

Worse than that is when they just ignore the question and start in on the problem they are having. Shut the fuck up and answer my question, jerk! I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are or where you are calling from.

The people who call in just don’t fucking listen. I ask them a question in the course of troubleshooting and some of them just ignore that too. I know that sometimes it is time consuming and a pain in the arse for you, but if we don’t do this troubleshooting the problem will not get fixed.

We also have a remote control tool which can be a blessing (most of the time) but then there are those people who cannot follow instructions. We ask them for a computer name, the same thing they are asked for each time we connect and they have no clue how to bring it up. I will talk to people twice in the same day and have to explain it to them both times. And when they finally get the screen up, they don’t know what they are looking for even though it says “Computer Name”. That might be a clue, dumbass.

Here is a typical exchange:

Me: Thank you for calling <company name> can I get your login ID

Dumbass caller: What is that?

Me: It is the ID you use to log in to the homepage

DC: ……

Me: It is usually your fist initial, last initial and employee ID

DC: Oh, you mean dc12345.

Me: That’s it, thank you. How can I help you?

Cut to later in the call

Me: I would like to remote control in to your PC. To do that I will need your computer name.

DC: How do I find that?

Me: If you look at the bottom right hand corner of the screen, near where the time is, you should see an icon which looks like a stop-watch or a clock face. If you double-left click on that it will bring up a box with the computer name in it.

DC: I don’t see that. Do you want me to click on the start button?

Me: No. Do you see where the time is?

DC: No

Me: In the bottom right hand corner?

DC: Oh, you mean the time, yes, I see it.

Me: Ok, do you see an icon which looks like a little clock face, it is white.

DC: Yes

Me: Can you double left click on that?

DC: Ok, now what?

Me: Can you read me the computer name?

DC: What is that?

Me: If you look at the box which popped up, the second line down should say Computer name and then listed some letters and numbers, can you read them out.

DC: Oh, computer name. It is…………

<sound of fanfares trumpeting>

2 minutes later the problem is resolved.

A 15 minute call for a 2 minute fix.

And that’s not even going into the evil that is the speakerphone.

2

So what’s the computer name again?

3

Well, I like to call it Bob . . .

4

I understand your frustration. I am unofficial “tech support” for all my family and friends that own computers.

-However-

This is sorta tangential, but I’m sometimes guilty of something similar to the callers that you describe. It often happens when I call my health insurance company or some other large, bureaucratic organism. I’ve learned my lesson through too many calls that went something like this:

Them: Hi, this is <whatever company>, name and member ID?
Me: <name> (spell it out twice for them), <give my member ID>
Them: Did you say <repeat name> ?
Me: Yes
Them: Can I just confirm the member ID? <repeat member ID>
Me: That’s correct.
Them: For confirmation, date of birth, mailing address and last four digits of social, please.
Me: (I give them the info, spelling out my awkward address once or twice).
Them: Thank you. What can I help you with?
Me: Well, I got a prescription filled and was charged…
Them: I’m sorry, I can’t help you with prescriptions. Please call the following number: <blah blah>
Me: (I dial the number)
Them: (repeat above procedure, name, address, DOB, social etc.)

I’ve gotten to the point where I ignore their request for member number, and immediately say something like, “My question is about prescriptions. Can you handle that or should I call a different number?”

Prescriptions are just an example, by the way - for any subject you want to know about, they seem to have a different department, with of course no way of passing on your info from one to the other - you have to tell them it over and over again.

5

Mine says its name is “Dell”.

6

This is a new thing, meaning that your callers have never done it before. Yes they should be listening to what you’re asking but given a little time they will get used to this new system.

Now for real fun try getting a Medicare number out of an 80 year old widow whose husband took care of everything so she’s spent the last 60 years learning how to be helpless.

Me: May I have your Medicare claim number please?
Helpless Widow: What’s that?
Me: It’s the number on your Medicare card right below your name, where it says “Medicare claim number.”
HW: Oh, you mean my Social Security number?
Me: No, it’s not your Social Security number. It’s on your Medicare card.
HW: Oh, my Medicaid number?
Me: No, not your Medicaid number, your federal Medicare number.
HW: Oh, I’m just stupid, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Me (silently agreeing): Do you have your federal Medicare card?
HW: My Medicaid card?
Me: No, your federal Medicare card, the red white and blue card.
HW: Hold on, let me go get it.
<silence and general rummaging sounds, lasting three minutes or more>
HW: OK, I have my red white and blue card, what number do you want?
Me: The Medicare claim number.
HW: I don’t see it.
Me: Do you see your name?
HW: Yes.
Me: Do you see right under your name it says “Medicare Claim Number”?
HW: Yes.
Me: Read me the number that’s right under that.
HW: 123, dash, 45, dash, 6789. (I hate it when they read off the dashes!)
Me: And then there’s a letter at the end of that.
HW: A and B.
Me: No, it’s a single letter right after the numbers.
HW: I have part A and B, it says A and B on the card.

And so on, until I finally get the letter out of them, then waste more time getting them to read the dates that are also on the card. At which time, some 20 minutes into the call, it turns out they should be talking to some other department anyway.

7

I’m not feeling a ton of sympathy here. I work in systems support with all my customers within my company. These people work hard at doing what they are hired to do. They aren’t hired to understand much about their computers - that’s what they pay me for. Sure, a lot of them don’t know any technical jargon, and some even have trouble remembering which password is for what purpose (e.g. signing into the network, or logging into an application). They ignore the warnings that their password is about to expire, and then come to me to re-set it. Yes, it’s annoying sometimes, especially when I’m busy trying to do something else. Interesting thought that, because I have to see these people in person repeatedly, I tend to remember that they are people too, with their own areas of expertise that I don’t share.

Try putting yourself in their place, trying to deal on the phone with a subject about which you know nothing. I’ll bet you would hope that the person on the other end would have a little patience with your fumbling ignorance.

Sorry, I seem to have gotten preachy, which wasn’t my intent. I’ll stop before I make it any worse.

8

Sorry, but I really don’t believe this.

How is knowing “who you are or where you are calling from” necessary to help with your run-of-the-mill Windows PC problems?

You could say “I won’t help…” or “Company Policy won’t let me help you until…” and that would be accurate. But that was a policy decision by your company. (And a new one, that users aren’t used to yet. Besides, how were you able to help them before this policy, when you didn’t know this?)

From my experience with IT help desks, I’ll bet this policy is there to assist in tracking your time, and billing it. So it benefits the help desk, but really does nothing for the customer. So why should they care about this?

Note your example: you spent 13 minutes of a 15-minute call (87%) trying to get information from the customer that your company wants, but is irrelevant to the customers actual problem. Once you’ve dragged that out of them, you actually spent 2 minutes to fix their problem. And you want us to feel sorry for you? I’d be more likely to feel sorry for the customer!

9

I think you will find that being polite with people instead of impatient and sarcastic will get things done more expeditiously.

I hope it occurs to you that at least one of these people who needs your help is the person who makes sure you receive your paycheck biweekly.

10

Just because he vents about his frustrations here, doesn’t indicate to me that he is rude to the people on the phone. In my experience (which is firsthand), most of the impatience and sarcasm and miscellaneous other forms of rudeness comes from those needing the support. The support desk has the right to vent about people when they’re off the phones.

11

Most of the time the information is not absolutely necesary and yes, sometimes we need it purely for tracking purposes but sometimes we need to assign new permissions, for example, and for that we need some technical information.

In my fictious example I was thinking of something which I needed to remote control in to the user’s PC to fix a problem because I have admin rights on the PC. Most of the time when I ask for this information it is relevant to fixing the customer’s problem, I never ask for it just for the fun of it or to drag the call out.

I am never sarcastic. Sometimes I do get impatient, but I try really hard not to. Walter Windchill said it best. I am not allowed to be sarcastic or rude to the customers. Besides, I am a quiet British guy. I rant in my head or online, not to customers. :slight_smile:

I just came here to vent.

Some of these issues could be mitigated by the company requiring some simple computer training for all new hires. I’m frustrated that they use computers but know so little about them, but I guess that is the company’s fault.

12

Don’t you hate, hate, hate people who are so ignorant of computers they don’t even know how to log off and post as themselves??!!?? Ignorant assholes!!!

Sorry, I posted as my wife, Brynda, above.

:wally

RickQ

13

t-bonham:

Some of us don’t trakc tickets/cases for information for our company. Some of us track tickets for issues that become too big for phone support, or long-term tickets, or for future reference when the same situation repeats itself and we can save a technician 400 hours of work for a 5 minute fix.

We must, MUST have this info. In my business, my customers have a lot of custom configurations and software. If I don’t know who the fuck is calling, and cannot look at their system, I cannot help them.

Sam

14

There’s also the part before that where a computerized voice asks you to punch in (or worse, say out loud) any numbers relevant to your case. Then it asks you to confirm the number. After that, the number you entered apparently gets deleted, and that data wiped to Department of Defense standards, because there’s no way in hell it’s ever coming back.

Even if your call gets successfully transferred two seconds after entering your information, you’ll find yourself reading those numbers anew to someone from Bangalore whose name probably isn’t really “Michael.”

15

I do have sympathy for the OP.
On the other hand, I figure that it is IT’s responsibility to make such exchanges as easy on everyone as possible. Whenever we instituted a new change to procedure that required reading from the computer, I always insisted that we create a sheet with instructions (and screen prints, if possible) to send to all users and told them to tape it to the sides of their monitors. On occasion, I have done that on my own, defying a boss who thought it was too much trouble.

It does not solve all problems, but it reduced a lot of them. (I also wrote a “whoami” script that they could enter that would display all the information I needed in a single list from which they could read the info back to me–not valid on all hardware/software configurations, of course.)

I will also support Roderick Femm, to a certain extent. Lots of these people have had monitors and keyboards dumped on their desks and told that it would make their lives wonderful, then the guy with the screwdriver in his hip pocket walked away and left them to figure out their new world by comparing notes with only slightly less confused co-workers.

Computers are NOT intuitive to the human mind. There are sufficient numbers of human beings for whom they are intuitive that they can make life easier, but those of us for whom it is intuitive have a bad habit of assuming that it should be intuitive to all people and many of us tend to skip over the step-by-step instructions necessary to a person for whom this stuff is scary.

16

Seriously, can anyone explain this to me. I have experienced the auto-data-getter when communicating with several different companies, yet EVERY DAMN TIME I immediately have to repeat the information to a human. I do mean repeat too, I am not just reconfirming again what I already confirmed. Do they just use it as a method of putting someone on hold so they do not realize how long they are waiting?

17

In the example above he was talking to his health insurance company. The federal government has very strict guidelines for protecting a member’s personal information. Insurance companies are very anal about this which is why you have to keep repeating it. They have to make sure, with each subsequent person you talk to, that you are who you say you are lest they give your information to someone who is not you. It’s a pain in the ass but it’s necessary.

18

Call center person here. It’s very possible that the reason you’re entering information is so that they’re routing you to the right person. Not every agent is trained on every single thing for every single customer, for example; if I call my cable company or my cell phone company, I have to enter my phone number, so they can send me to the right call center for my region. It’s used in the same way as “Press 1 for billing, press 2 for cancellations” is; they’ll still ask what they can help you with.

Interestingly, many large companies outsource different customers and problems to different centers. If you choose not to enter your account number (or whatever), you might get transferred to Site A, which is owned by a different company and in a different area than Site B where you need to go.

19

You want to try frustrating? Try dealing with doctors requiring support. Who are military officers, no less. 99% of the time they:

(1) are too busy to actually call the people they need to, so call you, those peoples’ boss, but just leave you a nasty message and then aren’t available to talk to you for days on end when you try to get back to them to help them,

(2) when you do get hold of them are often too impatient to give you the info you need to take care of their problem,

(3) are rude, nasty, and demanding when you can’t read their mind about what’s wrong and actually require input from them,

(4) are slow to respond to your attempt to get hold of them for days on end, but quick to complain to higher-ups that they’re not being helped,

(5) are even quicker to do exactly what you just told them NOT to do (“The last character of your new password MUST be a # sign.” Okay, I put in AG12395! and clicked enter, why won’t it take my new password?"),

(6) God help you if they get your cell number, they will call you 7/24/365.

And on and on.

It’s not me. It’s my husband. So help me, I don’t know how he stays nice to these guys. His salvation is the one colonel who understands what’s going on and can tell off the people for him that he couldn’t tell off without losing his job. The colonel has no such problems, and has been doing a wonderful job lately of wish-fulfillment by proxy. :smiley:

20

Just be glad that the computer’s name isn’t HAL and you don’t hear “What are you doing, Dave?” over the phone.

Should that happen, it is my recommendation that you hang up immediately and block the number.