me: dial-up support, this is abuse angel. can i have your username?
customer: i can’t get connected to the internet. is your server down?
me: not that i’m aware of. can i get your username?
customer: because i keep getting this error saying to check my username and password.
me: ok, i’ll try to help you with that. can i get your username??
customer: john doe.
me:typing “johndoe” into internal web. nothing happens
sir, is that your name, or your username?
customer: what’s a username?
me:gritting teeth the name that you use to log in to the internet. your login name.
customer: um, i don’t know it.
me: HOW THE FUCK DO YOU EXPECT TO BE CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR FUCKING USERNAME???
and the worst part is that this is just the beginning of the call, and you can already tell that you’re going to have to explain right-clicking about fifty times and spend half an hour explaining how you have to open a browser before you can see webpages.
Nope. Sorry. As someone who is SICK AND TIRED of hearing your EV1 radio spots, you get no sympathy from me.
Okay, that little bit of screed aside, all I can usefully say is “Ouch, that sucks.” I know people need help, but we can only pray for the day that this job can be capably handled by unfeeling robots. Definitely not a position that any human should be forced to fulfill for any length of time.
So as long as we’ve got you here, Mr. or Ms. Tech Support Person, could you please explain to my why those tech support phone systems require us customers to enter our phone numbers/account numbers/access codes/etc. . . . and then the first thing you ask us when we get to talk to an actual person is to repeat everything we just punched into the phone?!?
Because whatever the phone switching system uses is seldom, if ever, connected to the call tracking software the techs use. Said call tracking software is usually antiquated (may even run in a DOS shell), never reliable, and generally a plague for all who are forced to have contact with it. The techs have no idea what you hear on the line before you get connected to them.
i’m sorry, the ev1 phone systems do not ask for these things, so answering your question would be outside the scope of our support. you’ll have to call your own isp and ask them.
and that’s ms. tech support person.
seriously, i don’t know why other isps would set up the phone system to ask questions and then not provide the answers to the techs. probably the people who set up the phone system thought it would be “efficient” and “cool.” these people are generally idiots.
our phone system does not ask anything except what department you want to speak with. it is not connected to our call tracking system (ie, internal web) in any shape, form, or fashion. but, if you give me your username, i can look up your account and see the notes from all previous calls. i can also see if your account is suspended or closed or if you don’t have one yet (all of which would explain why you can’t connect).
btw, i’ve noticed that about 10 percent of people who don’t know their username don’t have accounts, yet.
um, yeah, that would be why you can’t connect. transfer to sales so they can lie to you about what you need and what you get before they transfer you back to me to fulfill their bullshit promises
dumb yes , but not 100% bad in the UK there have been a few (BT classic , Tiscali classic and a few others i can’t remember as its been a while) that didn’t need user names and passwords you just dialed up and it logged your tel#
and associated IP if you caused any trouble online , crap ISPs though 15Kbps was too much to ask for of these folks (this was when 38K was all the rage)
So have you ever pulled up someone’s account to see that the note from the previous call says, “This person is a fucking loon! I pity the poor bastard who has to talk to them again!”?
(Speaking as a tech support geek, I feel your pain. One caller asked me, “What does the menu button do?” :rolleyes: )
i’ve never seen that in call notes, but i have written notes about customers who refused to check or change any settings on their machine, insisting that it was our problem; customers who called up with no real problems and made me listen to them reading their settings outloud or made me explain how to look at webpages over and over; customers who were rude; customers who refused to take our advice, etc.
oh, there was one customer who would call and just wanted to talk. nothing internet related, just talk. :rolleyes:
Maybe you give good phone! I have a couple of tech support numbers I call when I can’t answer a customer’s question and I love calling one of them, because the gal I usually get just sounds so damn nice over the phone. I have to be careful when I talk to her, though, because I don’t want to sound like the pathetic geek I am, who’s really just calling so he can talk to her. Of course, I have to remind myself that just because she sounds good on the phone, doesn’t mean that she’ll look equally good in person.
Where I work we have a program on our computers called Aspect CTI screen Popup (or something like that). That reads what you’ve punched in and presents your information on screen accordingly. The operator might not have it (or the particular equivalent he’s using) open.
You’re doing it wrong. Where I work I have a little LCD display which tells me if you’ve done it wrong. It’s annoying really because where I work our automated system doesn’t tell you you’ve done it wrong, nor does it give you a chance to do it again. It just puts you through to an operator who naturally wouldn’t have your information. Next time you do it, punch it in real fast. That usually does the trick.
It used to work at my place of employment. You’d hear the beep of an incoming call and whatever you were doing would be interrupted by your call tracking software popping up with the caller’s account information, when it worked (most customers would enter nothing or enter something that had nothing to do with what it was asking for, like their phone number). It was extremely annoying, and pretty soon almost everybody in the call center had figured out how to disable that feature. It hasn’t worked in about a year, I think.
I feel for you…Really…I worked for GTE Internet as a senior tech, which meant that I got the ones that were so screwed up that the lower tier folks couldnt or didnt want to help,often they would give the really dificult ones a fake tracking number, so we couldnt figure out who sent us the call(first two tiers were in denver).
We got this drunk oriental guy who would call every weekend, because his favorite porn sites were down. He wouldnt tell what sites, but would alternately tell us there were problems with our servers, and then sing the fake tracking number to us. Finally, one of the supervisors told us all to just transfer the call to him when we got it. He would try to get the info out of the guy, and when he started singing, he would hang up. This went on for the better part of an hour. Finally, by accident, he got one of the mac people. The mac guy just put him on hold for a sec, came back, and said “Why yes, it does appear there is something wrong with the servers in your area, we’ll get someone right on it. Thanks for letting us know”. They hung up, convinced he was right, and didnt call again till next week. By then, it was now our un-official policy to just lie to him to get him off our backs. I don’t miss that one bit.
