Heh I got bit by this today and I’m the damn tech. Artfully rebuilding the mans raid on larger drives, I swap some drives around, reboot, boot failure :dubious: …hmmm settings correct in bios…raid controller says no drives detected? Huh? Reboot, nothing in bios either, hmmm, unplug drives and plug in again, reboot, still nothing, customer looks at me 
, I check all cables, SATA cables not plugged into motherboard :smack:
My mother’s desktop background is white, with (in bold letters) “Mum! Click this blue circle to go on the Internet! >>>”
The >>>s point to a shortcut to her AT&T Worldnet connection manager. Yes, she’s still on dial-up. She gets online once a week and checks e-mail from about eight people, then visits Oprah.com for a bit, then signs off.
Creating that background for her has saved me a good two hours a week of “RNATB, the internet isn’t working!” conversations…
Sounds like my mom:
Me: Get Wi-Fi, so we can use the laptops too.
Mom: Whats that?
Me: Well, its internet, but you dont have to have a wire to get it, just a little adapter thing. Wireless."
Mom: :eek: Like… The internet floating around us??
Me: uhh, sure I guess
Mom: Well, if its just around us, cant someone come in and take it?
Me: What in the hell are you even thinking of? Its not an actual WEB!
Just as response, please have more available hours than between 2:00 and 2:15am on alternate Thursdays. If that is the only time I can get through to tech support, then I’m going to get through whenever/however I can.
Second, please do not lie to me, especially if the lie is more transparent than “I did not eat the licorice” told by a kid with a bright pink mouth. It annoys me and waste both of our time.
**Havik ** I love your mum. You have just cracked my entire office up.
I know someone who does tech support for stores at night and on weekends.
You’d be amazed at some of the replied he gets.
Tech Support: Hmm. Sounds to me like a cable might be unplugged from the back of the computer, can you please have a look under the counter and check to see if all the cables are securely plugged into the back of the box.
Sales Assistant: Oh! I can’t bend down. I’m wearing my tight jeans today!
:smack:
I work remote. That means that if your factory happens to be a “mere” one-two hour drive away I’m not going to “come over for a quick meet” any more than I’ll be flying over to Singapore for the same. When you describe your needs to me, it has to be on email; I will read them and write back to make sure I have understood correctly - that’s our procedure and I heartily agree with it. I will not, ever, just say that I understood and start working, because IME half of the people out there don’t know what is it they want, why they want it, how they want it - or how to describe all of the above; half the stuff we’re having to fix and improve comes from people saying “OK” and just setting out to “do what the customer said” at a time when the poor customer (that’s you) simply didn’t know enough to define his needs correctly. Learn to use the phone; learn to use email; learn to use instant messaging.
Sadly this company has disabled the use of third-party IM and the IM program we have is, using the technical term, castrated, but still, since I hab an aksent and yiu haf ein ahksant, writing is probably the best way to go. Email, IM. And no, I’m not “just coming over for a quick meet”! The same procedure applies to you and to Singapore. Learn to write, n00b!
I do telecom maint & I love it when the customer complaint is “the internet is down”. The urge to type www.google.com into a browser & paste it into the ticket with the comment “nope, internet is up”, is almost overwhelming.
My other ‘favorite’ is T1 customers who scream and cry that they’re losing thousands of dollars a minute because their T1 is down. I always want to say (but have never had the guts) “if it makes that much money, why don’t you invest in a backup T1?”
I’m sorry you’re having trouble with this laptop that you purchased from one of our competitors. Unfortunately, I can’t fix it for you, because A) I’m not a qualified computer tech (I just know more about computers than our customers) and B) We don’t stock that brand of computer. You’ll need to call the manufacturer’s tech support number. I’m sorry their call centre is located somewhere in the Khyber Pass, but you’re just going to have to either deal with that or find a working computer and do a Google search.
Google is a website. Ask your grand-daughter if you’re not sure where to find it.
You need to do more than plug a phone line into your computer to get onto the internet. You need software, and you have to set up an account with an internet provider. Call your phone company. You’re with Telstra, and their call centre is also located in the Khyber Pass? Not my problem. They have Telstra Shops- go into one of those and bother them.
I can assure you that Royal Dutch Shell do not have billions of dollars worth of Oil Money sitting in Nigerian banks which they would be prepared to give you a cut of if you help them get it out of the country.
You need a better system than a Pentium II 1.66 Ghz system running Windows 98 with 256Mb RAM and a 16Mb on-board video card to get FarCry to play properly.
Multiplayer games work best when you have an internet connection or a network of linked computers…
In all seriousness, I’m beginning to think people should have to get a licence to buy or use a PC. :smack:
8 years of customer support (1st and 2nd line) for a very common hotel management software …
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“It doesn’t work” is not a problem description.
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Please give me the exact error message, not your interpretation of it.
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No, we are not Microsoft, even though our company name bears a slight resemblance.
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When I ask you to describe what you see on the screen, please do not reply “nothing” just because there is a message in English, and you do not speak English. I do not care if you mispronounce something, you can even spell it … OK, you probably can’t spell …
I don’t know why so many end users have such a difficult time explaining the problem. I got a message about accessing their work email at home with the problem described as: “pretty weird”, “hard to read” and “worked somewhat”. Seriously, what am I going to do with that info? I responded the best I could:
Our technical support line does no such thing, and yes, it’s stupid when other companies do it. The techs hate it, too, but it’s done for call routing. Why? Well, I used to work in management at a huge center; It’s much cheaper to make you ask the customer again for the same information than actually have a system to capture and provide that information to a CSR.
Our technical support line rings right through to me. People often are very surprised and start stuttering, or there’s silence after I answer and greet them, and they say “Hello? Oh, I didn’t realize you were a real person!”
Not every tech support person’s in a huge call center. I’m not. Number of technical support people at my company: one. We’re small but we do deal directly with the public. Because we’re small, I can say unreservedly that the technical support is fantastic. Still, you get the yahoos that want us to do unrealistic things (troubleshoot Windows problems when our software’s not installed; troubleshoot software that we don’t make because their technical support is too difficult to reach; magically fix broken hardware).
I wish a lot of these companies could keep track of their own outages, but I understand how it happens. I used to do outsourcing for one huge cellular phone (and more) company, and the training was so bad that people didn’t even learn how to check for outages until they just picked it up from other employees; there was “no time” for it in training (!!!). The really baffling part is that it reduces costs to know outages and not troubleshoot uselessly.
I am not the help desk. I am the person who may or may not be assigned the call that is opened when you call the help desk. A good part of the time they can help you over the phone and I’ll never be called. Or maybe it’s a problem that needs to be directed to another department in which case, again, I’ll never be called.
If it really is a problem that I need to address they’ll send the call to me. I’ll get paged and contact you within minutes.
Calling me to ask me if you should call the help desk just wastes my time and yours.
Stopping me in the hallway to describe your last call to the help desk and how long you were on the phone with them while they fixed your problem is just plain annoying.
I’ve send e-mail after e-mail to you people describing exactly when you should call the help desk (almost always) and yet you call me with “I’m not sure if I should call the help desk about this”. My advice to you is this: call the help desk and ask them if they can help you. 99.9% of the time they can.
Yeah, well, I can say that for all the calls that I get where something doesn’t work for the client, maybe 1 in 30 or so try to even just reboot before calling. So no, I’m not going to assume that you did that. And there are a bunch of people who will lie and say, “oh I already did that; it didn’t help!” and when you proxy to their PC and do exactly what you asked them to do (that of course, they did), it fixes the problem. “Oh, it didn’t do that LAST time!”, they say. :rolleyes:
"Did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in? Yes? But I thought you said you didn’t touch anything. No, no, that’s OK, just do it. I know you did it already, just do it again for me, one more time. I just want to be sure. Hmm, OK, I want you to do one more thing, odds are pretty good this will fix it. Mom, how in the hell did you simultaneously do nothing but still try everything?
I rarely take a support call anymore, but I just love that.
Me: Now if you’ll just go to the Start Menu . . .
Them: click-click-clickclick-click-click-clickclick-clickclickclick It doesn’t work. clickclick. . .
Me: Is the Start Menu open in the lower left-hand corner?
Them: . . . click-click-clickclickclick-click-clickclick-click I just see a bunch of garbage. clickclickclick-clickclick-click-clickclickclick. . .
I’d like to thank fluiddruid for starting a thread like this.
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“Did you get my message?” Nope. I was randomly dialing numbers one day, and yours just happened to come up. Amazing, right?
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“I wired it exactly like the diagram said, and it still doesn’t work.” Bullshit. If you wire it exactly like the diagram says, it works. Every single time.
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"Why doesn’t my (insert item here) work? Beats me. While you’ve managed to inform me that you’ve got a problem, you’ve also managed to give me exactly nothing in background information. No brand name, control configuration, make/model, zip. If I was a mind reader, I sure as hell wouldn’t be talking to you; I’d be counting cards in Las Vegas.
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Just because I’m apparently one of the few folks at this firm that actually returns calls, that does not make me a dumping ground for every other department here. So when you try my extension for invoices, accounts receivable, shipping, or sales, you can be sure that your message will be sent to the Magical Land of Deletion.
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Always be sure to turn feral, especially when I do not measure up to your lofty standards of what Tech Support should be. Don’t forget to threaten me by mentioning that you’ll just have to go to one of my competitors. I’ll give you their 800 number so fast that your head will spin. If it isn’t spinning already.
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And please don’t forget to lower yourself by whining. When I say I’m sorry, but you’ll have to contact a tech in your area, be sure to interpret this as just being plain stubborn on my part. Also add a liberal sprinkling of “Why won’t you help me?”. In your most pathetic voice.
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Since I’m the only tech here, when my voice mail says I’m probably on another line, this isn’t really a ruse to anger you. Be sure to listen to my entire message (while breathing heavily), then hang up without saying anything. I will leave no stone unturned while I frantically search the entire planet to find you, in an attemt to acheive 100% Customer Satisfaction.
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It also helps to expect the impossible. When you buy our product, and it’s missing something, you can fully expect me to hop on a plane and deliver the missing item to you. Personally. In the next two hours. And, in my crushing sense of failure, I’ll also jump off the top of the building, then buy a yellow dog and shoot it. Never mind that we shipped 30,000 units this month, and only a single unit was missing something that you could have gotten at a hardware store.
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Be assured that I really can perform miracles. Especially if you’re calling from another country. I apparently have unlimited air miles, and do not need a passport. Or a plane ticket. Why bother contacting the International Distributor for your country, when you’ve got a great guy like me?
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Don’t forget, Tech Support isn’t part of Customer Service, it’s part of Customer Slavery.
Thank you for buying our product.
Only time I have to talk to the actual customer is when it’s quicker to give them a call than to make one of my peons do it.
Lizevel thrizee rep, biatches.
My only real beef is with the lower level folks. We write your documentation. That is your script. You are expected to read it, and follow the steps that it lays out exactly. Do not deviate from it, because you think you know better. You will most likely fuck something up. If you think you have a better suggestion, by all means, suggest it to us. But do not fucking do it yourself. No, you may not have the root password. If you think you’re smart enough to have it, then submit an application for my team, because we sure as hell need people on the pager rotation.
I hate this too. It’s pretty much just me, and not only that, but I answer 4 different extensions. It’s set up so that other people CAN answer certain extensions based on their job but it’s usually slow enough that I just answer all 4 lines. When I’m on the line for one person, I hate to see the same. exact. number call EVERY line multiple times, making my call waiting beep. Leave a damn message! I will get back to you once the call’s over, or, if I’m away, after lunch. When you call and call and call and call and call and call you are only irritating me and wasting your time, especially when it turns out to be “Durrr, what does your product do?” Look, douche, you found our number on the website. The same website has that info. If you want me to explain it to you in monosyllables, I can, but chill the fuck out.
Much like drachillix, I’m working for the at-home tech people. (BTW Drachillix, you SAVED my job!) Lt’s take a gander at the past month worth of appointements:
- I realize you think we charge way too much. Nobody is preventing you from going somewhere else. When you can’t get them to take you for 3 weeks, or to come out until 10 am on a Monday 3 years from now, you’ll call back.
- We make money off our techs fixing your problem. Yes, I give out simple advice for free, usually if it’s not worth it for the tech to come out (“No, really, you can insert the new printer cartridge without a tech.”) If I attempt to help you, and give you the standard line that I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT COMPUTERS, and it doesn’t work, don’t complain and then demand a tech fix it for free. Not only is it not happening, but I then give you the polite form of , “What are you, a friggin idiot?”
- The techs DO warranty their work. This does not apply to either, “6 months ago, you fixed the internet connection. It’s down again. I want you to honor your warranty,” or, “You fixed my video card a year ago, and my printer is busted. I want you to honor your warranty.” People want a lot of things, and asking us to fix, for free, something that wasn’t our fault.
- If you already knew the problem, you’d also know how to fix it.
- Just because we have the logos for Dell and HP in our ad doeasn’t mean we do warranty repairs for them. Me having to coax this intent out of you makes me less likely to work around your schedule.
- If we can’t fix it, you don’t pay. That’s the policy. If we diagnose it, and you say not to fix it, you’re still paying the full hourly rate. I explain this during the phone call not because I think YOU’RE a deadbeat, but because we had 3 in a week.
- No, I don’t think that a 50 year old woman is surfing unsafe pron sites. I do think your college aged son is, though. I can guarantee that his “nothing” is really something illicit or, worse yet, illegal.
- Limewire is not an application we’ll support. Neither is BitTorrent, BearShare or STEALFILESAPP. If it’s not supposed to be legal, we ain’t helping.
- Can we replace whatever laptop part you’ve killed? Often times, yes. If not, we tell you within about 5 minutes of the appointment being made. We can’t however, justify the cost of stocking a wide range of laptop screens “just in case” and neither does anybody but the manufacturer. Sometimes a shop has a dead laptop and you can get lucky. I’ve never done it, but I hear it exists. It’s like Sasquatch.
For the other lusers I work with:
10: We have a helpdesk. Use them, please. I don’t know why email/printers/internet aren’t working after a reboot. I’m THE lowest paid person on the floor. I’m BELOW intern status. WHY would they give me classified information like that? I can’t even get into the other buildings here!
11: I know about computers. I’m ok with some electronics. My powers of ESP aren’t what they used to be, so a descriptive, “My DVD player doesn’t work, what’s wrong with it?” won’t suffice.
12: Again, my support is free, and I haven’t done tech work for almost 5 years. If I give you advice that fixes one problem, but reveals a second one, don’t bitch about it. I love to figure stuff out, but I’ll put that simple pleasure aside if it means making you squirm, worm.
13: Don’t ask for my advice and then tell me that your cousin’s boyfriend’s ex-rommate’s Darth Helmet Impersonation Club’s Vice-President got it for half price 8 years ago, so why is it expensive now. Prices go up and down. When others on the florr give me a 2 week window to find an item, I get them outstanding deals, or spot-on advice to wait until a certain time. If you need that computer NOW, you get 2 options, and neither are great.