huh-hum…SHE CAN GET FIRED FOR HELPING!!!
that is all.
No, man, you don’t get it. See, the customer is always right and so therefore the lowly tech should be glad for the chance to get fires so that the customer can get what he wants.
Imagine if you didn’t change the oil in your car, and eventually the vehicle broke. You have it towed to the car wash place, and you ask them to fix it. The operator politely tells you that he is not qualified or authorized to work on the mechanical systems of your car, but you could probably get help at the dealership where you bought it.
Of course, you’re going to tell the operator that you wish their children would die. It’s his fault, because they do something related to your car, so they should be able to do whatever you need done to it, right? It’s obvious that the car wash guy just hates you and is ducking behind the “It’s not my job, bug someone else” shield.
(And, of course, when you do finally take it to the dealer, they ask if you have changed the oil, like the little light on the dash has asked you to do. You look at them like a deer in the headlights. They point out that you probably could have prevented the problem if you would have, but that they can fix it. They spend hours fixing the vehicle, which is complicated because they can’t touch your car themselves, they have to walk you though it. Then, of course, you complain because in order to save your vehicle, they had to erase your radio presets.)
What I am requesting is not that every customer be hand-held through the process to download the necessary patches and fix the computer, all that I wish that Magayuk would do is provide a SIMPLE LITTLE REFFERENCE!!! Disclaim it all you want, make it clear that you are not assosciated, blah blah blah, that’s fine.
I have no problem with you refusing to help support this, just give them a clue as to what to do.
Take any of the hypothetical car situations offered here. No, the Jaguar dealer does not have to fix the Honda, but would it kill them to give them a phone number to the Honda dealer?
Is the Jaguar dealer going to be sued even if the Honda dealer completely breaks the car? No. Is the sales rep going to be fired? No.
Will the sales rep be fired for being a complete dick, unwilling to provide at least a phone number to call? They should be, but given the attitude which seems to be cultivated my Magayuk’s company, they probably won’t.
Let’s take a similarly obvious issue for a car problem. A customer walks in to a Toyota dealer, says, “there’s something screwed up with my car.” Service rep walks out, notices that a tire is flat on a Honda Accord. Does he need to change the tire, clean the windshield, change the oil, replace the spark plugs, top off the transmission fluid, and offer a blow job? Nope. But he could point out that the customer has a flat tire, probably caused by a sharp pointy object, and tell the customer that the Discount Tire Company just down the street can fix the tire. “Have a nice day! Toyota is in no way assosciated with Discount Tire Company, nor can it verify the effectiveness of Discount’s supposed remedy. All customers may refer to Discount Tire Company or to their Honda dealership at their own risk. Toyota assumes no responsibility.liability, direct or assoscited, etc.”
Again, it comes down to one small, critical issue:
DON’T BE A DICK!!!
Great analogy, but for one thing…
Is the sales rep going to be fired? YES!
How many of you are actually reading this thread?
My goodness, I shall repeat myself. I do give out the tech support number for microsoft. You show me where I said I refused to give out their number. In fact, I even give people links to websites with information one the problem, so if they have the computer knowledge they can fix it themselves.
What I cannot do is walk someone through fixing this problem. And most people who phone in want to be walked through it. Which is fine, good that they recognize their computer related limitations. But I cannot help them.
From HeidiHo:
Follow Up:
From Magayuk:
Fine, fine, if you do this. I apologize for the miscommunication, but the feeling I got from earlier in the thread is that you were refusing to even refer people to this basic information.
Again, I think that the level of service suggested by HeidiHo is reasonable.
If people are still wishing death upon your children after offering them a reference or two to help you out on a product you don’t have to support, they are indeed goat-felchers of the highest order.
But, in all fairness, I think I made the extent of the advice which you should give was pretty limited in my first post:
Meka Leika, uh, Hi Meka… Yeah… may be right, I think we all could use a little reading on this thread.
–Elliot
I tech support work for a small-ish ISP, and we’ve developed a regimen for dealing with calls about his worm:
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Give them the Symantec URL, which has links for a removal tool and the Microsoft bulletin that will direct them to the patch.
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We also do onsite tech support (for $35/hour). I let them decide if they want to pay or try to fix it themselves.
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If I have time, I can and will walk someone through setting the RPC service to not restart Windows, and even manually removing the worm. If I have other calls, however, I let them know that this is not something we officially support, and they can call Microsoft.
At that point, most of them schedule an onsite. I’ve made about $245 since Tuesday fixing this thing. So far, nobody’s yelled at me.
If my boss told me not to support generic Windows problems, and only connection problems, we’d be out of business pretty quick. Our service is slightly more expensive than AOL and MSN, and some of our customers have dropped us for other providers. 80% of them come back within three months, because they can’t get tech support. The ones that don’t come back are the ones that like to whine about how slow our service is (the phone lines around here suck - it ain’t my fault your WinModem won’t connect higher than 28.8kbps).
So, spend the extra $5/month and use a local ISP with real techs. Or don’t, and deal with Microsoft. Your choice.
Thank you, SteelWolf, that’s all that I am asking of techies.
Good to see that there are still some people in the IT industry with a good sense of what customer service means.
Breaking company policy?
Wait Steelwolf, I just want to make sure I understand.
You charge more, refer the customer to the same website I do, and if they cannot fix the problem themselves, you offer to come out onsite and charge $35 an hour…and do what exactly? Download the free patch from microsoft? Now that is service!
threemae: Thanks 
Binarydrone: I realize Magayuk’s company won’t let techs work on this problem. Mine does, that’s all I wanted to point out.
Magayuk: That’s pretty much it. I know you’re being sarcastic, but really, if it’s what the customer wants, and they’re willing to pay for it, what’s the BFD? You and I know how easy it is to fix this thing, but not everyone’s comfortable mucking around with System Restore and Admin Services.
I don’t just refer them to Symantec, however. After they download the removal tool and patch, I’ll go through each step in the process over the phone, if that’s what they want. Unless, as I said, I have other people on hold with problems directly related to their Internet service. In that case, people with the worm can call back later, or pay for an onsite, or get someone else to help them, or try it themselves. Indeed, a few of the people I talked to were initally going to have me go out, but called back to say they had fixed it themselves. Unlike your company, mine lets me support any user problems to the best of my ability, on a priority basis. If people can’t, or won’t, follow instructions over the phone, they can pay for onsite support.
Now, I’m not trashing techs just because their company won’t support users on non-service issues. I was simply trying to show that customers have a choice in which provider they choose, and computer help unrelated to their Internet service is one of the features that some ISPs offer. The one I work for does, and our success is due in part to that fact.