So, so tired of knowing more than tech support...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Sigh.

I understand that compared with the average person, I am a geek. Compared with real geeks, no. But I have been glued to my computer since 1987, and I have always been interested in understanding how things work so I am not at the mercy of others.

But this has led to years and years of painful, frustrating, depressing conversations with first-tier techsupport people, who, it seems, know exclusively what they were taught when hired, which seems to be confined to only the most basic kinds of support. Like the kind where the first question really needs to be “Have you checked to see that it’s plugged in?”

I cannot tell you the number of times I have found myself listening to a very sweet, well-mannered person telling me some version of “Gosh, it sounds like you actually already know more than I do about this subject!” Yeah, no surprise there.

I wish there was a way to just start off with: Hi. You aren’t going to be able to help me, because I’m not Joe Technophobe who actually looks at my furniture when you tell me to check my desktop. Before you ask, yes, I repaired permissions. Yes, I rebooted the computer. No, I haven’t added any third party software today. Yes, the problem persists in a new account, etc. Tried all the stuff your book tells you to tell me to try first. So can you please just start by escalating this call to second tier support right off the bat? Please??

So tired…

2

I’ve been on both ends, and you’d be surprised at the number of times that people who ought to know better find that the cable has become unplugged. My usual line here is along the lines of, “Can you please check that the (whatever) cable is firmly plugged in at both ends?”

3

Seems like an amazingly simple solution to me, and one that can be conveyed respectfully: “Hi, Anne. This is Joe in cube farm #1. I am having trouble with ____. This is what I have already tried. What do you recommend our next steps be?”

Or are you just wanting to boast in a roundabout way that you know more than tech support?

4

I don’t know what type of tech support you generally need, but even if the level 1 people are going off a book of standard scenarios, one advantage they do have - at least hopefully - is access to the latest information. That may or may not be relevant in your case though.

Anyway, the only time I’ve ever had to call tech support was with my ISP because of network related issues. Otherwise, I’ve always seemed manage find either an answer or enough of a hint to figure out the answer by googling a description of the problem. Sometimes that takes several attempts and/or sifting through more than a couple pages of hits, but I don’t think the method has ever failed me.

5

This is what happens when you know more than everyone about most everything. A blessing and a curse, it is.

6

I sympathize. But it may be that the support person will face a penalty for escalating to second tier support, or at least for doing so within a set period of time. If so, they will be very reluctant to forward your call.

7

If you repaired permissions… is this a mac? Did you run FSCK from single-user? And keep running until it said no errors were found? Did you repair disk and repair permissions on all disks and partitions from recovery?

Mac T1 advisers SHOULD know that.

With Macs, it’s OK to say, “Hey, I’d like to discuss this with a senior adviser.” They should be used to doing that sort of thing. They’ll usually have to collect your reason for calling, and the seniors will push back on them about if it’s a tech or empathy issue, so help your T1 out and tell them that you’re concerned about the tech and want extra help.

PM me if this is a Mac.

8

Indeed… :cool:

9

You’re actually right. And I have the direct line to a couple of them, one who actually isn’t that knowledgable personally but she is good about getting me the information, god love her.

But I was prompted to finally post this because I called Apple to ask one simple question that wasn’t even about something broken, and the pathetic level of knowledge I was dealing with was actually kind of heartbreaking. Particularly in a less than stellar economy: THIS is what you guys can afford? Seriously? And it just reminded me of all the times I’ve had to navigate the dawning realization that I’m in for a very long haul getting what I need, if indeed I ever do.

Worst ever, burned into my brain, was The Two Day Affair Of The Router… it went from maddeningly rage-inducing to funny and back again…and again… because the whole thing took 7 actual phone hours on Day One and about 4-5 on Day Two, involved Apple, AT&T AND the router manufacturer, and on ALL THREE I ended up at the very highest possible levels of support, which included boatloads of “Hey, not us, look at them!” and in the end, guess what? It turned out that the original piece of information I was given that led to all this mayhem (by a first level supervisor in the Indian call center for the router manufacturer) was 100% wrong. No lie. No exaggeration. Had he actually known what he was talking about, none of what followed would have followed.

And the other one was when I managed to actually stump the guys who are The Guys of Guys - The Ones Who Write Code and Never Speak to The Little People, at Apple - the parts I remember are these: it involved creating a Linux boot DVD so that I could clone and upgrade my Tivo drive. I somehow managed to turn my Mac into a Linux machine that I could not UN-linux, I think, and whatever it was I did, I do distinctly remember The Guy of Guys being gobsmacked that I did it, because he didn’t think it was even possible. And no, I don’t remember how I undid it, but I did. And I do remember that it was me undoing it, too, not the Guy of Guys. It wasn’t some techno-brilliance, it was just something about knowing what I did and what happened and simply having the information about it that allowed me to figure it out. And it was simple, cuz I don’t do complicated when it comes to Linux. And I do remember that being able to talk to the Guy of Guys was some kind of fluke, though I don’t recall how.

Anyway, me and techsupport…it’s been a long and winding road…

10

I worked for a small family-owned software company, 1993-2002. At any time, we had two or three front-line customer support guys. The clientele tended to be computer literate (they were not end-users, but dealers who in turn supported their customers). We had a hell of a time getting any information out of the three brothers-and-sister principals of the company.

I knew programming and databases, so I quickly got promoted to second-level support (a position that previously didn’t exist there). I did a lot of customizations for customers.

Our standard in-joke was that we always had ONE instant, standard, knee-jerk solution for all problems, big and small: FDISK!

We had one very pushy and insistent customer who called us, it seemed, many times every day. (If you know how shitty the product actually was, that’s actually GOOD news. Most other dealers sold a few copies of the product and then we never heard from them again.) This guy was a regular and rather prolific customer, even to this day. He became so familiar with the product (installation and configuration issues), that we often had him explaining things to us.

He had one problem, with receipt printer formatting that was all fucked up (which it really was), and the techs couldn’t help him. He called umpty-ump times before someone got tired of it all and escalated it to me. I was able to fix it on the spot, walking him through a whole bunch of editing of some scripts to fix the formatting. Thereafter, I became his regular go-to guy.

About the time I left the company, he called me privately and asked if I would be willing to do private consulting for him. I started doing that. A few months later I got fired (for unrelated reasons, as far as I know). That was in 2002. I have been consulting for this guy ever since, doing the customer support for him that the company can’t or won’t do, fixing bugs with custom scripts and work-arounds, and developing custom add-on modules.

In fact, I sent him some revisions and enhancements to a custom add-on module just this morning (July 3, 2013).

11

Cool!

12

The last time I called tech support at Bell Canada (before I changed ISPs) to tell them their name server wasn’t working, there was a long pause, followed by “Uh, what’s a name server?” (I had a couple actual numerical addresses, but they were the only sites I could get to, so it had to be the name server.) After I explained, he denied there could be a problem.

The actual reason I switched suppliers was that they took a week to fix a broken outside phone line. But they never tried to find out why I left and the regular calls I get to try to entice me back are from poor slobs who don’t know and don’t care.

13

It’s mostly a matter of how rigidly they have to adhere to a script, and whether the person who wrote the script was good at playing “what if” ot not (most people are not). If you add a rigid script plus hiring people who have no knowledge of the field, you have a recipe for “uh… what’s a name server?”

On the bad side, we’ve had instances of someone calling because they needed to add a new user and needed the proper forms sent (they wanted to make sure they were using the current version). Since the caller was a Production Manager, the script called for a batch number. Ah, Joe? Batch number is J-O-E.

On the good side, I had an ISP-by-radio whose support lady, when I pointed out I’d noticed my service always went down under some very-specific metereological conditions, said “one sec, let me look at the map… you know, that could be bringing down the repeater! Thank you! I’ll make a note to check weather reports for this repeater and our other ones, maybe that’s it…” After that, those same conditions would still bring service down but never for more than a few seconds; they comped me a few months. But this woman wasn’t working off a rigid script.

14

That’s it, Nava…the rigid script. And not just technical support, ALL customer service. Talk about grinding your teeth in frustration…GAH… It is a great and beautiful thing when you find yourself talking to someone who is not only knowledgeable, they have the freedom to think, problem solve, etc.

15

At that company I worked for (see above), we didn’t have any script at all. The problem we had was poor support from the higher-ups. We had only our wits to work with, but as we became familiar with all the myriad quirks and bugs of the product, we either got the hang of it, or ran out the door, screaming, never to be seen again. We had plenty of both outcomes, but on the whole, way too much turnover. I was with the company for 8 years, apparently a longevity record by a wide margin at the time.

16

Just say the code word shibboleet.

17

The first two panels are so familiar, they could have been standing in my office… I’ve learned to just keep agreeing until they run out.

That is a thing of beauty, truly!

18

I do tech support for a bank’s website and you would not believe the amount of seemingly-savvy people who sheepishly apologize after I ask them to check if caps lock is on.

However, most of the people who I talk to are the type who can’t remember a password, or if they know it they can’t type it correctly within three tries. They also can’t figure out how to reset their password themselves through the website, so they call us. The “marginally-competent” in all areas of life, if you will.

19

No, I believe it. I’ve certainly had my caps-lock moments. :o

20

One real skill for a tech support person to have (and you’ll know it when you see it), is to be able to quickly judge the caller’s technical competence (or general intelligence) level, and adjust your support technique to that.

There are technically knowledgeable users, and you might be able to spot them quickly, with whom you can immediately discuss editing their Registry, or some INI file. You can discuss intelligently the symptoms of their problem, and within a few guesses or experiments, zero in on the problem, skipping the stupid script. (PROVIDING you’re allowed to, of course.) (ETA: I’ve been on both sides of conversations like that. Once I got an ISP tech with whom I could discuss detailed dial-up modem settings, including things like initialization strings.)

Then there are those users that you really have to walk through the whole megillah.

Tech: Go to a command prompt window. (This would be pre-Winders or early-Winders days.)
Tech: Type DIR . . .
Tech: No, DIR. That’s D as in David.
User: Uh, let me try something. [Sound effect: type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type.]
Tech: (WTF is he doing?)