Holding the Customer's Hands, and Other Pains In The Butt...

The lack of posts doesn't indicate a sudden drop in Code ID-Ten-T's, noooo, far from it. Actually, it's more of the same, and since variety is the spice of life (something like Mrs. Dash is the spice of cookouts), it's easier to write about unique instances rather than retread the same old complaints.

Thus, we come to one of my latest pet peeves, "Holding The Customer's Hands".

If you've been in Tech Support, you know this well, and you dread it. In a way, I feel sorry for these customers. They remind me of the kids who want to go in the water and play, but are so terrified of it that as soon as they touch it, they initiate a death-lock bear hug around the neck. (Persistant parents usually are the ones with the purple faces...or collapsed on the beach.) Similarly, there are some customers who are so terrified of technology, that they refuse to face it alone, or even learn anything about it.

One customer, today, has called me 8 times, asking me every tiny question in the world. "Who's my ISP, you or Failtel?" Um, you're calling us, right? Then that would be us. "Do I click Agree or Disagree?" If you want to use the software, you better click 'agree'. "Do I have DSL or Broadband?" It's basically the same...one is a narrower category of the other. DSL is a kind of broadband, Broadband is a broad category including DSL and Cable Internet. "Do I have Windows XP, or Office 97?" Can I shoot myself first?

Look, I know customers have questions. It's the nature of the beast. As such, there will be the Neck-Chokers...the ones whose hands you have to hold step by step through the entire process of doing every mundane task they want to do. I just wish they'd make one call instead of fifty.

Unwritten rules from the highly over worked, but woefully under paid technical support staff at an Internet service technician near you...

I think almost any Tech Support Operator/Technician can relate to this. You may think this is harsh or over-blown...but believe me, I have encountered EVER SINGLE ONE of these 18 examples at least once in my 6 years fielding tech support calls.

Word of warning, don't be drinking anything while you read this. (Thanks to my boss who got this from a friend, whom got it from somewhere else...)

Unwritten rules from the highly over worked, but woefully under paid technical support staff at an Internet service provider near you...

1. DO NOT talk over me. Listen! You can't do what I tell you to do if you're constantly jabbering over me. I talk... you do. Why did you even ask me a question if you are going to answer it?

2. DO NOT call me and then put me on hold. You called me, genius. You want my help, stay on the line and listen. We have much better things to do than talk to you anyway.

3. DO NOT read long error messages to me unless I ask you to. Do you honestly think we get anything out of a 50 digit hex number???

4. DO NOT start off a call by saying anything in the neighborhood of "hi, how's it going" or "busy today?" That just serves to piss us off. Get to the problem so we can get you off the phone. The day was great until I had to start answering your totally moronic questions.

5. DO NOT get pissed when we tell you that your system is royally screwed. We didn't screw it up. It wasn't us. We're simply telling it like it is.

6. DO NOT call about unrelated products. We DO NOT know the intimate details of every shareware program you dredge out of the internet. Nor do we want to. Stop it!

7. We DO NOT manufacture modems, write e-mail programs or engineer browsers. If something in this arena goes wrong, call the people who made the thing. YOU DON'T USE THE INTERNET TO FAX!!! Can't stress that one enough.

8. DO NOT compare us to AOL when something goes wrong with your connection to us. If you had the computer literacy of an 8 year old with a broken Atari 2600 you'd know better. Everyone else connects just fine. It's just you. Keep that in mind. It's just you.

9. DO NOT call simply for the purpose of giving us your thoughts on the content of our homepage or to request that we send you flyers so you can pass them out at bridge tournaments and bingo night. Not only is this a waste of our time, but it encourages just the type of user tech support reps fear most... the elderly.

10. DO NOT make us sit there on the phone while you tip toe through setup instructions so easy they were originally tested on lab chimps.

11. DO NOT call us and complain about a problem with your system and then say you're not in front of your computer when we try and help you. We aren't technological psychics.

12. DO NOT call us assuming the problem you're experiencing is our fault. If your computer crashes, performs illegal operations, gives you the blue screen of death, or flips you off and runs away with the toaster to
Mexico, you can be damn certain it isn't us who caused it.

13. DO NOT call us and announce to us that you don't know anything about computers. This really gets us cheesed off. Trust me, we're well aware of that fact. We figured it out the minute you called and announced "help, the internet
is broken!" Something here definitely needs help. People who know computers don't call us.

14. DO NOT call us and act as if you know all that are computers and that you're doing us a favor by gracing us with your call. This pisses us off more than 13. Chiming in with stupid suggestions and comments only increases the already tremendous temptation we face to use you as an unwitting instrument of destruction and really do some damage to your system. Not that you'd notice.

15. DO NOT (in addition to 14) say acronyms you don't know the meaning of or even what they are for. Just admit you're completely lost and leave the technobabble to us.

16. DO NOT call in if you can't speak English. This might seem like a small thing to you, but we find it just a tad annoying when we try and assess your problem and we can only understand every fifth word you say. And no, just because those words may be 'computer' or 'broken' doesn't absolve you of the offense. (Our apologies for that mess that is Dell Tech Support.)

17. DO NOT call in hoping to get another tech rep to tell you something different than the first one did. If one of us tells you your system is pooched, it's pooched. The second guy is going to simply look at the log and tell you the same thing, it's pooched. That is of course unless you really piss him off and then he's going to make sure your computer has the functionality of a house plant. (See also: Über-Pooched)

18. DO NOT be stoned or drunk when you call us. You wouldn't think this would need to actually be said, but believe me it's come up. For god sakes, if you can't control yourself and must call, at least have the common courtesy to offer us some of what you're on. We probably need it more than you do, anyhow.

The hardest part of my job is when a user has done something completely dumb and I haveto explain what happened, but not make them feel like a moron. When I was coming back from lunch today I got a call from one of my users saying her computer died when she was plugging in a USB drive. I figured she had knocked loose the power or video cable and told her I'd come straight to her office after parking my car. When I got up there the monitor was on, but I noticed the computer wasn't. I hit the power button just to see if the PC came on and of course it did.
She probably knocked the power cable loose and put it back in, but once the computer turns off you have to hit that little button for it to come back on.

I know...patience...

Cingular Tech Support ID10-Ts

Cingular has customer support right down there with Dell. I called today about a client's Blackberry and was transferred from Customer Support to Tech Support, back to Customer Support, to a "level 3" tech support rep, who then transferred me back to the menu I started at.

Thanks.

All we needed to do was see if they could reset the guy's password for their Blackberry web site account. The general response I got was "we don't do that," then after I told them the url for their blackberry site they told me that I had to answer the secret question on the site to reset it. I had already told them we didn't know that answer and thus were told to call them. When all that failed, we tried a bunch of different guesses and one worked. I hung up on the rep I was on hold with.

Cingular, welcome to my "Never To Be Recommended Even If Its To Someone I Hate" list. You'll be comfortable right beside Dell.

They're KILLING me I tell ya!

We got the Dual 1.8Ghz Dual G5 Powermac tower in yesterday, and we're supposed to set up Virtual PC and transfer over my tech stuff to the G5. I'll have every flavor of Windows installed so I can do tech support on virtually every platform on one machine. But the bossman, who's been out of the office most of yesterday and so far, all of today is supposed to do the majority of the setup. They won't let me touch it..so it sits on the top of the repair shelf, sadly calling out to me to release it...but my job status (you know, the one that says "Employed") prevents me from heeding the call. I think they're getting revenge for all my laughing at them over Windows viruses and Spyware, and the fact my iBook and Dual G5 at home don't suffer from anything like that at all.

And I Shall Call It...Mini Mac!

Or rather, the Mac Mini.

Apple announced yesterday the cheapest Mac in their history, and it's somewhat of a milestone and a shock as well. I had absolutely no faith in the rumors, my fervant belief was that the rumor was the same as it always has been, no Headless iMac, and no way that Apple would try to throw it's hat into the low end market battleground. Well, it should come as no surprise that I've been wrong before. And even some Mac pundits who staunchly put themselves in the same camp found themselves getting more than their fair share of messages rubbing in the fact that they too, were wrong about the $499 Mac. Sometimes, the Mac fandom can be a harsh mistress.


One thing I wanted to mention was how shocked I was at the absolutely miniscule form factor. This computer is tiny! For most current Mac users, this will be more of a novelty purchase or a replacement for their aging Macs & iMacs. For power users, it could be a media center purchase, or a second Mac for the kids, but it's unlikely that a Mac mini will replace their new iMac G5 or Dual G5 tower. But the real crowd this was designed for is the on-the-fence PC user. This was designed for the PC user with a limited budget who has an existing Monitor, Keyboard and Mouse and doesn't want to have to buy a whole new system to get security and freedom from viruses, worms and spyware. This is for the Windows user who sick and tired of Windows problems every other time they turn on their PC. It's for the PC user who's ever said "Bill Gates can stick it!"

That being said it's not for hardcore gamers, tinkerers, or PC users looking to do massively power graphics. While this Mac Mini is pretty powerful, it's not hardcore, and really only an entry level Mac, one of the first Apple has ever offered. Power users, hardcore gamers and the like will want to pass over the Mac Mini. (Except as an ADDITION to their computing arsenal*, and not a replacement of it.)

Steve Jobs also unveiled the iPod Shuffle, a Flash based iPod without a screen that comes in 2 configurations, 512Mb and 1Gb. About half the size of a pack of Trident™, and weighing only an ounce, it's a nice compliment product to the iPod line, but if you're an existing iPod user, it's highly doubtful you'll find this product appealing. People with large music collections will also most likely pass this over. This iPod is for people who have about 100-240 songs they want to take with them, and you can create playlists in iTunes either randomly or manually, and then the iPod Shuffle can either play the tracks in the order you specified, or randomize the playback. There's no screen, just the control buttons on the front and the slider on the back that turns the iPod Shuffle on, and sets the playback to straight through or random modes. It plugs into a USB port like a USB Thumb Drive, just pull off the cap on the bottom, and plug it straight in. It charges through that port and the battery is said to last 12 hours. It even comes with a lanyard that clips over the USB plug so you can take it on the go. I forsee a LOT of joggers with this little beauty in very short order.

Jobs also previewed Tiger, the next major update to OS X, and damn him, I now have to get it. I wasn't planning on getting Tiger, but they'd just done so much with this version (over 200 new additions and improvements) that I can't just sit idly by and NOT get this release. Thankfully, I'll have time to save up for it. He also previewed iWork and the updated apps for iLife '05, all stellar applications now made even more spectacular. I'm really interested in iWork because of Pages. Pages is the complete update of Appleworks. This should be interesting to see what happens here.

So was Macworld worth waiting for? Actually, I think so. Seeing Tiger demo'd was just simply too awesome. Even the lockup gaffe that wound up being a stab at Microsoft and Gates was too funny. One has to wonder, was it planned due to what happened at CES? "That's why we have backup systems."

JFGI!

I found this link tonight on the DC++ forums. Ah...if only we could give it out to people that need it and not lose our jobs...

"do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?"

Sigh...I'm helping a user expunge the deleted items from his mailbox to give him more space and this is how our conversation went:

me: ok, open up a web browser
him: is Internet Explorer OK?
me: yes. Now browse to this address. http://
him: hetp?
me: no. hTTp
him: httpp?
me: no. one "p."
him: ok
me: colon slash slash
him: colon slash?
me: no. two slashes.
him: ok
me: servername dot domain dot edu
him: servername dot edu?
me: no...servername dot domain dot edu
him: ok
me: you see a link called "account information?" click it. It's going to ask for your e-mail username and password.
him: it says authorization failed.
me: you probably had a typo. click reload.
him: reload...
me: hit F5.
him: ah, the username was misspelled.
me: you see where it says "account summary?" Click that.
him: it says 89% of quota.
me: ok, you see where it says "expunge mail messages?" click that, then click the button that says "expunge all mail messages."
him: ok
me: it'll show you a list of all your mail folders. When you see that click "account summary" again.
him: it's down to 69%. Thanks!


Sigh...How many times have you not had to put the domain name in a web address. Sure for local servers you can leave of the domain.edu but never just the domain part.
The sad thing is, he'll call about the same thing in a month or so and this will repeat again.