when do you realize...

[MrIllini]

...that you know more than the person you're supposed to be getting answers from?

Called the support department of a company last night that is entirely dependent upon computers and the internet for their income. I was having problems logging in to their service, and couldn't understand why.

"Well, the login and password are case sensitive."

Yeah, I know you douche, it has been every other time I logged into your website and it actually worked.

"Then I would try clearing out your internet cache." Only he pronounced it CASH-AY.

THAT'S when I knew I was dealing with a grade A dipshit.

So I fire back "So I just clear out the cache (pronounced cash), and that'll fix the problem?"

Reply..."Um, sure. And if it doesn't, just call back."

Naturally, it didn't work, and needless to say, I didn't call back. Thanks for nothing you dick.

[Suicane75]

Ya know, I always pronounced it CASH-AY as well and my girlfirend laughed at me for nearly an hour when i first said it around her. :(

[MrIllini]

excusable when you're not making a living trying to help other people with issues, and blame it on the cache (CASH) :)

[Draft Dodger]

when the tech talks about booting Windows into "Save Mode".

[samifan24]

When I'm filling in the pauses in the tech's instructions. Oddly enough it seems to happen quite often. Thanks for nothing Dell. :mad:

[Samdari]

It seems most of these front line tech/customer support people simply read to you from a FAQ that your question matches most. I don't bother calling them anymore for that very reason.

Just start the call with, "I'd like to speak with a supervisor."

If they ask why, tell them you have already figured out they are too stupid to help you.

[TroyF]

Originally posted by Samdari
It seems most of these front line tech/customer support people simply read to you from a FAQ that your question matches most. I don't bother calling them anymore for that very reason.

Just start the call with, "I'd like to speak with a supervisor."

If they ask why, tell them you have already figured out they are too stupid to help you.

Being a former tech and a supervisor in a call center, I can give some tips:

1) Before you do anything on the call, ask for the agent to give you his name and badge number. Write this information down no matter what.

2) Be quiet and let the tech go through the dumb ass stuff, provided he isn't trying to rush you off of the phone. Most techs do work from a script to start and they have to follow it. Getting sarcastic or raising your voice isn't fair to them. Give em a chance.

3) Also realize that at the start of the call, many techs are judging the computer literacy you have. For example, I used to tell people to go to the device manager. If they needed help getting there, I knew they didn't have a lot of troubleshooting.

4) Under NO circumstances should you ask to speak to a supervisor right off. If something like the first post happens, by all means ask for one. I've worked in 5+ call centers now and been a supervisor in a couple of them. Even though I was an excellant tech and won a lot awards, after a year of being a supervisor, you wouldn't want me to help you.

Why? Because as a supervisor I'm not on the phone everyday. My troubleshooting skills are rusty at best. My technical skills are still there, but any new issues that are making a buzz around the floor aren't going to get to me quickly.

What am I going to do if you get me on the line? I'm going to tell you my tech skills are rusty (the truth) and tell you that I'm putting you with my BEST agent. ( a lie) I'll walk the floor, find the first tech getting off of a call and assign him/her to take care of you.

You won't get any better support than if you'd just asked for the person's name at the start and you'll have wasted 15 minutes+ extra to get the same help you would have gotten before.

[Samdari]

Originally posted by TroyF
4) Under NO circumstances should you ask to speak to a supervisor right off. If something like the first post happens, by all means ask for one. I've worked in 5+ call centers now and been a supervisor in a couple of them. Even though I was an excellant tech and won a lot awards, after a year of being a supervisor, you wouldn't want me to help you.

Why? Because as a supervisor I'm not on the phone everyday. My troubleshooting skills are rusty at best. My technical skills are still there, but any new issues that are making a buzz around the floor aren't going to get to me quickly.

That might be what you would do, but from my experiences, the only times I've ever spoken to anyone who knew anything more than what was printed in the "playbook" was when talking to a supervisor. The front line people answering the phone have been clueless, every single time. I know, its anecdotal evidence, but that's what I do, because that's the only way I have ever gotten any useful support from a tech support call. I know I would want to talk to you, because as you say, your technical skills are there. You have to know that there are occaissionally problems that are beyond the skills of people who are the front line guys right? Well, those are the only times I need to call, when the problem is that difficult. What do you do when you hand the call back to one of those guys and they cannot help?

[TroyF]

Samdari,

The problem is that many of the front line guys have great troubleshooting skills as well. They can't use those skills until the basic TS is completed. In fact, if you get me I'll walk you through the same starting steps the regular tech will.

Yes, there are problems beyond the scope of a front line agent. It all depends on how the call center is structured. At the call centers I worked in, they didn't go by levels. It was Agent, Lead, Supervisor, IR (Internal research)

Essentially, there really was no "second" level for you to go. At one of the jobs I had a staff of 20 techs. Five of those techs were better than ANY supervisor or lead on the floor. 10 more were as good as the leads. The bottom five were agents with less than 6 months tech support experience who were learning the ropes and were always stationed between two experienced techs.

The leads main jobs were scheduling breaks, making sure the call times didn't get out of hand and working on projects. They also threw out ideas if an agent was struggling on a call. The supervisors job was to surf the internet all day. :) :) I actually updated out web site and worked hard to stay up on the tech stuff as much as possible so agents could use me as a resource, but there were a few supervisors in my department who were about as intelligent on technical issues as The Pope.

So, in answer to your question, what would I do if the agent I gave your call to coulen't fix it? I'd give you to one of the top 5 agents just to see if they had an idea and then it would go into IR and you would be getting a call back in 12-24 hours with more suggestions. If those top 5 didn't know it, nobody else in the call center would.

Not bragging, but when I was at the top of my game and in the top 5 position myself, I could out troubleshoot anyone in the building, including IR. The worst mistake you could have made would be to demand to speak to a supervisor, especially if you had a difficult problem.

[Samdari]

Originally posted by TroyF
Samdari,

The problem is that many of the front line guys have great troubleshooting skills as well. They can't use those skills until the basic TS is completed. In fact, if you get me I'll walk you through the same starting steps the regular tech will.

Yes, there are problems beyond the scope of a front line agent. It all depends on how the call center is structured. At the call centers I worked in, they didn't go by levels. It was Agent, Lead, Supervisor, IR (Internal research)

Essentially, there really was no "second" level for you to go. At one of the jobs I had a staff of 20 techs. Five of those techs were better than ANY supervisor or lead on the floor. 10 more were as good as the leads. The bottom five were agents with less than 6 months tech support experience who were learning the ropes and were always stationed between two experienced techs.

The leads main jobs were scheduling breaks, making sure the call times didn't get out of hand and working on projects. They also threw out ideas if an agent was struggling on a call. The supervisors job was to surf the internet all day. :) :) I actually updated out web site and worked hard to stay up on the tech stuff as much as possible so agents could use me as a resource, but there were a few supervisors in my department who were about as intelligent on technical issues as The Pope.

So, in answer to your question, what would I do if the agent I gave your call to coulen't fix it? I'd give you to one of the top 5 agents just to see if they had an idea and then it would go into IR and you would be getting a call back in 12-24 hours with more suggestions. If those top 5 didn't know it, nobody else in the call center would.

Not bragging, but when I was at the top of my game and in the top 5 position myself, I could out troubleshoot anyone in the building, including IR. The worst mistake you could have made would be to demand to speak to a supervisor, especially if you had a difficult problem.

Do you still do this for a living?

It seems to me that the quality of tech/customer service has plummetted to almost zero in the past 3-4 years, as companies continue to try to cut costs and it seems to me that hiring cheaper employees (or more likely outsourcing this function to an organization that hires unskilled workers) in this area is a way many companies have tried to do so. This of course almost forces competing companies in the same industry to do the same. The whole quality of service being zero is my perception, based on my limited anecdotal evidence, but the outsourcing of TS/CS functions I have actually read about on CNN.com (to foreign countries even).

If there are indeed front line phone answerers who are as likely to solve a problem as anyone in the company, I have had extremely bad luck, as those guys sure as hell never answer the phone when I call.