Dealing with Tech Support

Dealing with tech support can be a frustrating experience.  There are a lot of subtleties that can drive people nuts, at both ends of the phone.  I’d like to say that I can tell you how to make it all better, but I can not.  What I can do is examine a typical support call and offer suggestion that may ease your pain.

Let’s examine the tech support call from both sides, step by step.

Typically you have experienced an issue with your hardware or software, and you have tried to the best of your ability to resolve the issue on your own.  For whatever reason, you find yourself unable to correct the matter, and so you call tech support.  You are hoping that tech support can provide some insight about the issue, and perhaps they’ve seen it before and can tell you how to quickly resolve the problem so you can get back to what you were trying to do.

It would be nice if that statement was correct, but it is not.  It may be how you see it, but in reality you probably have been trying everything you can think of and talking to your friends or family with no success.  You dread the thought of calling tech support so you struggle on with the problem until you can stand it no more.  Each time you make an attempt to fix the problem, it pops right back up in your face, taunting you.  You go from concerned to irritated, from irritated to angry, from angry to furious, and the more you fight it the worse it gets.  Maybe you try to email tech support and you get a form email in return that completely ignores the facts you have already presented.  When you finally pick up that phone you are, to say the least, frustrated.

Then you find yourself in an endless maze of press 2 for this and press 4 for that.  Maybe they have you enter your serial number or account number, if you do reach a human, you tell them your story and they transfer you to some place else.  From there you get into another maze of button pressing, or transferred again, or even worse, disconnected.

Eventually, you reach someone who might actually be able to help you, but all of the numbers you entered, and facts you have explained have not reached them, so you start over from the beginning.  If you are really lucky you are in the right place, and they make an attempt to help you, if you are having a bad day, they transfer you again.  When and if you do speak to this human who can help, you are so frustrated that there is almost no chance of speaking to them politely.

Sound familiar?

OK, let us look at it from the tech support person’s point of view; for the sake of this article we will say it is a man.  We start with Tier One Support.  This poor fellow is one of the most abused people on earth.  He works in some massive room full of cubicles, where he sits all day with a head set strapped on.  He is expected to perform a specific number of support calls per day, regardless of the difficulty of any of the calls.  His breaks are timed, including bathroom breaks; he makes very little. He may be in a foreign country, and he may be struggling just to understand what those funny Americans are trying to say to him.  Typically he really knows very little about the subject and has only been trained to look up problems in the company database.  Unless the issue is very simple, anything you get from this guy is going to be something you have already tried.

To complicate issues, the customers he deals with are irritated, and getting more irritated every time he puts them on hold.  You see he has to put them on hold, so he can meet his quota of support calls while looking your problem up in his database.  He is not allowed to transfer anyone to Tier Two Support until he meets some benchmark in the call.  Unfortunately none of us know what that benchmark is, so we have to struggle along with this guy until we get lucky and hit that mark.  Usually Tier Two are people that actually know what they are doing.  Large companies don’t want to pay the higher salaries it takes to hire qualified people, so they hire less of them, and they require Tier One people to run interference.

Now I know you know someone that gets upset easily and makes a scene in public whenever that happens, commonly with a server at a restaurant.  Now imagine that person, frustrated to the point their eyes start bleeding, talking to this low level support person who is not allowed to express himself, and who has to get 3 more calls handed in the next 15 minutes. 

Really, close your eyes and imagine this guy sitting in his cubicle, two lines on hold and another one ringing, his boss walking by checking his watch, he can hear the supervisors connecting and monitoring his calls, all the while the person on the phone is berating him on a personal level because their mouse doesn’t work.

Poor Guy

Got the picture?  Now image you are the one on hold, and you are irritated.  What do you think your chances are of having a good experience here?

Let’s back up.  Let’s try to remember that the tech support guy is a human being, and let’s remember we are calling him because we don’t know what we are doing.  Talk to this guy in a calm voice, and try to be friendly.  Maybe make a joke about “those darned computers”, give him a reason to pick up your call next and put the screamer on hold.  Remember you need his help, without his co-operation, you can not get to Tier Two.

In order for this plan to work, you need to control your own frustration.  How do you do that?  Stop beating your head against the wall.  When you have an issue, walk away from it.  Come back later, if you still can not get it working give up and call tech support.  But when you call, make sure you have:

  1. Nothing to do for the next 4 hours.  Seriously.
  2. All the documentation you can find on your equipment, software, and support contracts if any.
  3. All the details of the problem written down.  It’s pretty hard to diagnose a problem when some tells you “There was some error message, I don’t know what it said.  Something about Windows I think”
  4. A hard wired speakerphone.  Waiting on hold is much easier when you are using a speakerphone.  Don’t use your cell phone.  Invariably you will drop a call or have your battery die after 2 hours, just as you reach Tier Two, and if you call back, they will make you start from scratch.
  5. A cordless phone on the same line right next to you.  At some point in the next 4 hours you may need to move out of your chair.
  6. Paper and pen, most of time they will give you reference numbers as you progress.  Most times the reference number is worthless, but on occasion it can help you go straight to Tier Two if you have to call back.  The reference numbers are always some long confusing string of nonsense, so don’t try to use the back of a worn out business card, get a pad of paper.

 

Here are some guidelines that may help:

  1. As you work your way through the maze of numbers (1 for English, 2 for Latin, etc.), if anyone wants to transfer you to another department, ask them for the direct number first.  If they disconnect you, you can avoid repeating the previous steps.
  2. Use your pen and paper, record the names of people you speak to, and call them by name “I’m sorry Ferengi, my fault; I thought I told you there was no video.  Since there is no video, I can’t see what color the screen is.  Oh by the way, did I mention my Sister-in-law is named Ferengi, isn’t that a coincidence?”
  3. When they ask you to stand on your head and hold your breath for 6 minutes, wait a bit and tell them that you did.  That is to say when they want you to do some task, and you know darned well that has NOTHING to do with your issue, or you’ve already done that 10 times and you already told them that.  Don’t get frustrated and argue with them, just ask them to hold, take a potty break, and come back and say that you did it.  Remember, they are just reading from a computer screen, and the break you take lets them take one too.

 

When it is all said and done, I will point out that you could have just brought it to The Village Geek, and we would have handled all this for you.  Yes, we will even call your tech support for you if we don’t know the answer; we do it all the time.  Certainly we will charge you, but how much is your time and frustration worth?