Quote:
Originally Posted by Toxaris
You would be surprised how many problems are fixed when they follow the scripts. I heard percentages between 75% and 85%. I also find them annoying, but if these percentages are correct, I cannot blame them.
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I would not be surprised at all, because I've
been tech support.
I mentally classed users in three categories:
1) Had a clue
2) Clueless
3) Brain dead, and how did someone this stupid survive to reach adulthood?
Most were in the second category.
One of the things I did was set up user access to systems I administered. I ripped out the default menu interface, and made access keyed to userid. Different classes of users got different access, and the set up put them directly into the program they would use when logged on, and signed them out when they exited the program. (They were Unix systems, accessed via terminals or terminal emulators.)
My experience for decades was that when users got choices, they tended to pick the wrong one, so don't
give them a choice.
I understand tech support has to follow scripts, and try not to get annoyed. I
did have one apologize for making me do things I'd already done to try to fix the problem while I was on the phone with him, but he was required by policy to do it.
I did discover it
sometimes helped to make clear when I called that I
was a tech, and that my call would probably have to be escalated to the next support tier.
My first broadband was DSL via what is now Verizon. The telco screwed up everything that
could be screwed up in the install and it took three months from placement of order to working installation.
(I spent an hour on hold during a slow afternoon at the office till I could reach a live human being and begin the process. My boss came into my office later and said "I heard you on the the phone with Bell Atlantic. I'm sorry you had to got through that!" I said "Larry, it's okay. They are idiots with their heads up their butts. I deal with that as your telecom administrator, but you
pay me for it!"
)
One of the questions I had once up was using DSL under Linux. A tech I spoke to in email said "You didn't hear this from me, but..." and provided a URL to a site whose owner was using DSL under Linux, and documented how he did it. It was one tech to another, outside of the standard procedures.
A former coworker had a problem I really sympathized with. He had broadband, and like the rest to the known world, plugged a wireless router into his broadband connection. If he had to call support and the problem required a tech visit, they wouldn't touch it unless his primary PC was plugged directly into the broadband connector. If they saw a router in the mix they woudn't proceed. Given the number of cases where a router configuration issue was the likely problem, that was really helpful...
______
Dennis