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I sacrificed several months of my life, sanity and dignity working in tech support to amass the dark knowledge I share in this article. I may have even helped you with a computer problem at some point. If so, I'm sorry. Now, it probably seems like every time you call tech support you're playing a game of dipshit-roulette that by and large you can't win. You probably spoke to one of three people:
The outsourced guy in India who, as best you can tell, is either explaining how to reset your BIOS or reading you amateur erotica;
The mouth-breather who refuses to believe that you've already power cycled the modem and that you are fully aware that a computer needs to be plugged in for it to properly function;
A level two tech support assistant, which is kind of like winning the lottery since there's actually a chance that he knows how to fix your computer, though he won't do much besides talk to you like you have mittens pinned to your jacket and need the tines on your fork filed down so you don't stab yourself when you eat. If these three characters sound familiar, you're not unlucky. Based on my experience, these are pretty much the only three types of tech support people that exist. There are reasons for all of this. Terrible, nonsensical reasons. Let's walk through a typical call, from the beginning. On Hold
The Suck: At some point in time while furiously fapping to some hentai on a venture through various East Asian thumbnail galleries you may have had the unfortunate luck to run afoul of some kind of virus that completely crippled your computer. Desperate for some more pictures of Sailor Moon pleasuring Pikachu, you call up tech support. You'll likely notice the phone rings and rings again before finally a pleasant recording will let you know that your call is important. That's nice. Around the 15th time the recorded voice assures you of your importance, you begin to imagine what you're certain is a faint whiff of sarcasm in her voice. Your eye begins twitching ever so slightly. The Reason For The Suck:
You may have heard one of those messages say you've called during "peak" hours, when everyone is fucking up at the same time, and to call back later. And you've probably noticed if you call at 2 AM you may get through right away, but if you call at 5 PM the next day, you'll wait an hour. It seems like the solution to this problem would be simple: shift some of the staff's off-peak hours to the time when, you know, people are actually calling. But predicting a rush of calls is like trying to predict a traffic jam; you know its more likely during certain times of day, but you still can't predict when 50,000 customers all download the same virus-encrusted clip off of DirtySanchez.org at the same time. You may be asking why they don't just say "better safe than sorry" and staff the call center with extra support just in case of a problem. It's the same reason your yard is not full of unicorns shitting gold coins; that's just not the world we live in. In this world, where support staff are paid by the hour and everything is sacrificed for the bottom line, the company thinks having too many staff sitting idle is worse than not having enough. They even sell special scheduling software intended to make sure call centers have the exact minimum of staff on hand at all times.
So while Tech Support agents tend to be nocturnal cave creatures who use sonar to feed on field mice, that's not why it's easier to talk to one at night. Well, at least it's not the only reason. Somewhere there's a stressed-out manager who'll catch hell if he's got guys "sitting around." The Level 1 Tech Support
The Suck: When you finally do get through to an agent, you'll hear something like: "Welcome to DSL technical support, my name is Larry how can I help you today?" You give Larry your account number and begin to explain your situation, knowing all the while that this is a formality. As soon as you stop talking he'll begin the same dance you've danced every time you call tech support. You conclude your exhaustive rundown of your case history. There's a beat, and then Larry responds, "I understand sir. Can you tell me. Is your computer plugged in?" Goddamnit.
Reason for the Suck: Every call Larry takes is subject to quality control which means he's being monitored. And the Big Brother in this particular situation requires he ask you if the computer is plugged in, if the power is on and if the monitor is on as well. If he gets caught doing something else he'll get fired. He doesn't necessarily think you're borderline retarded, he just has no autonomy whatsoever. Larry is like a CSI: Miami cast member: a now-soulless abomination with a script that he must follow against his better judgment. Most tech support agents you've spoken with are sitting in a giant, cubicle-strewn mess of a room with hundreds of other agents, all at their computers with headsets on, all running the same tech support software. Most don't actually have any computer expertise. By and large they're recent high school grads, single moms or social malcontents who refuse to wear anything that doesn't feature a character from a Tim Burton children's movie on it. They're trained for 30 days on the software and are encouraged to just read along with the computer for each call. So in most cases, Larry's bosses aren't exactly wrong for discouraging any off-prompter improvising.
That's why every time you call with a different problem they ask you to do the same thing. It's not that they don't know what they're doing (though they very likely may not), it's that they only have one thing to do and this is it. It might help you feel less frustrated to think of each tech support call as a horrific fall down a set of stairs. Fight as much as you want, but there's only one way that this can go, and each step leads to banging your head. Level Two: Getting Mistreated By Someone Who Kind of Knows What They're Doing
The Suck: If it's your lucky day and your computer is especially fucked in such a spectacular way that the first guy you talk to actually realizes that he can't possibly help you, you may achieve what few mortals have--elevation to Level Two. Like the Yeti and child Disney stars who don't grow up to be train wrecks, the Level Two tech is a hard beast to track down. Even when you're promised a glimpse of one, you may still be left empty-handed as elevation to Level Two means you once again go into queue and are placed on hold. Generally, Level Two tech associates are the elite crew at any given tech support center. They are like Iceman and Maverick, only with worse skin and probably not as bogged down with homoeroticism. By and large this doesn't mean they have an abundance of technical knowledge, it means they're literate and can retain basic information better than 95 percent of their coworkers. This is also why there is only one tech support agent at Level Two for every 100 or so at Level One. So sure, you may need advanced help, but that doesn't mean you'll get it within the hour.
If you've spoken with a Level Two tech, you may have noticed that he seems just as socially maladjusted as his lower level counterparts with an added layer of arrogance that comes with a position of power and responsibility. You may start wondering why it is that the agent you're speaking to seems to be treating you like you just shat into the phone and are forcing them to taste it every time you speak. Maybe it's you. Is your problem really so stupid? Not really. If it seems like the level two tech is barely even able to feign interest in what you're saying, it is because he's barely able to feign interest in what you're saying. But it's not you. They just hate their jobs and, by the transitive properties of unfocused job place hatred, they hate you too. Reason for the Suck:
In addition to being bombarded with complaints all day, your call center employee is also bombarded on all sides by the kind of corporate shitheadery many of us are sadly familiar with. Employees at some centers face rampant and ceaseless harassment when they go off and do foolish things like use the bathroom during their shift or read quietly between calls. Like the set-in-stone script agents must follow when answering calls, so too must management follow its own set of completely arbitrary rules. This often includes no books in your cubicle because they're "distracting" (agents are encouraged to use any free time to read over notes on how to better serve customers or brush up on company policies). And your bathroom breaks will be timed; often companies monitor their computers for idle time and if your computer shows you haven't answered a call within two minutes of ending one, someone comes looking to see why you're slacking off.
You may one day be randomly told to stop wearing blue jeans to work because your client, being the company your call center has contracted service out to, wants to portray a more professional image. Which is to say a company that may actually be located in another country has decided that you can't wear jeans while talking to customers who may also be in another country, because it's unprofessional and they may have super-sensitive phones that can detect the sound of denim being worn. Yet, since the work at a call center is done entirely over the phone, the actual conditions of the call center itself can fall by the wayside. As an employee, you're left to wonder why wearing jeans is unprofessional but an overflowing toilet that hasn't been fixed in five days is kosher. Or why none of the lights in the last three rows of cubicles work. Or why you have to share a cubicle with a day shift guy who gets it covered in corn nut dust and leaves the cushion of the chair smelling like a wicked case of acrid swamp ass. The center itself is also pretty much a buzzing hive of people talking non-stop in a headache-inducing slurry of white noise and random snippets of repetitive banter which can and does lead to a lot of health issues for the agents. As much as 10 percent of working time at some centers is lost to sick days due to the various job stresses one faces when working in such an epic shithole. Factoring in what is generally a fairly low rate of pay given the amount of work one is expected to do and the stress they're under, it's not too hard to appreciate just why some agents' phone manner makes it seem like they're dragging their scrotum across a cheese grater with every word they speak. There's also the problem of you. Namely, you just got patched into the middle of a retarded game, and you're frustrated because you don't know the rules. The Part Where You Get Kicked Off the Call
The Suck: As frustrating as it was to wait half an hour for Level One and another half hour for Level Two, your worst tech support experience probably came when, after all that, you either got put back on hold, transferred to yet a third agent or, worst of all, got disconnected and had to start the whole motherfucking process over. But it's not so bad for the Level Two tech, and might in fact be exactly what he wants. Reason for the Suck: It's entirely possible you did get transferred because the guy wasn't in a position to help you, or may be new to the job and needed to transfer you to someone with more experience. But it might also be that the guy you're talking to can help, he just doesn't want to. And why wouldn't he want to? Metrics!
Metrics are the monkey on a tech support agent's back that tell them what numbers they must achieve on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. They need a certain percentage of all their shit to go right or the job gets lost and one of the things they need to do is maintain a handle time, maybe around 15 minutes per call. So if your agent has already had three calls that lasted an hour each, fucking up his average for the day, he wants you off the phone quickly. So any time an agent has offered to transfer you to another agent and you mysteriously got sent back into a queue or the phone just disconnected, it wasn't an accident. He just needed his call to end quickly. The best thing to happen to a tech support agent in a day is a "ghost" call, where no one answers after the agent says hello. After saying hello once or twice more if there's no reply, the call gets disconnected and the handle time is clocked in at 15 seconds or so, bringing the day's metrics well into check. No ghost calls in a day means every second he talks to you is like a kick in the teeth for him. If transferring you doesn't work, the agent may escalate you or tell you it's a problem that he can't help you with. So if you call your ISP with a connectivity issue, the tech might say it's hardware and tell you to call HP. HP will tell you it's connectivity and tell you to call Verizon again. And when you call Verizon you'll get a new agent who will tell you none of those things. The merry-go-round of clusterfucking starts all over again.
But again, that's not to paint the support agents as the villains here. Like all of us--well, the ones who are employed anyway--they're just helpless little apes vainly struggling to ride a unicycle so their cruel overlords won't beat them. Or make them wear khakis. Now that you've learned about the assholes on the giving end, it's time to check out the ones on the receiving end, in 8 Customers Everyone Hates. Or checkout Gladstone's own tale of surviving the dredges of customer service, in Mac vs. PC: Either Way You’re Screwed When It Breaks. And visit our tech support in the Top Picks section. And by "tech support" we mean "glorious titties." |
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God, this article is true no matter what sort of Call Center you work with. The only difference, it seems, is in the fine print (being what the calls are about). I recently quit (THANK GOD) from a Call Center that specialized in "Telephone Research", which is to say, calling you up at the most unreasonable hour of your day and trying to get you to stay on the line with us to do a survey. Generally, they were 5-10 mins, but sometimes you'd get the 20+ surveys, which were basically designed (imo) to be the most annoying and aggravating surveys designed to piss of the respondent (the person who picks up) and then have our boss come over and b***h at us for doing bad.
Christ, we had a problem one weekend, where a question simply asked if you were driving more, less, or not at all...but compared to what? On what basis where they supposed to rate it? Well, I sure as hell didn't know, and neither did they. We conducted surveys for 4 days with that dumb frigging question before someone higher up decided to listen to us the lowly people and fix it.
But just about everything else in this article was right. The s****y conditions, terrible atmosphere of the place, terrible co-workers (mostly the Supervisors) and the lousy pay and requirements. We were made to sit in our little cubicle 'encouraged' not to speak to anyone around us, TOLD not to do anything else (no reading, no MP3, no playing games...) and simply focus on these calls that none of us cared about. Hell, our job was to call you and convince you not to hang up on us in the first seconds, and most of us did our best to make sure you did (because this particular center I worked for would send you home up to 5 hours early if you did bad enough). Sure, we could get in s**t if that happened, but it was soooo worth it.
Honestly, call centers just suck. Mostly due to Management, as this article said. You have standards to reach, and a deadline to do it by, but no way of controlling the circumstances to achieve it. Most jobs requiring paperwork generally mean you do the work at your pace. But to get a minimum amount of time on the phone, surveys completed, products sold, rests entirely on the respondents, but by the way, most of them are morons.
And that's my point. The 'Respondent', the 'Caller', the Person in need of help, whatever your center calls the person on the other end, they're the nuisance, they really are. Sure, we can get annoyed at them, but it's not (generally) at the person we're annoyed, but the masses of them in general. Most of them are morons as I said, and most of them do nothing but cause us trouble. But simply google the 1-800 number that won't stop calling you, and you'll find a dozen or so sites, filled with dozens of peoples cries for help to get them to stop calling. It's really not that hard. Just talk to them and don't simply hang up in the first second, or tell them to 'call you back in a year' then hang up and snicker, because we hear that, and set your call to be for a day, an hour, 5 minutes away. We don't care, pissing you off was what got us through the day. My best calls, were the ones when the respondent chewed me out. They where the ones I liked best, why? Because I could put little words out, all while remaining polite and courteous, and still piss the person off more.
Regardless, if someone actually manages to get through my little rant here, I thank them, and pity them for taking such an interest in a poor foolish soul such as myself. I've needed a place to lay this down, and if it's deleted or removed or replaced or rewritten, none of that matters to me, as I've done my part. I simply hope none of you should go so low as to have to work in the modern world' sweatshop, the call center.
Call Centres are today's Sweat Shops.
I worked for a company handling tech support for Comcast. Worked specifically in the cable department. I could deal with the stupid customers, I never was fired for my ridiculously long handle times (mainly because I refused to let the customer get off the phone unless their problem was fixed), and I could even deal with all the loser co-workers and managers that worked there. What I could not deal with was the knowledge that if, for whatever reason, something couldn't be resolved right then, there was absolutely no guarantee that the problem would ever be fixed for the customer. If you call and end up having to schedule a service visit, and they don't fix your problem (which is extremely likely), then you're fucked until you give the company more money. It's absolutely retarded.
I think one of the main issues with s****y tech support service has less to do with metrics and more to do with employees not expecting an 'office job' to be so damned demanding. They apply, fill out the little online test with help from Google, and suddenly think they're teh leet haxxor or something. This is clearly not the case, and the trainees inevitably become disillusioned, bitter L1s and provide awful support.
If you start an internet tech support job and you don't know the difference between an email address and a domain name, you might as well quit right then and there. You're not cut out for the position. Sorry, but it happens. It's not genius work, but it ain't McDonalds either. You do in fact have to know your stuff.
Personally, I love metrics. They're like my own personal fantasy team stats and I can't help but obsess over them. If your call times drop below 660 seconds, but your quality assurance suffers, you adjust. If you have a high fix percentage and high call times, again - adjust. It's awesome.
Luckily, I work for a company filled with younger people who know the system is broken, and who encourage us to go off-script to remedy the issue. We have our basic help desk, the level 2 desk and our out-of-scope support desk; we have our remote-login tools for when the customer can't even find the f*****g Start menu. If there's something wrong with your s**t, we will fix it if it can be fixed.
I'm a tech support guy for a couple companies in a call center based out of Chicago and I gotta say we must be very unique because we don't have scripts and need to know the products, how they work, how they break and how to fix them in order to work here...everything is in our heads....but other than that the job blows and our level 3 (a.k.a. supervisors) I think wait till you're off the phone before they bother even answering your question let alone take a call from you. tho it's pretty cool cuz we can play video games and s**t while we're working as long as they can't hear it and some of our people literally look homeless so professionalism is pretty much all out the window there haha. Great article tho....reminded me of work....oh wait, I'm at work....s**t gotta get back on the phones.
@ doh-nut
"We don't get any input during the development of new products. We are expected to support whatever our developers crap out. Training on products is skimpy or non-existant for many of us."
Hell yes! They just keep on shitting out products and expects us to handle them like pros on the first day. We are basically forced to learn on the way. Which sucks for both us techs and EUs.
@ StarChaser...
I feel for you man. I think you just mentioned everything that goes behind the scenes of a support call. You got it right when you said that it's pointless to ask for our last names or supervisor. Hell, they can complain to the CEO and it won't do squat. Cooperate with us and we'll fix the problem ASAP. If it can't be fixed then tough luck. We can't do everything. s**t happens. That goes for both the tech and EU.
@taekwondogirl: You would be exactly right.
I'd rather pound nails through my palms before going back to doing tech support of any kind, honestly. But especially before going back to Dish.
@MaggieMarvel: I'm guessing you worked at Dish. I lasted about 4 months befoe I quit as well.
I don't mind the QA scoring metrics at call centers. Whatever. The call time is what irritates the living hell out of me. Coworkers do everything they can to get in that 6-11 minute time frame required for going to the next level to possibly get a bonus. Someone eventually has to help those customers that repeatedly get dumped so other people can meet their stats. Yeah. Great.
I worked at a satellite television company in the tech support department. I managed four months and then quit because I was going to have to punch someone in the teeth repeatedly if I didn't, or break very expensive equipment to get my stress out.
I invariably got the filthy old men or the pissy customers. I had, like, two nice customers in that entire time. The managers didn't know jack about what they were doing. One of them kept hanging up on my customers, or would refuse to take the call in the first place so she could keep working on her crossword. They would dangle all kinds of prizes in front of us and then go, "lol no, not for you, only for sales." And then when I transferred to sales for awhile, they did the same thing, except they went, "lol no, not for you, only for tech." The desired metrics were almost freakin' impossible to get (they wanted your average call to even out to about six minutes--yeah, I had ONE that lasted that long, and that was because the dude hung up on me in anger because I couldn't wave my magic TV-fairy wand and make the snow on the dish go away so he could watch football). And then there were personal reasons that I quit, too, but chiefly, it was in disgust over company policies and horror that I somehow kept getting filthy old men. That place just sucked so hard. Ugh.
I worked at two of these shithole call centers. Once for cell phones and one for cable TV. The reason most of us only last 6 months? The constant verbal abuse from customers and our bosses and the constant threat of losing your job for making a mistake lead me and countless others to nightmares. Imagine working the worst possible job all night in your dreams and then waking up to go do it in real life! Also, our checks are always fucked with. The company promises bonuses and such only to find an excuse to take it away last minute. At one company I had to maintain over 10 different metrics within a tiny little window and if one was off that meant no bonus or commissions for that two weeks or even the whole month (losing commissions could mean taking away $50-$300 per check or more).
The people who stick around for the longest are not the smartest people around. They are just the ones capable of either conforming two or sneaking around the millions of retarded rules companies try to enforce. I now work as far from customer support as possible.
I'm one of the people he's talking about. I've done tech support for 11.5 years now, in an industry where the average lifespan is six months.
I worked for IBM doing contracted tech support (Not random people off the street, but companies that wanted us to do support for their employees, like Maytag, several pharamceutical companies that merged more than downtown in rush hour, etc), for AOhelL, ghod help me, and now for a phone company that again contracts out to other companies to do their tech support.
AOL tech support is bad for a reason. We were required to follow a script on pain of disciplinary action up to and including being fired, even if we knew it didn't work. We HAD to ask you is it plugged in, is it turned on. To be fair, many AOLusers are so utterly clueless that this is necessary; I had one call me bitching because he couldn't get online after he bought his new modem. JUST a modem. Nobody told him he'd need a computer. So he spent the next ten minutes bitching at me and demanding that I send him a free computer.
We were specifically told at one point that the most important thing in a call was the pitch at the end, to try and sell you something you didn't want. It didn't matter if we fixed the problem or not because then you would call back and we'd have another chance to sell you something.
The reason you're on hold for an hour before you get through to someone is that the last person I talked to spent ten minutes whining about how it took so long to get through to someone, then wanted me to hold their hand while they read the directions. "It says type my name! What do I do!?" And that is not, in any way, an exaggeration. IBM had a proprietary antivirus. It opened a window that was the full size of the screen. It had one single button on it that said 'click here to scan for viruses'. People would call in to ask what to do. I once spent 30 minutes getting two AOLusers to plug in one end of a standard phone cord into a standard phone jack in the wall.
The reason we sound like we think you're idiots is that most of the time we're right. If you want better help, don't b***h at us saying you've already done it. Just do it, and report the results, and wait for the next directions. If you sound reasonably competent, and we have any leeway in what we can do, we WILL start treating you like you know what you're doing.
We want you off our phone as quickly as possible. You want your problem fixed. The easiest way for us to do that is to fix the problem, and if you work with us you will get it fixed if we can. There are things that we do not support for contractural reasons (you didn't pay for that service and it isn't free), or for company reasons (your company doesn't want us messing with your registry or changing settings in IE), or for things that are just not our problem. (If you have a three foot hole in the side of your house with Hurricane Ivan coming through it, yes, the computer that is being rained on in the dark house with no power is not going to work and that is in no way AOL's fault or problem. And yes, I took that call.)
I WANT to fix the problem. It's my job, and I am good at it. But there are things I just can't do for one reason or another. Demanding to talk to my supervisor is pointless. My supervisor makes sure that we're following our scripts and signs our paychecks. If he was at all technical, he wouldn't be in management. Demanding my last name is stupid; there is no reason you need it. Threatening me by saying you'll call the director, president or CEO is pointless; I am laughing at you behind my mute switch. (And yes, the ass at AOL who said that he and his thousands of friends were going to call congress and get AOL put out of business made for much mirth. His b***h? He didn't like the color blue they used on the website when they changed it.)
Don't try and tell me how to fix the problem. If you knew what it was, you wouldn't have called me. Tell me what the problem is, INCLUDING ERROR MESSAGES, and let me figure it out from there. Half the time I have to spend half the time fighting with someone just to find out what the problem is, since for some reason they can't read the one part of the screen that I need to actually hear, although they can read everything else. "Do you have Program X on the program list?" "I have program A, B, C, D, E, F, and under A I have a1 a2 a3 a4, and then I have G, H, I and J..." Answer the question I asked, then stop and wait. If I need more information I will ask for it.
/endrant. The Wall of Text crits for 69,105.
Sorry. This got a bit stream of consciousness, but I get sick of people bitching about me when they have no idea what they're talking about.
I have a Gateway laptop T6330 with vista. I like the laptop but not the gateway support. My system was affected by spyware and it was running very slow when I called the gateway support they said:
- They will charge me for virus removal since its not covered in my warranty.
- They will not solve the printer problem because that's not gateway printer.
- They will not troubleshoot internet problem since it is the problem of my internet service provider (which was not true)
I took well and proper of that tech support guy but no luck, then I searched on internet and contacted IT24BY7 (www.IT24BY7.com). These guys are awesome, I have their unlimited support plan and whenever I have any problem with my computer, wireless or printer, I call them anytime and they fix the problem within minutes. I recommend their service to everyone.
Having worked at a call center when I was just starting college this stuff is so epically true! Problem is the rules are made by a bunch of fancy suits with MBAs who have absolutely no clue about reality. The metrics and rules we had to follow pretty much made it a fireable offense to actually go outside the stupid script and HELP a customer.
I like literally have a phobia of calling tech support, I only do it when I absolutly have to
It was fun to read at first but it soon turned into post-traumatic stress disorder. Up in Canada, I worked two years as a call center supervisor. It was a billing department for a phone company but everyone of those problems applied to me as well. I remember being so fed up with it that I scheduled a meeting with the higher ups to tell them how employees are overworked, treated like cattle and made to take everything out on the customers. I then quit and took a job for half the salary. I never looked back and have a much better job now.
I really hope you find something else but it is nevertheless an incredible experience for your resumé.
Great article
I'm so relative to this article. I've gone through tech support issues so many times it isn't even funny. I use to have dial-up and all sorts of problems with it--so I'd call and some foreign idiot who barely spoke English would ask the same questions over and over again and gave me advice that never really worked. It was just the same thing all the time.
I got into a big blow-out with them and in the end figured out the issue myself.
@Legolas - You are a tard because FAT32 allows files up to 4 gigs in size and not the 2 gig cap that you implied.
I worked at a over the phone smoking cessation company (Free and Clear) and left because I felt it was run according excatly as this article describes. It was a retarded game of rules, forced responses, metrics, big brother, everything ahhhhhh!! It was the least sincere example of helping others I have ever encountered in my life.
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I cant believe it..This article is really SAD.It sucks man.Seems you know a lot of stuff about call centers and technical support.Send your resume man..You can at least improve the service that you are not happy about.Instead of wasting time writing long craps help to improve the service as you know what is going wrong.