Why do tech support people treat customers like muppets.

[timwilky]

Firstly I was working on the implementation of CSMA/CD & token ring protocols for networks back in 1980. To me that gives me a bit of credibility, I was installing/configuring 10Base-5 (Thick yellow cable with transceivers) back in 1984 and have installed/configured systems with every permutation of networking since. including fibre/infrared and wireless

To me this gives me a bit of cred. I also have worked on cisco/ acc routers, nokia/watchguard/netgear/netscreen firewalls. I have worked alongside the guys at BT installing some of the first SMDS networks and have configured/managed frame relay circuits.


Now I have a problem that my cable modem has an intermittent fault, and finally I get that ****ed off with it rebooting itself that I phone the tech support.

They tell me to reboot my PC. Err it is the modem not the pc. I can communicate with the modem and I am reading to you the log that is telling me it cannot acquire an upsteam. Then he tells me to disconnect my firewall and connect the PC directly to the modem. (Like hell) and he gets me to read out the frequencies that the modem is set to.

He then tells me enter the exact same frequency back on the modem and reboot. He now tells me the thing is reconfigured. No it isn't it still has the same frequency.

I have told him there is currently a Telewest technician next door investigating a similar problem and when I asked him if there was a problem in the area, he thought there may be as he cannot acquire an upstream. But to fault my problem as he is unable to help me directly.

The Numpty still has to go through his script. Will he connect to my modem and look at the log that is showing it has problems. No.

If I get the problem again they will assign a technician to come round.

Look there is a problem. Sort it.

Boy do I wish I had an alternative to this crummy service

[Anonymous]

A. They are useless themselves

B. They are sad geeks who laugh at normal people who dont understand why rebooting your besquizzle with your mizzle button would solve the problem.

[sharriso74]

It's not NTL is it? Has to deal with them for the (out)inlaws. Their proxies have cr@p balancing and keep going up the wall. Spent an age on the phone to some helpdesk monkey when all I wanted was a direct ip so my father inlaw could send out some important mails.

They should give you options when you call

Press #1 if you work in IT
Press #2 if you have a vague idea about computing
Press #3 if you are like my parents and still think a video recorder is witchcraft!!

[Grinch]

I love calling NTL/Telewest... I just listen to them and say, done that...

But you have to remember they are not techies, they are just reading off a screen like monkeys.

[Iansv]

Get alot of people on those lines just follow scripted responses to try and fix your problem as they're not technical, means they can pay them sod all... esp with ISP's

I always ask for a technical specialist if I have to ring a support line, altho i've not had too for years..

Working on an internal helpdesk (1st/2nd line) tho, I hate the ones who ring you to tell you they have a problem and while your getting the details/fixing it they tell you how to fix it and about how they "know about IT"..

SO WHY RING ME IN THE FIRST PLACE :roll: :evil: :evil:

lots of muppets in the industry esp IT Managers who don't actually know what they're doing... exactly why I want out of it

[TSM]

At the office we use Zen & Eclipse ISPS. Zen are brill and understand everything that i say, very quickly they change from non techi speak to techi speak which i prefer, all very helpfull and quick to resolve any issues. Eclipse on the other hand, i am asleep by the time one of them pick the phone up, they realy annoy me and have some realy odd policies that are just unworkable.

[Swiss]

Anybody who has worked in IT support knows that 85% of people are numpties when it comes to PC's and most will lie to you to make it sound like they are not.
I lost count of the number of times I had to go and "help" somebody turn on their monitor because "my screen is blank"
For the other 15%, trust me when i tell you that your frustration at your support guys is minimal compared to the next benial question they will be asked.

[northwind]

Like's been said, their job is to elmininate the utterly stupid before involving an engineer. Unfortunately, some of them actually think they're giving advice and not just reading off a list, which is where it goes wrong.

We get this all the time dealing with BACS... They're pretty good, but occasionally we'll have a fault and just getting them to understand the fault is a nightmare. "That happens all the time, it's perfectly normal" "No it's not" "Yes it is, it's a result of the rejection process that you guys do" "We found it when we started the erjection process". They don't seem to believe in cause and effect, they're perfectly happy to say that something that happened on monday was caused by something we did today. So all we do is, we get their name and number and when it does turn out to be a problem, we drop them in it.

[Daimo]

ooooooooooooo i used to do support..

Its the poeple who call you to have a massive whinge about their PC that isn't working and that its your fault? Scuse me, have you seen me at your PC? Have you ever even seen me, so how can it be MY fault.

They then also like to tell you that that thing your doing doesn't work and I should be doing something else (Why call me if you know the problem). They be quiet when the thing im doing works.

Or when you put people on hold (i loved this) and they start whinging to their other secretaries about how **** IT are, that their computer never works and your being fobbed off by that IT person on the phone, at which point you take them off hold and explain that you can actually hear everything they are saying.

This has led to many apologies to myself due to someone being a bitch down the phone thinking im not there..

End of the day people, we're there to help, not to have your sh1tty moods taken out on us.

I know, i'll come down to your secretary bay and slag everyone off because all they do is sit on their ass all day typing letters and scoffing chocolate and tea. Such an interesting life. Its nothing to do with me, but hey, pot and kettle and black and all that. But they always know best............ HEnce why i lvoe proving them wrong. :twisted:

Tim, what you need to remember is that we can't see you, we don't know what your doing, you could be anyone. You have to go through set questions to eliminate issues that can give you your answer. You being IT literate get wound up, but how is that person on the phone meant to know you have experince when 95% of the people that call don't have an f-ing clue. HD people need to work out the issue for themselves, or at least get the right direction so they can pass it onto their appropriate team if he/she can't find the issue.


And being in IT, you should know that its the WORST job to have in IT, you get **** all day, and have to deal with it. You should be able to understand, so shame on you :P

[mudge32]

I'm in 3rd-line support so I don't have to talk to the riff raff :wink: :lol:

To be honest if I do talk to a user, I try my best to behave, because afterall, we all had to start somewhere.

And besides I'm not a complete tw*t like some of the bods here at work :lol:

[Filipe M.]

please ignore, double post.

[sharriso74]

Most of them outsource their helpdesk function I know Telewest do to ICL as my brother works for them. The majority of the staff who man the helpdesk it's their first job in IT so while they may have done some MCP's they have no real world knowledge. Also a bone of contention with my brother is that they get in trouble if they take too long or try and fix something that is out of scope, but could be causing the issue

[Filipe M.]

Tim, what you need to remember is that we can't see you, we don't know what your doing, you could be anyone. You have to go through set questions to eliminate issues that can give you your answer. You being IT literate get wound up, but how is that person on the phone meant to know you have experince when 95% of the people that call don't have an f-ing clue. HD people need to work out the issue for themselves, or at least get the right direction so they can pass it onto their appropriate team if he/she can't find the issue.


And being in IT, you should know that its the WORST job to have in IT, you get sh*t all day, and have to deal with it. You should be able to understand, so shame on you :P

The kind of language used should be a dead giveaway, though... I can't believe Tim would call support with something along the lines of "the internet connection thingy with the wire running to my computer ain't workin', what should I do?".

I understand exactly what he's saying, since I've had that same problem before. I'm not as IT literate as he is, nowhere near, but I know my way around these things and I've been out of cable service for a week because the ****s in the support line wouldn't even try to believe that I knew what I was saying.

Basically I've had 2 major network speed changes in about 3 months, both of them resulted in loss of connection while speaking to them. Since my provider is cable based, it looks like there's a "bootfile" somewhere in their servers that will set my modem's downstream and upstream speeds, based on MAC address.
The first time it happened they told me to wait a couple of hours while the "bootfile" "propagated"... oh yeah. Waited 12 hours, 2 phone calls later (to one of those really expensive numbers...) they decided they had to send me someone to check it out. I told them to check the damned bootfile, since it was the only thing that was changed, "I've checked, it's fine, will have to send a team." They tried to book me for next week, I told them if I'd be a week without internet they could come and collect the modem. Result, next day there was someone knocking at the door. Half hour later, guess what?, it was a corrupted bootfile. :roll:
Second time it happened, again phone support, told them imediately there would be a problem with my bootfile, nah, had to go through all the muppetry (although like Tim I was looking at the modem's log), and another booked support team to go and check it out. :evil: This time I lost it, told where to shove the team and PLEASE check the goddamn bootfile. No way, team it is, at least it only took them a day to show up. Wanna guess?... :roll: Yes, bootfile again.

[/rant]

sorry........ :oops: got carried away :oops:

[Sudoxe]

Hmm I reconise this from last week....

Dan at 8:05AM: You either have a fibre break, a major trunking problem or our NTE has died.
BT at 17:35: There is a fibre break

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

Dan

[TSM]

Hmm I reconise this from last week....

Dan at 8:05AM: You either have a fibre break, a major trunking problem or our NTE has died.
BT at 17:35: There is a fibre break

:evil: :evil: :evil: :evil:

Dan

Same here but worse.

TSM: I fell over and broke the fiber to the NTE.
BT next day send out tester to test and see if the fiber is broken: Its broken. (I knew that, i did it, you can see that its crushed). They took 2days to fix it because the flippin tester marked it as fixed when it was not. :evil: :smt076

[northwind]

Tim, what you need to remember is that we can't see you, we don't know what your doing, you could be anyone. You have to go through set questions to eliminate issues that can give you your answer.

And that's fair enough, but it doesn't sound like that's what's happened here. Obviously not all technical help people can be tarred with the same brush.

But some are really terrible. Here' s my ongoign thing... McAfee Spamkiller has started randomly blocking email with the reason "The address is in your Friends list". It's taken me 10 emails just to get the point across, I keep on getting responses telling me that they've looked at it and nothing's wrong at all. They've told me to uninstall and reinstall, already done that, the only response was "Well, do it again".

The guys I've dealt with are more like faith healers than qualified service staff, they know that if you power cycle things it might help, but they have no idea why. They know that sometimes if you reinstall that fixes things, but they seem to think it's just random, and if it doesn't work you should just keep tying til it does. This is what annoys people. No doubt eventually I'll get passed to a competent, qualified individual who'll fix it in a flash, but they won't even pass me to anyone who can help at this stage.

[mudge32]

You want fun? Try the Dell help line!! If it's not on their prepared script they're flumaxed!

I knew exactly what the problem was but they insisted on the ruddy preamble!! Eventually after mucho argumento they agreed to send an engineer with a new motherboard. Had to claim nearly £60 worth of phone calls back from them!!

[northwind]

Oh no thank you, I've had enough of Dell's phone people.

[Ed]

Oh - as a consumer I can identify.

Fact is - any downtime is seriously bad news, you can't do anything, so you get desperate. You have a pile of work that isn't getting done, your own clients are calling you every hour or half hour for a progress report, you can't do anything cos you don't understand the systems that someone else has installed, and you're probably not allowed to touch them anyway, so your blood pressure rises as after waiting till next week you at last get through to IT and the call centre people ask you what seem to be silly and inane quezzies.

Yes they are only doing their job but a bit of context is no bad thing, but the user doesn't realise that they have X hundred similar queries, and won't listen either because by that time they're so mad, the person who really knows what they're talking about is fixing someone else's problem, and if only you'd get off the bloody phone and stop whining and wasting everyone's time then everyone could do their job without all the hassle that you're creating and yes your problem would be solved.

But in the meantine your work is getting even further behind, you think '35 years ago a man walked on the moon and you mean to tell me you can't fix a simple problem with this crappy computer that I'm supposed to use'..... and then your client calls again and bawls you out..... and it all happens again.

[Daimo]

IT Support, don't you love it.

After 6 years, im hoping never ever ever ever to be dragged back into it.

Oh, thats not to mention the 24 on-call support most big companies do....

But when your calling us at 3am when we're asleep, its still ok to have a whinge!!!! (Maybe thats just solicitors)....

[timwilky]

Then again, I work for an international company. The directors all have my mobile/home phone number. (But I have theirs). We have a list that even includes wives/partners names so that we can be friendly when we phone them at silly o'clock


Yes I have had calls from the states at 4 in the morning when someone has had a problem and it is outside of their local support working day so they come straight to me.


But then again, non of the companies hell desk muppets have it. They would need to escalate it pretty high before I got disturbed sleep. It is just when you have the number for the **** kicker it is far easier to use it and get something done than to wait for days with a job stopper.

As for 24/7. We use "follow the sun" support, ie the uk hands over to the us who hand over to the far east. Great during the week. but Friday in Far east is start of weekend and they work Sundays etc so tends to screw up the 7 part

[fizzwheel]

The guys I've dealt with are more like faith healers than qualified service staff, they know that if you power cycle things it might help,

Sometimes it feels like that :D

What I hated more than anything on when I worked on the helpdesk was a smart ar*e who thought they knew what they were talking about but when in fact they didnt. ( I dont include people like Tim in this, its very easy to realise that the person on the end of the phone does know what they are doing ) The trouble is that the helpdesk doesnt make any money for companies its a service not a revenue earner. So you employ cheap staff to run it. Cheap staff by ergo dont have a lot of skills so often the service they give is poor. Until they get experienced at it. You thinking ringing one is bad. You try managing one, never ever again will I do that. You get directors ringing because their PDA is broken and they cant get their email and they think that fixing that is more important than the fact that the company order taking system has failed and we cant process customer orders. It really is a thankless task.

It can be really difficult to troubleshoot problems over the phone as Daimo says, you cant see what the customer is doing and sometimes what they are telling you isnt actually what they are doing. Working on a helpdesk is a skill and to be good at it you have to understand the working of a human brain and also a PC.

It really is frustrating when you get a muppet that insists on going through his or her script. HP can be bad for this. I normally just ring and ask to speak to an engineer. If they wont put me through I give them far to much detail as to what the problem is and what I've done to fix it. That normally turns their brain into mush and then I get to speak to somebody who knows what they are talking about.

I did have to make four trips to PC world the other week though to fix Liz's sisters analogue modem. I guess everybody has a bad day :lol: :shock: :oops:

[PsychoCannon]

Those guys you are talking to aren't techies :)
They are called tech support but they are phone jokeys reading a script who probably know as much about your system as you know about Quantum nuclear physics :)

If you happen to know about quantum nuclear physics replace that phrase with something even more obscure...like wales.

[Ed]

But when your calling us at 3am when we're asleep, its still ok to have a whinge!!!! (Maybe thats just solicitors)....

Oh we're not all the same y'know :lol: I finish at midnight, not 3am :lol: :lol:

[Grinch]

Argh... someone mentioned PC world...
I was in there and I asked if they had any laptops that had Hard disk that ran at more then 4200rpm... Anyone would think I was asking them where the Cup of Christ was.

[mysteryjimbo]

Argh... someone mentioned PC world...
I was in there and I asked if they had any laptops that had Hard disk that ran at more then 4200rpm... Anyone would think I was asking them where the Cup of Christ was.

I worked there whilst i was at college. I was probably the only person in the whole building who knew anything and they made me a cashier! :lol:

I look back from my position as senior DBA and laugh at them..... :shock:

[northwind]

You thinking ringing one is bad. You try managing one, never ever again will I do that.

I do :) Or at least, I have oversight day to day, and operational control over most of the area. Though tech support is a fairly small part of our role, we spend more time on financial troubleshooting, fraud prevention, and setting up new services. But luckily, it's a small team, and the boss is very selective about who she takes on- we've only got one person who's not capable of rational independant thought, and mainly she does data entry.

What drives me utterly nuts is people who just don't have the capacity to link events. Lets say we have a customer who phones our useless staff member. They've had a liquid lunch and dropped their smartcard into a pint, while eating a pie, then dried it out on a radiator, and tried to log onto the system. Their encryption challenge fails. While wearing a hat.

Now, she'll be aware that going out for lunch, dropping your card in a pint, and heating it on a radiator while wearing a hat breaks the digital certificate. But she'll not be able to grok the important details- don't drop the certificates in liquid, and don't heat them on a radiator. If someone else phones in tomorrow who dropped the card into a glass of water instead of beer, she probably wouldn't make that connection.

These people, I think, seem to have a tendancy to fit into really low-end tech support. As we can't fire her, I've proposed dropping her down the lift-shaft.

[wyrdness]

Sometimes customers really are muppets. I've just been sent this by email:

http://thedailywtf.com/forums/thread/74323.aspx

[chazzyb]

As we can't fire her, I've proposed dropping her down the lift-shaft.

My eyes are watering, I'm laughing so much - thank you! :smt046