How to do Customer Support Right

After talking about how bad things can be for all those months, I was hired by an organization that does support right.

Idealist.org, the pre-eminent job and volunteer resource for the nonprofit world, hired me last May to help customers. Tech-support-wise, it's mostly just me, though a few other wonderful folks pick up specific kinds of calls and help when I'm home sick. My phone rings. I answer. And I do my best to help.

No hold time. No blind transfers to unknown departments. No not-being-allowed-to-answer-your-question.

The organization believes in having happy customers, and does its best to make sure I have the resources I need to make that happen.

It's pretty amazing.

Read More

The End

This job was supposed to be a quick stop-gap solution while I looked for something with dignity that paid well and was ethical. It lasted about six months. Now I've got a better job. Yesterday was my last day.

I never did hear any sort of acknowledgement from supervisors that I was leaving. I emailed all the HR staff yesterday to make sure they were planning to send appropriate paperwork, and got a curt note that they would.

Over the course of the six months the job went from harrowing and miserable to just tiring. The first few months, with non-stop calls from customers who were all angry from being on hold, were about as bad a work experience as I've ever had. The last month or so, in which the pace has been relatively slow and a large percentage of the customers actually pleasant, has been pretty decent and occasionally almost fun.

But yesterday was my last day. My first call of the day was someone who had been transferred to me inappropriately and got angry when I explained that I couldn't help them without a paid subscription. In the middle of the day I got a call from someone whose computer was totally destroyed beyond help (not because of us; the damage was done before she first called us) and who then sobbed and wept and demanded that we pay for it; and my last call was an hour and a half long and at the end of it I had to explain to the caller that his problem was that his computer was badly damaged and there was nothing I could do about it.

I told one of my coworkers by chat that I was leaving. He seemed incredulous that anyone could want any other job.


Two last thoughts:

The company I worked for is called Support.com. They seem like a decent enough organization. The ISP they contracted with is Comcast. All my experiences have led me to believe that Comcast thoroughly despises its customers.

Some of my co-workers were themselves Comcast customers, and said they think the company provides great value (mostly these are people with extremely, extremely fast internet connections, which I just don't see the need for). For my part, I went into this job thinking Comcast was a terrible company to do business with, and I feel even more certain of that now.

And yet... many of my customers talked about how great Comcast was compared to their previous ISP (Verizon and AT&T were mentioned). Far more told me how awful 'we' were. Maybe once you account for the fact that folks who call are already having a problem, this evens out statistically. There is a significant percentage of people who are getting a good experience. But to the folks I know in person, I would say: stay away from this company.

Also... this country is filled with interesting people. I talked to a lot of:

• Deep-south redneck drawlers 
• Poor black families in Detroit and Chicago
• Stoned college kids
• Jovial grandparents in Florida
• Destabilized neurotics in their siblings' care
• Anxious and helpless retirees
• Irritable moms shouting at their kids
• Gadget-obsessed middle-aged men

And so on. Some calls began with a long silence, followed by a guarded, suspicious, "WHO IS THIS?"... some calls began with a maniacal three-minute-long babble of everything the customer had to say, all in a rush. Some began with the sound of the customer cursing.

I can't say the job enhanced my faith in humanity. It may have actually damaged it a bit. I'm the sort of person who wants to treat everyone with dignity no matter what, because we're all one and we're all worthy of love. And I still believe that. And I had a lot of very sweet and pleasant customers. But a lot of my callers were so blinded by resentment, or so convinced they already knew everything they needed to know, or so intent on proving a stranger wrong, that they kept themselves from being able to get what they needed. A lot of people didn't seem interested in listening to advice. (Which sort of defies the point of paying for tech support). Some were suspicious and paranoid. Some seemed like they had an amazing amount of anger stored up. I feel bad for these folks, but I also feel bad for their loved ones, neighbors, and coworkers.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. May each of you do work that has some dignity and is for a good cause. Be cautious about viruses, back up your files, and be nice to strangers on the phone.

Read More

Too Many Questions

Me: "Ma'am, is this computer a wired or a wireless computer?"
Customer (all in a rush): "well, it does have wires but i don't know if they're wireless wires it's plugged in like the other computer and it has wires but i think it's a wireless wire, the computers are connected to each other you know? it's a wired wireless wired computer that's wireless but with a wire."
Me: "Um, okay. Do you know if it's a desktop or a laptop?"
Customer: "Well, it's a squarish sort of box, it's more like a desktop than a laptop but it's square, it's like a rectangle but with sort of even sized shapes and it's not too big or too small but it's sort of square."
Me: "...okay. Do you know if it's connected to a wire that's connected to your wireless router?"
Customer: "Oh I just don't know... do I have to answer all these questions?"

Read More

Phone

Customer: "Thanks for calling back on the land line. That little Obama phone wasn't cuttin' it."

Read More

Which Which

Me: "So we know that the laptop won't work wirelessly, because the desktop computer we're looking at, which is connected with an ethernet cable, isn't working."
Customer: "Well, yeah, I think the desktop computer won't work either."
Me: "So... there's another desktop pc?"
Customer: "No, just the one main computer."
Me: "Isn't the desktop the main computer?"
Customer: "Yes, I carry the laptop around from room to room."
Me: "So which one have we been working on all this time?  I thought it was the desktop."
Customer: "The laptop."
Me (biting tongue): "Well, let's take a look at the desktop then."
Customer: "This is the desktop."
Me: "The computer that we've been looking at: is it the desktop or the laptop."
Customer: "Yes, it is."
Me: "The desktop?"
Customer: "Yes, the laptop."

Read More

Specifics

Me: "Can you open Internet Explorer for me?"
Customer: "What do you want me to do"?

Read More

Spelling

Customer: "Can you spell support for me?"
Me: "sure, that's s-u-p-p-o-r-t".
Customer: "ok, i typed s-u-p-e-r-t".
Me: "that's s-u-p-p-o-r-t, actually."
Customer: "ok, i've got s-u-p-p-e-r-t, is that right?"

Read More