• Getmaguiness (unregistered)

    Frist you need to check that the keyboard chair interface has a pulse!

  • (cs)
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
  • moz (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
    Perhaps you would, but Your Name wouldn't.
  • (cs)

    If it was me I would have told the customer that he needed to download more RAM.

    That way he bothers someone else about something impossible.

  • Smug Unix User (unregistered)

    Trusting users/customers is always a mistake.

  • ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL (unregistered)

    A friend of mine works graveyard shift phone support for Dell, so I hear a few stories. One important thing that Tom apparently didn't have was the ability to look up the customer's history. Assholes like this guy tend to be repeat offenders, and it's good to know at the start of the call if you've got one before you waste a bunch of time.

    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    A friend of mine works graveyard shift phone support for Dell, so I hear a few stories. One important thing that Tom apparently didn't have was the ability to look up the customer's history. Assholes like this guy tend to be repeat offenders, and it's good to know at the start of the call if you've got one before you waste a bunch of time.

    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.

    Libel/defamation lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember that ALL your internal data is subject to discovery.

  • F (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    A friend of mine works graveyard shift phone support for Dell, so I hear a few stories. One important thing that Tom apparently didn't have was the ability to look up the customer's history. Assholes like this guy tend to be repeat offenders, and it's good to know at the start of the call if you've got one before you waste a bunch of time.

    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.

    Libel/defamation lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember that ALL your internal data is subject to discovery.

    In which jurisdiction is truth not a valid defence to a libel action?

  • Built A Customer System (unregistered) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL

    Funny you should mention this. I was part of a certain, popular healthcare company's efforts to rebuild their aging call service interface. I spent the day listening in on their calls and watching how the call center used the system.

    About halfway through the day, I noticed there were two, randomly placed, fields on the forms. One was labeled XS and the other AH. I asked about it after seeing XS on a particular phone call.

    "Oh, that?" the rep replied to me, "Is our special treatment fields. For example, that last call was marked XS because the caller was one of the board member's wives. You go out of your way to make sure she is happy or you don't have a job. We also save it for customers we really like."

    "Ah. And the other one?" I asked.

    The rep grinned kind of ruefully. "Well, let's just say AH stands for those people that we make sure go on hold, stay on hold, and we generally don't help because they were downright rude, mean, or anything else you can think of. Basically, it's a blacklist."

    I quickly realized what AH stood for.

    "So," I said, smiling, "I'll make sure I add those fields into the new system's interface."

  • eric76 (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    A friend of mine works graveyard shift phone support for Dell, so I hear a few stories. One important thing that Tom apparently didn't have was the ability to look up the customer's history. Assholes like this guy tend to be repeat offenders, and it's good to know at the start of the call if you've got one before you waste a bunch of time.

    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.

    Libel/defamation lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember that ALL your internal data is subject to discovery.

    "Lied about having 4MB of RAM" is neither libel nor defamation.

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to eric76
    eric76:
    Anon:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    A friend of mine works graveyard shift phone support for Dell, so I hear a few stories. One important thing that Tom apparently didn't have was the ability to look up the customer's history. Assholes like this guy tend to be repeat offenders, and it's good to know at the start of the call if you've got one before you waste a bunch of time.

    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.

    Libel/defamation lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember that ALL your internal data is subject to discovery.

    "Lied about having 4MB of RAM" is neither libel nor defamation.

    Insufficient hardware issue.

    Customer stated having 4MB of RAM. After diagnostics, it was determined that customer only has 2MB of RAM. Customer informed that software will not work on 2MB of RAM.

    Same story, gets point across. Completely lacking subjective judgement that can be used against you.

  • Anomaly (unregistered)

    Easier solution is to just tell the guy with 2MBs that that program is working as intended. And he needs to file a feature request if he wants anything changed.

  • Dylan (unregistered) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    > Insufficient hardware issue. > > Customer stated having 4MB of RAM. > After diagnostics, it was determined that customer only > has 2MB of RAM. > Customer informed that software will not work on 2MB of RAM.

    Same story, gets point across. Completely lacking subjective judgement that can be used against you.

    That doesn't get the point across to me. It makes it sound like the user was mistaken. The deception is the important part. You can be completely objective if you want, but you need to make it clear just how many times the customer insisted on having 4MB, and that they misstated what was on the screen.

  • RockyMountainCoder (unregistered) in reply to Dylan
    Dylan:
    That doesn't get the point across to me. It makes it sound like the user was mistaken. The deception is the important part. You can be completely objective if you want, but you need to make it clear just how many times the customer insisted on having 4MB, and that they misstated what was on the screen.

    I absolutely concur. It is neither libel nor defamation to document that the customer completely falsified information in order to deceive the support technician. There is a difference between "was mistaken" and "lied." This was a lie, and there is nothing wrong with calling it that. It was clear it was a lie as the customer got irate when the truth was discovered, and he stated that he had run into this issue before.

    This is the equivalent of playing Mom against Dad trying to trick them, and must be handled in the same way: You lie, you get nothing.

    If you have to isolate a cause of the issue, and conjecture that "poor parenting" is the cause, then you are making a subjective judgment, albeit a likely one.

  • (cs) in reply to Built A Customer System
    Built A Customer System:
    Funny you should mention this. I was part of a certain, popular healthcare company's efforts to rebuild their aging call service interface. I spent the day listening in on their calls and watching how the call center used the system.

    About halfway through the day, I noticed there were two, randomly placed, fields on the forms. One was labeled XS and the other AH. I asked about it after seeing XS on a particular phone call.

    "Oh, that?" the rep replied to me, "Is our special treatment fields. For example, that last call was marked XS because the caller was one of the board member's wives. You go out of your way to make sure she is happy or you don't have a job. We also save it for customers we really like."

    "Ah. And the other one?" I asked.

    The rep grinned kind of ruefully. "Well, let's just say AH stands for those people that we make sure go on hold, stay on hold, and we generally don't help because they were downright rude, mean, or anything else you can think of. Basically, it's a blacklist."

    I quickly realized what AH stood for.

    "So," I said, smiling, "I'll make sure I add those fields into the new system's interface."

    We had an internal application in VAX FORTRAN which accessed the personal details of the customers, and included two fields which were designed for "notes" about those customers. The customers themselves were allowed to request a printout of their information, which would be printed out and mailed to them. This form did not include the "notes" fields.

    When we redesigned our systems in Java / Oracle, we allowed the customers direct access to the data held on them which (you guessed it) included access to those "notes" fields, including the immortal: "I love talking to this guy! He's a sweetie!"

    Wups.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    A friend of mine works graveyard shift phone support for Dell, so I hear a few stories. One important thing that Tom apparently didn't have was the ability to look up the customer's history. Assholes like this guy tend to be repeat offenders, and it's good to know at the start of the call if you've got one before you waste a bunch of time.

    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.

    Yes, it's totally Tom's fault here. That's exactly what the issue is here.

    Well done for not reading a single word of the article.

  • Stewie (unregistered) in reply to Dave
    Dave:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    A friend of mine works graveyard shift phone support for Dell, so I hear a few stories. One important thing that Tom apparently didn't have was the ability to look up the customer's history. Assholes like this guy tend to be repeat offenders, and it's good to know at the start of the call if you've got one before you waste a bunch of time.

    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.

    Yes, it's totally Tom's fault here. That's exactly what the issue is here.

    Well done for not reading a single word of the article.

    Well done for not reading a single word of the comment, which was a criticism of the support system, not its operator.

  • The President (unregistered) in reply to Stewie

    Personally, I wouldn't have congratulated him.

  • Meep (unregistered)

    And thus was virtual memory born, so that cheap, stupid bastards could just wait while it swapped and swapped and swapped.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to F
    F:
    Anon:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.
    Libel/defamation lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember that ALL your internal data is subject to discovery.
    In which jurisdiction is truth not a valid defence to a libel action?
    Japan.
  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    Completely lacking subjective judgement that can be used against you.
    There's no subjective judgement involved here. Customer openly admitted lying and even explained his motivation for doing so.
  • (cs) in reply to moz
    moz:
    DaveK:
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
    Perhaps you would, but Your Name wouldn't.
    Doesn't scare me:
    Oh, you have a recording of this call? Great, please send it directly to our legal department. I'm sure they'll be very interested to receive your evidence that you attempted to obtain goods or services from our company by deception.
    That'd be the last I heard of that.
  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    When we redesigned our systems in Java / Oracle, we allowed the customers direct access to the data held on them which (you guessed it) included access to those "notes" fields, including the immortal: "I love talking to this guy! He's a sweetie!"

    Wups.

    If I were the caller to which that note applied, I can pretty much guarantee that whichever support technician wrote that note, would be a gay chap.

  • Jeff Grigg (unregistered) in reply to Built A Customer System
    Built A Customer System:
    ... "Well, let's just say AH stands for those people that we make sure go on hold, stay on hold, and we generally don't help because they were downright rude, mean, or anything else you can think of. Basically, it's a blacklist."

    I quickly realized what AH stood for.

    "So," I said, smiling, "I'll make sure I add those fields into the new system's interface."

    So what was the system's internal variable and column names for the "AH" field? Usually, sensible naming standards require something longer and more meaningful than "AH". ;->

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK

    Tom reckons this program needs 4 MB, right? Why does the program seem to disagree with him?

    I could assume that the program puts up a big warning "You only have 2 MB, you gonna crash!!" on load, or I could assume that the program pretends to the user that it has a valid operating environment and tries to run when it simply cannot.

    I can only assume that they hoped to sell the program to people with less than 4 MB RAM (to get their sales figures up) before persuading them to upgrade their computers. It still smells like deception on the part of the company to pretend that the program is going to work, when it doesn't, and when a computer is a black box, and when support staff and developers frequently do say "No", how do you know that they're not making up an excuse about the RAM?

    The program has no memory usage checks, and it allows you to run it under impossible circumstances. If they were originally hoping it would manage with 2 MB (but since found that it really cannot), where are the checks to make sure RAM isn't running out?

    In what way does this inspire anyone calling you to trust you? Honesty and openness has to go both ways, and computers and software companies lie and fob you off so often.

  • (cs)

    "My supervisor is not available right now, may I put you on hold until she comes back?"

    Then go home and leave the customer on hold all night long.

  • moz (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    moz:
    DaveK:
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
    Perhaps you would, but Your Name wouldn't.
    Doesn't scare me:
    Oh, you have a recording of this call? Great, please send it directly to our legal department. I'm sure they'll be very interested to receive your evidence that you attempted to obtain goods or services from our company by deception.
    That'd be the last I heard of that.
    I can't quite imagine that a customer in that position would want to speak to you again, not wishing to risk another bout of foul mouthed abuse.

    I'm sure your line manager would be happy to take that risk, though.

  • (cs) in reply to moz
    moz:
    DaveK:
    moz:
    DaveK:
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
    Perhaps you would, but Your Name wouldn't.
    Doesn't scare me:
    Oh, you have a recording of this call? Great, please send it directly to our legal department. I'm sure they'll be very interested to receive your evidence that you attempted to obtain goods or services from our company by deception.
    That'd be the last I heard of that.
    I can't quite imagine that a customer in that position would want to speak to you again, not wishing to risk another bout of foul mouthed abuse.
    That was indeed the purpose of aforementioned abuse. It's a win-win situation!
    moz:
    I'm sure your line manager would be happy to take that risk, though.
    I'd hope my line manager would grasp the sound economics of being rid of a customer who's going to cost the firm more in bogus support calls than he earns us in the way of sales!
  • (cs) in reply to Daniel Beardsmore
    Daniel Beardsmore:
    Matt Westwood:
    When we redesigned our systems in Java / Oracle, we allowed the customers direct access to the data held on them which (you guessed it) included access to those "notes" fields, including the immortal: "I love talking to this guy! He's a sweetie!"

    Wups.

    If I were the caller to which that note applied, I can pretty much guarantee that whichever support technician wrote that note, would be a gay chap.

    I can say for certain that it wasn't, because she's a personal friend.

    On the other hand if you were the caller (in this situation a regular contact at a client business -- our contacts were all professionals in a particular business niche) then who's to say?

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    moz:
    DaveK:
    moz:
    DaveK:
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
    Perhaps you would, but Your Name wouldn't.
    Doesn't scare me:
    Oh, you have a recording of this call? Great, please send it directly to our legal department. I'm sure they'll be very interested to receive your evidence that you attempted to obtain goods or services from our company by deception.
    That'd be the last I heard of that.
    I can't quite imagine that a customer in that position would want to speak to you again, not wishing to risk another bout of foul mouthed abuse.
    That was indeed the purpose of aforementioned abuse. It's a win-win situation!
    moz:
    I'm sure your line manager would be happy to take that risk, though.
    I'd hope my line manager would grasp the sound economics of being rid of a customer who's going to cost the firm more in bogus support calls than he earns us in the way of sales!

    That's not your call to make, and your supervisor would neither be happy with the abuse you gave the caller, not the call that you made on the financial viability of the contract when you have precisely zero access to the background, sales invoices, etc.

    I hope you're happy in your chosen role because, with an attitude like yours, you would be ill-suited to a direct customer-support role. Thankfully, you wouldn't last too long anyway so it's no biggie.

  • (cs) in reply to skotl
    skotl:
    DaveK:
    moz:
    DaveK:
    moz:
    DaveK:
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
    Perhaps you would, but Your Name wouldn't.
    Doesn't scare me:
    Oh, you have a recording of this call? Great, please send it directly to our legal department. I'm sure they'll be very interested to receive your evidence that you attempted to obtain goods or services from our company by deception.
    That'd be the last I heard of that.
    I can't quite imagine that a customer in that position would want to speak to you again, not wishing to risk another bout of foul mouthed abuse.
    That was indeed the purpose of aforementioned abuse. It's a win-win situation!
    moz:
    I'm sure your line manager would be happy to take that risk, though.
    I'd hope my line manager would grasp the sound economics of being rid of a customer who's going to cost the firm more in bogus support calls than he earns us in the way of sales!

    That's not your call to make, and your supervisor would neither be happy with the abuse you gave the caller, not the call that you made on the financial viability of the contract when you have precisely zero access to the background, sales invoices, etc.

    I hope you're happy in your chosen role because, with an attitude like yours, you would be ill-suited to a direct customer-support role. Thankfully, you wouldn't last too long anyway so it's no biggie.

    Yay, another win-win situation! Why would I want to work for a company that doesn't know how to code a memory size check into the startup of its program?
  • Kim Jong (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    F:
    Anon:
    ¯\(°_o)/¯ I DUNNO LOL:
    TRWTF here is not having a way to put a simple "Lied about having 4MB of RAM when he actually only had 2MB" in the support history.
    Libel/defamation lawsuit waiting to happen. Remember that ALL your internal data is subject to discovery.
    In which jurisdiction is truth not a valid defence to a libel action?
    Japan.
    North Korea.

    Although I guess there is no legal defence there to anything.

  • mike (unregistered) in reply to Jeff Grigg
    Jeff Grigg:
    Built A Customer System:
    ... "Well, let's just say AH stands for those people that we make sure go on hold, stay on hold, and we generally don't help because they were downright rude, mean, or anything else you can think of. Basically, it's a blacklist."

    I quickly realized what AH stood for.

    "So," I said, smiling, "I'll make sure I add those fields into the new system's interface."

    So what was the system's internal variable and column names for the "AH" field? Usually, sensible naming standards require something longer and more meaningful than "AH". ;->

    AlwaysHectic

  • awergh (unregistered) in reply to Daniel Beardsmore
    Daniel Beardsmore:
    Tom reckons this program needs 4 MB, right? Why does the program seem to disagree with him?

    I could assume that the program puts up a big warning "You only have 2 MB, you gonna crash!!" on load, or I could assume that the program pretends to the user that it has a valid operating environment and tries to run when it simply cannot.

    I can only assume that they hoped to sell the program to people with less than 4 MB RAM (to get their sales figures up) before persuading them to upgrade their computers. It still smells like deception on the part of the company to pretend that the program is going to work, when it doesn't, and when a computer is a black box, and when support staff and developers frequently do say "No", how do you know that they're not making up an excuse about the RAM?

    The program has no memory usage checks, and it allows you to run it under impossible circumstances. If they were originally hoping it would manage with 2 MB (but since found that it really cannot), where are the checks to make sure RAM isn't running out?

    In what way does this inspire anyone calling you to trust you? Honesty and openness has to go both ways, and computers and software companies lie and fob you off so often.

    are you for real? In all likelihood it was never tested on a 2MB box, so the fact it didn't work with only 2MB was discovered after shipping when the first customer with only 2MB had issues and cried a bit. By that time, red tape probably prevents developers deploying a check for enoiugh memory....

  • Unbound (unregistered) in reply to Built A Customer System

    So with AS explained, would XS then be eXtra Service og eXtra Special?

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    moz:
    DaveK:
    TFA:
    Tom’s shop didn’t record calls.
    If it had been me, I would have taken advantage of that to swear a lot at the guy, rip him several new assholes and tell him to fuck off and never call us again.
    Perhaps you would, but Your Name wouldn't.
    Doesn't scare me:
    Oh, you have a recording of this call? Great, please send it directly to our legal department. I'm sure they'll be very interested to receive your evidence that you attempted to obtain goods or services from our company by deception.
    That'd be the last I heard of that.
    Are you really that stupid? Are you really suggesting that the entire part of the call where you'd learn that the caller is a huge asshole won't be deleted never to be heard from? Are you really under the idiotic impression that the entire call would hit the 5:00 news, rather than just the first 5 seconds (where you stated your name) and the angry rant?

    This is a question of context, and the caller damn sure isn't going to provide it when he rats on you. You ONLY get the privilege of ensuring that everyone gets context if YOU made your OWN recording.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Unbound
    Unbound:
    So with AS explained, would XS then be eXtra Service og eXtra Special?
    Does it matter?
  • trtrwtf (unregistered)
    He muted the phone, then went down the list of figures, converting each one to decimal before summing them for a grand total of…

    Surely this is the real wtf? Who converts hex to dec for addition?

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to trtrwtf
    trtrwtf:
    He muted the phone, then went down the list of figures, converting each one to decimal before summing them for a grand total of…

    Surely this is the real wtf? Who converts hex to dec for addition?

    Maybe he didn't know how to set Windows calculator on hex mode.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to anonymous
    anonymous:
    trtrwtf:
    He muted the phone, then went down the list of figures, converting each one to decimal before summing them for a grand total of…

    2048.

    Surely this is the real wtf? Who converts hex to dec for addition?
    Maybe he didn't know how to set Windows calculator on hex mode.
    4MB was enough to run the vendor's application, not enough to run the Windows calculator.

  • Tom (unregistered)

    "This is Tom, how can I help you?"

    "My computer isn't starting up. The screen is black."

    "Sure, I can help with that. Can you look at the front of the computer and tell me if the lights are on?"

    "There's only one light. It's on."

    "Are you sure? There should be 3 lights. The power light, the turbo light, and the hard drive light..."

    "No, there's just one, right under the screen! It's on!"

    "Sir, please look UNDER your desk..."

    "Oh..." click

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to Tom

    I should mention that was a real conversation. 20 minutes of back and forth on trying to get diagnostics, beep codes, and just plain "look at the front of the computer."

    And she'd never actually turned on the computer.

  • mizchief (unregistered) in reply to Built A Customer System
    Built A Customer System:
    Funny you should mention this. I was part of a certain, popular healthcare company's efforts to rebuild their aging call service interface. I spent the day listening in on their calls and watching how the call center used the system.

    About halfway through the day, I noticed there were two, randomly placed, fields on the forms. One was labeled XS and the other AH. I asked about it after seeing XS on a particular phone call.

    "Oh, that?" the rep replied to me, "Is our special treatment fields. For example, that last call was marked XS because the caller was one of the board member's wives. You go out of your way to make sure she is happy or you don't have a job. We also save it for customers we really like."

    "Ah. And the other one?" I asked.

    The rep grinned kind of ruefully. "Well, let's just say AH stands for those people that we make sure go on hold, stay on hold, and we generally don't help because they were downright rude, mean, or anything else you can think of. Basically, it's a blacklist."

    I quickly realized what AH stood for.

    "So," I said, smiling, "I'll make sure I add those fields into the new system's interface."

    I worked at a pizza delivery place and we had a field "CF" for those patrons that didn't tip. We would typically leave the store with 2-3 deliveries at once. No matter how far out of the way the CF houses always got their orders last.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to mizchief
    mizchief:
    I worked at a pizza delivery place and we had a field "CF" for those patrons that didn't tip. We would typically leave the store with 2-3 deliveries at once. No matter how far out of the way the CF houses always got their orders last.
    Did your pizza place charge extra for delivery? If so, you're an asshole.

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