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Admin
A group of speakers of a given language do not form a race.
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Also, this is the first time I've heard about Dell support having a bad reputation; they consistently score highest in the customer surveys of the German computer mag c't. But then, those are mainly about actual hardware repairs, not the competence of call center drones.
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We had a Dell guy come out to the office to replace my motherboard a few weeks ago. He left behind one of those little survey cards where you rate his performance between 1 and 5. I was quite pleased so I circled the '5' then looked all over that card for an address where I should send it, but the only instruction it gave was "click here to submit".
On a PRINTED CARD.
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Ugh! I hate calling tech support.... ANY tech support.
HP's tech support is notoriously terrible. My daughter had to spend over an hour trying to get the idiot on the phone to understand that when she says her laptop's screen is black, she CANNOT POSSIBLY CLICK on any icon. She has way more patience than I do - I only give support people about 30 seconds to demonstrate some level of competence and understanding before I ask to have my call escalated up the food chain.
In HP's case, it is not just external customers who get the short end of the stick either. Up to about a year ago I worked for HP and their internal tech support was just as bad.
It sucks that companies in this country have chosen to "save" money by sending customer support to countries where their culture, by and large, doesn't know how to LISTEN to people.
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I'm now having flashbacks to the last time I called any tech support, two years back. I was having trouble with my brand new internet connection; the trouble being that there wasn't a connection.
After I finally managed to get through to them that yes, I did indeed have broadband, and that I wasn't using their shonky hardware to access it, and after I finally got put through to third-line support (and that's a story in itself), the conversation went something like this.
TS: OK. At the bottom left of your screen there's a button labelled Start. Can you see it? Me: Yes, yes. I'm clicking Start. TS: OK. Can you see something that says Run? ...we fumble our way painfully into a dos box... TS: Now please type exactly the letters that I say. I... P... Me (seeing where this is going): ...C? TS: No. I... P... C... Me: ipconfig? TS: C... O... N... F... I... G Me: OK, I've got the IP config. TS: OK. You will see three numbers. Please tell me the third one. Me: Um... which third one? I've got three lots of settings, because I've got two virtual machines on here. TS: The third line. The one that says 'Default Gateway'. Me: Yes; I have three Default Gateways listed. Which one do you want? TS: It's the third line. Me: WHICH third line... never mind. It'll be this one. OK, now what? TS: OK. You see the Start button? Click that again, and then click Internet Explorer... ...slowly and painfully takes me through connecting to the router... Me: ...You want me to log into the router. Why didn't you just SAY that ten minutes ago? TS: OK. Tell me what the number is in the XYZ box... ...we establish that all my settings are correct... TS: OK. I don't know what's going on here. I'll have someone call you back within 24 hours. Me: screams, tears hair out
Looking at the logs (that I hadn't done that earlier is the real WTF!), I discovered that one of the settings was bugged and only appeared to be correctly set. I unset and reset it and then settled down to enjoy my unlimited broadband.
I'm still waiting for my callback.
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Youch - sounds like the guys you worked for were real bastards. The call centre I supported not only encouraged the callers to give their (first) names upon request, but also pointed out to them that the call management system we used meant that anyone calling back to complain could easily be linked back to the caller they wanted to complain about, as long as they could supply the date and approximate time of the call. Calls were also routinely monitored by the management team and the 'bad' callers were quite quickly weeded out.
It might all sound a bit draconian, but the call centre worked predominantly on behalf of charities, who were very particular about maintaining a good relationship with their supporters. Of course, it seems that the majority of call centres don't seem to give a flying fuck about good customer relations, if the people that keep calling me up at dinner time and trying to sell me new mobile phone contracts in heavily-accented English are anything to go by...
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Sounds like somebody's got a case of the servers!
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Yes, you're the only one. The point of the story was not the fact that he said it wrong, it was his incredible stupidity. Stupid apparently knows no race or ethnicity.
Oh come on. If a tech can't figure out what the hell a caller means when he says Vista, he should immediately turn in his badge and gun and leave that career behind. And then drive off a cliff on the way home.
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Bet you work at AJI.
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If it weren't for the "[email protected]" signature, it would have been entirely possible that the "Yooha¡" service technician simply was not fully aware that he was communicating with a customer but actually thought that he was being "harassed" by someone in a different department at "Yooha¡". Or someone at customer support agent forwarded a stressed technician's reply without reading or comprehending it to the customer, passing it as his own.
I happened to me several times that the first reply to a inquiry was along the lines of:
"Thank you very much for making us aware of these problems. We are sorry you’re encountering these issues. Your report has been passed on to the development-team to rectify and we’ll get back to you with answers as soon as we can.
Sincerely Rebecca de Winter"
and the second started with:
"Hey Beccy,
how are you and how is Max doing? I heard guys were finally going on that boating trip this summer? The list you sent contains mostly known issues that management currently considers to costly to resolve [...]"
Unlike "Geeglo", "Yooha¡" doesn't have separate e-mail- domains for customers and employees ([email protected] vs [email protected] / [email protected]), which might add to the confusion.
Of course, all of this isn't exactly an excuse for the reply ... I'm just saying that it happens way too often in my experience.
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You've just reminded me of a salesman we had (past tense, thankfully) who couldn't scroll down a page of our management system. On checking his laptop I discovered he was looking at a screendump!
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Actually, there's a serious point here. There's way too much bitching about infelicitous misappropriation of linguistic metonymy, and way too little recognition of this simple fact: if you're working on a help desk, you should at least be technically qualified to help.
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This is possibly the first time I have heard off-shoring referred to as 'affirmative action.'
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Even if the WTF was about language, which it's not, I missed the part of my biology class where language is determined by genetics. Maybe it's a "languagist" joke (like Haagen-Daaz ice cream or heavy metal umlauts), but it can hardly be "racist".
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Even if the WTF was about language, which it's not, I missed the part of my biology class where language is determined by genetics. Maybe it's a "languagist" joke (like Haagen-Daaz ice cream or heavy metal umlauts), but it can hardly be "racist".
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Even if the WTF was about language, which it's not, I missed the part of my biology class where language is determined by genetics. Maybe it's a "languagist" joke (like Haagen-Daaz ice cream or heavy metal umlauts), but it can hardly be "racist".
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As a manager, I would hope this is more of a warning sign that there is something wrong above the heads of the underling, and instead of hiding the problem (firing), actually seek a solution.
Managers seem to forget that in their relaxed and detached view, strange reactions can occur in people under extreme stress. Why should an employee ever have to get to this stage?
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More frequently it just gets you transfered back into the hunt group for the next tier 1 support guy to pick up the phone.
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My bet is that this was the 47584934758457th email that tech had received from helpful customers about that particular problem. That's enough to drive anyone over the edge.
Where I used to work our web site would have problems from time to time. Within seconds, it seemed EVERYONE in the office was dropping by. "The web site is down." - punch to the face. "The web site's down" - kick to the groin. We really should have just put locks on the doors, but apparently management liked the feeling of "open" offices. So no, it wasn't inexcusable.
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Yahoo email support is the worst!
Two years ago I started a small business and my biz partner wanted to use Yahoo Mail for it. No problem, I signed up and paid for Yahoo Mail Plus(no ads in the emails), and we got to work sending out hundreds of emails to prospective customers.
A week goes by, and we hear very little response. We do some checking, and it looked like only about 40% of the email recipients actually received the email.
I called Yahoo support about this problem, and their response was (and I am not kidding about this) was "oh, sending yahoo mail is like sending regular mail-- sometimes it just doesn't get there. there's nothing we can do about it".
That day I dropped yahoo and signed up for Google for Domains, despite my partner's protest.
And about the "submit" button on the printed card -- for the same business as above, we have an online registration page on our website which looks very nice. We've had a few IRL networking events to get people to sign up, so I just printed out our registration page to hand to people to fill out, and then I would register them online later. The WTF part of this is when people got to the "password" section of the form, and WROTE their password down TWICE -- since there is always the "verify password" text box on the web page. I just laughed when MOST people did this on the printed form!
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What are you on about? It's okay to vent at your manager or colleague, it's not okay to vent at your customer (I've been rightly called on this before, though nothing as severe as the Yooha example).
Anyway, I'd much rather deal with a well-meaning user who tries to provide detail (even if it's wrong) than a lazy user who just says "it's broke", because the well-meaning user will probably listen when I tell them "actually I need X instead" or "actually I checked and X isn't the case, it only looks like it because Y".
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Eliza? Is that you?
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My guess as to the "Yohaa" one is 'customer support' had received MANY similar emails. Whoever was responding got pissed off. It's the sort of response customer support are (hopefully) trained NOT to give, but they are only human.
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Regardless of your interpretation of the tone of the E-mail (which reads to me like "You obviously have no idea what you're doing, sigh grumble, I'll fix it for you, you useless monkey") your reply reeks of this truly foul belief that because someone works in support they have to put up with people looking down on them all the time and treating them like shit.
You know why customer support is nearly always rubbish? Because snarky, bitchy little arseholes like you insist that we should be nailed to the wall for even DARING to expect to be treated like a human being. So the ones who are any good at it leave and find something better, while the ones who aren't good enough to do anything else remain.
The next time you need support from the drones and get frustrated, remember that you whined that somebody should be fired for telling an arrogant customer to politely fuck off, so you brought it on yourself.
We're people. Treat us like people and we'll help you out, but treat us like slaves who should just sit there and take whatever anyone feels like dishing out and we'll stop caring about your problems VERY quickly. In fact, we'll take great delight in making your life harder.
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Naturally, despite explaining this in detail at the beginning of the call, the line of questioning involved such questions as "have you tried plugging the computer in?"...
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A complete outsider who thinks they know what is going on and has made several assumptions about the system and is shouting suggestions from the outside while they try and fix the real problem isn't 'helping'...
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Bullshit. "You might want to" is not a command, and is not an assumption. It is only a suggestion. The only reason for a technician to respond to a support ticket in that way is that he's an arrogant prick with an attitude problem.
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That's just wrong man! That's sick! It's sick!
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captcha: ratis (yes, dell does seem a bit ratty)
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Oh, how I hate !Yooha customer service. They rarely ever answer the question I'm asking.
If it's in any way related to their web interface, they invariably instruct me to clean my cookies. Or, if it's in any way related to !Yooha IM, it's instructions on how to download it. The best part is that their replies start to loop after 4 or 5 emails.
Sometimes I'm lucky and they actually seem to look into my issue when my 4th or 5th reply includes the line "ARE YOU FUCKING READING WHAT I'M ASKING OR NOT", but mostly they just go on with their unrelated nonsense.
Back in topic: Oh, how I hate !Yooha customer service.
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Friends don't let friends buy Dell.
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Uhhh... Abort, Retry, Gmail?
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Sure, but I still have and use the big Y.
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fail
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... But the DVD must play as MUTE. Please come upstairs before 4:00pm and press MUTE ...
Sure, I'll get right on that...Do you want me to wipe your a** and tie your shoes too? Sheesh.
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Okay, so working the Dell call center is hardly a tech career. I think the only requirement is to "have a pulse", though that may be optional. The reps probably don't have any computer background, otherwise they'd probably be able to get higher-end jobs. They read flip cards (or a computerized version thereof), and if they're unable to find what the customer is talking about in the cards, they're usually utterly lost. It's not the least bit surprising that an entry-level rep don't understand the limitations of 32-bit software versus 64-bit, when a good many geeks don't either.
I can't say I fault the "Yooha" response too much either, even though it was a bit less-than-professional ("professionalism" being the ability to just smile and take the slights and abuse). The submitter of that ticket was not asking for help so much as telling them how to do their jobs, because he obviously knows the correct course of action, and they'd be stumbling in the dark over how to troubleshoot and correct the issue without his brilliant insights on how to proceed. Gosh, the sysadmins probably would've chased their tails all day with failed diagnoses of why people were complaining about not being able to get their mail, and then they would've been exposed for the donut-eating frauds they are and been fired!
Seriously, if people don't grasp the point yet, the way helpdesks work is, an end user experiences a problem, which they describe in detail and submit to the queue in the form of a phone call or trouble ticket. The helpdesk then forwards it to the techs, sysadmins, or network engineers, who then attempt to replicate the problem or perform troubleshooting, and then devise a solution. Only in the event that they fail to find a solution, should an end user make suggestions. No, scratch that, unless the support staff are all completely incompetent and unqualified, the suggestion is not going to help get anything fixed.
If things aren't being fixed, escalation is the best solution. If an end user knows more than support staff, there's a fundamental problem that needs to be addressed.
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Hey, cut the "Yooha" guy some slack. He was probably having a rough day. We all have those days from time to time.
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Additionally, even assuming he was from another country what makes you think he wasn't a native English speaker? Just because someone has an accent doesn't mean they aren't a native English speaker.
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Maybe this is the case where you work, but most or all of the CS reps I've had the pleasure of dealing with work within a tightly-constrained flowchart of customer assistance.
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Another company (we'll call the Mickeysoft) has a great habit of charging you when you call after a certain time. Since they cannot charge you for the call before that time, there is a tactic they employ to make sure you'll be calling afterwards. I've been cut off, put on hold, had the operator talking veeery softly; and worse. All in the hope that I get frustrated, hang up, and dial back. Last time it took 6 hours to speak to someone that could help. Funny how it was practically impossible before the "free" time lapsed, but the moment "for charge" time started it was easy.
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Awful lot of burned out tech support folks commenting here. Time to find a new job, guys.
Interpreting the e-mail in a bad light is certainly possible, but any reasonable human being that can't see that that's not the only interpretation, much less the likely one, has got to be under some serious strain. Oh well, you interpreted it badly, let's move on. The response, even with the most skewed interpretation of the original e-mail, has escalated well beyond acceptable social norms. Forget "customer service", the guy is either a ^$#@$ of the nth degree, or his burned out. In either case, he's not someone you want to continue employing in a position where they must interact with customers.
There was abuse here... and it was all one way. Fire the bum.