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Why Tech Support Is (Purposely) Unbearable
Getting caught in a tech support loop — waiting on hold, interacting with automated systems, talking to people reading from unhelpful scripts and then finding yourself on hold yet again — is a peculiar kind of aggravation that mental health experts say can provoke rage in even the most mild-mannered person. Now Kate Murphy writes at the NYT that just as you suspected, companies are aware of the torture they are putting you through as 92 percent of customer service managers say their agents could be more effective and 74 percent say their company procedures prevented agents from providing satisfactory experiences. "Don't think companies haven't studied how far they can take things in providing the minimal level of service," says Justin Robbins, who was once a tech support agent himself and now oversees research and editorial at ICMI. "Some organizations have even monetized it by intentionally engineering it so you have to wait an hour at least to speak to someone in support, and while you are on hold, you're hearing messages like, 'If you'd like premium support, call this number and for a fee, we will get to you immediately.'"
Mental health experts say there are ways to get better tech support or maybe just make it more bearable. First, do whatever it takes to control your temper. Take a deep breath. Count to 10. Losing your stack at a consumer support agent is not going to get your problem resolved any faster and being negative in your dealings with others can quickly paint you as a complainer no one wants to work with. Don't bother demanding to speak to a supervisor, either. You're just going to get transferred to another agent who has been alerted ahead of time that you have come unhinged. According to the NYT, to get better service by phone, dial the prompt designated for "sales" or "to place an order," which almost always gets you an onshore agent, while tech support is usually offshore with the associated language difficulties. Finally customer support experts recommended using social media, like tweeting or sending a Facebook message, to contact a company instead of calling. You are likely to get a quicker response, not only because fewer people try that channel but also because your use of social media shows that you know how to vent your frustration to a wider audience if your needs are not met.
Ever wondered why tech support is so shitty? This article from the New York Times may explain the reason:
You may consider yourself even-keeled, the kind of person who is unflappable when those around you are losing their cool. But all that goes out the window when you call tech support. Then you fume. Your face turns red. You shout things into the phone that would appall your mother.
It's called tech support rage.
And you are not alone. Getting caught in a tech support loop — waiting on hold, interacting with automated systems, talking to people reading from unhelpful scripts and then finding yourself on hold yet again — is a peculiar kind of aggravation that mental health experts say can provoke rage in even the most mild-mannered person.
Worse, just as you suspected, companies are aware of the torture they are putting you through.
The article goes on the state that some of the reason is the simple fact that users are getting more sophisticated and can solve the simpler problems themselves. But:
The most egregious offenders are companies like cable and mobile service providers, which typically have little competition and whose customers are bound by contracts or would be considerably inconvenienced if they canceled their service. Not surprisingly, cable and mobile service providers are consistently ranked by consumers as providing the worst customer support.
The article goes on to describe companies and situations where excellent customer service can be found, and situations in which customer service is intentionally awful. I'm wondering what Soylentils think about the conclusions of this article.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday July 10 2016, @07:20AM
Yet we do business with them anyway?
Just what kind of sado-masochism is IT anyway?
I have shied away from a lot of high tech, not because of ludditic tendencies, but because of ignorance... ignorance often mandated by IP Law.
What we are seeing is the other side of the coin called "Customer Lock-In". If the customer had a choice, he would not put up with this kind of crap.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @07:54AM
Actually, you often do have a choice, it's just that most people default to loss aversion for something they already paid for rather than accepting it and moving on. The company already has your money so they don't care.
And often it is a matter of you get what you pay for where a premium cost mostly translates into better service after the fact (and usually less problems to begin with). Some exceptions apply.
But if you are dealing with a shitty company, one of the best investments you can make is in a speaker phone. No reason to be tethered just because the support hopes you will give up. Go about your business and speak up when needed.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday July 10 2016, @10:03AM
This is one of the things I would probably open up a social media account for... so the misery I am encountering with a company's tech support is public - and shows up every time a prospective customer does any "due diligence" research before the sale.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday July 10 2016, @10:48AM
often it is a matter of you get what you pay for where a premium cost mostly translates into better service
If only we could rely on that always being true. But some shitty companies charge a lot to catch people who assume that it is.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by art guerrilla on Sunday July 10 2016, @11:37AM
yes, but dealing with Big Computer, is *almost* as soul-sucking as dealing with Big Media...
...AND you find there is NO VIABLE ALTERNATIVE: i can go with Big Kompany A and get screwed, OR, i have the 'choice' (*snicker*) of going with Big Kompany B and STILL GET SCREWED ! ! !
it is getting to the point where the only way to 'win' (a la war games) is to not play ANYONE'S 'game': WE are all marks to be fleeced in ALL the games...
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday July 11 2016, @05:29AM
I believe this is why both Big Kompany A and Big Kompany B have lobbied Congress so hard for Patent Law.
If they can catch you doing it yourself, without their hand in it, they have the legal say-so to tell you that you have to do it their way, not yours.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday July 10 2016, @07:54AM
Tech support is a waste of time. Here's what I do, in order:
1. search the Internet for posts about the same problem
2. If I can't find anything about it, take a shot at figuring out the problem myself.
3. return the product for another, or for a full refund.
Calling tech support isn't in that list. They can make quality products with decent documentation, or they can cry over having to give me a full refund.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @09:30AM
Such a exhaustive checklist you have there, guy. What do you do about billing errors? Dispute the charges? Attempt a chargeback? Hope whatever service you were double- or triple-charged for doesn't get canceled? Cancel the service yourself eat the cost? Crawl under your bed and cry?
(Score: 2, Informative) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday July 10 2016, @11:54AM
That's not tech support.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday July 10 2016, @10:00AM
Boy, do I remember having to deal with "tech support"... and that was *before* things got really complex, involving many companies.
It convinced me that if I were involved in building any sort of control devices for anyone, better make it as simple as possible, and use proprietary solutions *only* as a last resort.
Heaven help me if everyone is looking at me as their technical saviour, and *I* don't know what's going on. I went through a helluva lotta stress as people expected me to diagnose bugs or change something when that thing was "supported" by a corporation. I was not the one with any say as to whether or not a sale was made, therefore my situation was not important to the vendor. The vendor would take my boss to lunch, dress up for him, shake his hand, flatter him, you know - the salesmanship stuff. I was just the minion who had to implement a "turn key" solution. Turn-key my ass! I really resented being held responsible to make it work, but not even asked when it came to buying the POS in the first place.
What I always got was something that almost worked. Just enough to fulfill nebulous contract wording. If you aren't familiar with modern businesstalk, try reading an business agreement. My salesmanship skills ( I am rather Aspie ) are terrible. And so are my crystal ball skills when it comes to either "needle in a haystack" things or "guessing games" when it comes to what the deliverable was actually configurable to.
Gone are the days programs were simple enough I could pull out IDA and SoftIce and work around things. I do not get source code anymore. How in the hell can I fix something if I have to make things from multiple vendors work together with unresponsive "technical help" usually provided by someone who knows far less than I, and coming from a call center in another country to boot?
The latest stuff I find so confusing and unreliable I had just as soon go get a shoebox full of Arduinos / Parallax Propeller chips, program each to handle one little part of the thing, and link 'em all together with a Raspberry PI or so. Reason: Most of the stuff I like to work with is realtime, with each process usually demanding excellent "task fidelity"... such as running stepper motors. Screw up the timing by just a few microseconds and you will never make the same part with the same dimensions twice. My stuff is more like conducting an orchestra, where each Arduino/Propeller is an instrument.
Having as little as one interrupt arriving at in inopportune time results in a sour note, or in my case, a malformed part. Not acceptable. Especially if I do not know which part was affected and it goes into the big pile we intend to ship to the customer. Having a random one part in a thousand that is off in my book is completely unacceptable.
It takes me a long time to do it the way I want it done - but once its running, it does exactly the same thing over and over until its changed. I am still of the school of deterministic systems.
If I had to go through "technical support" trying to find out why my parts have variance, now - that could take forever.
However, I acknowledge that the time to first product out the door is much quicker doing it the corporate way, however those parts are apt to be junk if more than one corporation is involved for mass production of a custom part. Each corporation's technical support will try to place the blame on the other corporation, and I end up with all the blame for failing to get the thing made right.
I can not take it anymore. Let the corporate lawyers fix it with their relentless pen-wagging. It simply takes too long to fix it on a technical level.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday July 10 2016, @04:28PM
My list is a little different:
1. Re-RTFM. I always RTFM before I do anything else with anything I buy.
2. Try to figure it out. Step 1 works for me most of the time.
3. Google the problem. This is often useless, especially when you're trying to figure out how to use an older piece of equipment.
4. Email the company. I learned decades ago that calling tech support us usually useless, especially if it's made by Microsoft.
I went through all four steps with an iHome bluetooth speaker. Google gave an answe, the same one over and over, that didn't work and the FM was almost useless. It turned out that the solution was simple, with a tiny bit more information. Yeah, I had to wait a week for the return email, but it's better than waiting on hold for an hour.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday July 10 2016, @08:23PM
I haven't tried emailing them. Closest I've come is posting in their forums, if they maintain any on their website. I seldom get to the step of returning the item.
I left a couple of things out of the list:
2.5. Is there a workaround I can live with? Or is the problem with some feature I don't need?
4: Out of warranty? Throw it in the recycling or trash bin, and make a note of it as possibly a brand to avoid in the future. I have too much old junk cluttering up my home as is.
Right now, my primary desktop has a small glitch. It sometimes fails to detect the hard drive or USB subsystem on power up. Will sit there with the hard drive light on, not flickering as normal. One power cycle of the box is usually enough to get it working for as long as I want to leave it on. If only the USB system wasn't detected, which means the keyboard and mouse do not work, I need only wait for the GRUB menu to timeout and boot the default OS (Linux). I don't know what resetting and probing of USB the kernel does, but whatever it does, the mouse and keyboard work by the time the GUI comes up. Been like that for several years now, and I can live with it.
Last time I returned an item was the famous Linksys WRT54G router. I'd heard what a great router it was, that it ran the Linux kernel, and got one. Little did I know at the time that Linksys had just completely changed the internals without changing the product number, only the revision number from 4 to 5. Slimy. Internally, they dumped Linux for, I think, VXworks, and cut the RAM in half. Seem to have rushed the new product into the market without much testing. It just. did. not. work. Took 10 seconds to pass through IP packets even when there was nearly zero traffic, and locked up after about 15 minutes (probably overheated). I never got around to trying the wireless part, this was all with network cables. I returned it for a full refund 2 days later.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Sunday July 10 2016, @08:03AM
Purposeful "Stupidity" [cia.gov]. Everybody has the old adage completely backwards
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday July 10 2016, @10:10AM
Thanks! Now I know where these MBA's came up with these paradigms... There they are.... all right there in black and white!
And all this time, I thought they had seen that Cappuchin monkey, grape, and cucumber experiment, and saw it made great executive entertainment...at stockholder expense.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @08:54AM
Support is unbearable? [macmavenconsulting.com]
File a lawsuit. [macmavenconsulting.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @09:00AM
Oh! So that's why I'm alone in this universe. Meanwhile all the cocksucking cocksuckers are never alone because they're always busy sucking some cock. Cocksuckers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Sunday July 10 2016, @12:09PM
According to TFA, the companies are not only aware of how horrible their tech support is - they deliberately make it awful. Tech support is a necessary evil; make it cost as little as possible, and put customers off from using it.
I have had two truly awful experiences: One with GMAC (now Ally Financial), and one with Intuit.
With GMAC (now Ally Financial), it was when I was cleaning up my mothers affairs after her death. She had a leased car through GMAC, and they flatly refused to believe that the rental contract was over. They hounded me for months to continue payments, even though they had both the car and a death certificate. That is the only time I have ever yelled and cursed at a phone agent. Ultimately, I just stopped talking to them, and started throwing their correspondence in the trash. I mean, what are they going to do, go dig her up? [yahoo.com]
With Intuit, it was trying to get support for a European edition of QuickBooks. I don't remember the precise problem, but probably somewith with the VAT implementation, which initially has some problems. Or maybe with currency conversion, which never did work correctly. They offered an international support number (notably not toll-free), where you could quite literally spend an hour in the waiting queue, only to be "accidentally" disconnected when it was finally your turn. Changing accounting software is a pain, but it is possible - needless to say, we no longer use Intuit products.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by black6host on Sunday July 10 2016, @01:08PM
Usually I provide all the tech support for my mother, who turns 80 today. Happy birthday Mom!
However, there are times when I can't because of lack of physical proximity. Last week she wanted to hook her smart TV up to netflix and I have no idea of her setup nor have I owned a smart TV. If worse came to worse I could probably figure it out but doing so with my mom is like getting your teeth pulled. "Mom, don't do *anything* until I tell you. Ok, select this option. What do you mean you've already done that and the next two options after that, I asked you not to do *anything*...." I'm sure many of you have lived through this. First we had to figure out if the TV was connected to the net. I gave her some options to try and if she was connected things would be easy, if not then we'd figure something out.
Anyway, she decided that was too confusing so she called her cable company. Tech support said they didn't hook up smart TVs to netflix. So she hung up and called again and got a different person. She repeated this process until she finally found someone that walked her through the whole setup (took about 5 calls.) Turns out the TV wasn't connected to the net, they walked her through that and then helped her set up a netflix account! Took hours but she got it done.
Moral of the story: If you don't get treated the way you'd like then hang up and call back to get somebody else. Repeatedly, until you get what you need. It's now at the point where that's my Mom's SOP and she gets resolution to her problems whether it be billing, support or whatever. Tech companies, governmental agencies, whatever... :)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @01:22PM
We have a phrase for that at work when talking to vendor support..."put me back in the queue"
Usually they're pretty stunned when you say that you'd prefer starting over with anyone else. Seems to be better than asking to escalate which,as the article says, generally only gets you the neighboring cube.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @04:43PM
I worked at a call center for a few weeks. The worst thing you could hear was people asking to talk to someone else horizontally or that they were going to hang up and call back. Those hurt your numbers a lot more than any other action the person could take. Even more so than escalating. The reason is that escalating is seen as a SOP power play by some people. I was literally asked to talk to my manager before I finished my welcome message at least once a shift.
However, with hang ups and lateral transfers, the company knows that the person is resigning themselves to starting over. Instead of a power play, it is seen as an act of desperation or frustration and desperate or frustrated people can quickly become pushed to the point where they cancel. Every call center has a caller history and you'd better believe one of the first things done is checking the last time you called and they probably have a system to automatically escalate if you call too much. I know I was told to be extra careful with people who called recently.
On an unrelated note, one of my coworkers told me a genius way to ask if something was plugged in, ask how many prongs the plug has and, if it is a power strip, how many those have. Don't know how many callers expressed anger at the mere suggestion of it not being plugged in. However, many problems were magically fixed after having them check the plug and either telling them to flip it if unpolarized or plug it in correctly if it was polarized. Often times the problem would be fixed before I could finish describing the solution to plugging it back in.
But back to the GP post, she probably gets good service because repeated calling will either luck out to someone who wants to help or will automatically bump her up a tier. Last thing the company wants to see in a cancellation report is that the call center people told her the service didn't work with Netflix or they were otherwise unhelpful, because that was money they could have saved with extra effort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @03:08PM
She must have Comcast or TWC, Cox will help you set up anything.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2016, @01:11PM
I think the tech support most people or companies are willing to be pay for is a more accurate assessment. For example, my NetApps generally have autosupport so I get a call agent within a minute or two of a call and I get, usually, an on-shored rep who knows what they are doing. On my Dell equipment, I get their Canada call-center a lot and the techs their know their stuff enough for the purposes of the call. I.e., confirm a a part needs replacement and get it dispatched ASAP. I have called into Novell and SUSE for some weird stuff and the techs knew their product very well... they were based out of Provo.
Conversely, I have called Symantec for support and it's literally the worst in the world. I have had agents ask for my working hours and deliberately call back outside of them. So, they never get a recommend from me.
The point is my enterprise support contracts are not cheap... generally, 5 year terms are 9% - 15% of the original purchase price so on a big order, it adds up. But, we are willing to pay because it matters. Most people are not willing to pay because they just do not care enough. If you are old enough, you can recall when Dell tech support was 100% US-based and they would support their products indefinitely. Then they found out consumers were not willing to pay for that anymore... so now, if you buy consumer, you get India based support and they are going to grind out their script whether you like it or not.
It's just the way of the world.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday July 10 2016, @03:22PM
There's a world of difference between business customers and consumers. Generally, having decent and responsive support can make or break a sale on the B2B side, where it is much more likely that the time-to-answer will be tested before purchase. The B2C side nearly never encounters that, as many consumers won't bother to test it.
In a way, management doesn't want the B2C folks to be as quick or as helpful as the B2B folks because otherwise the constant callers and lonely elderly will clog up the lines, driving up costs. For just about everyone but Apple, customer service is a cost center.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday July 12 2016, @02:25AM
This is one of the reasons I always suggest people check out the small business lines from Dell and others when shopping for laptops. Because you see the same thing there -- the difference in quality of support between an Inspirion and a Vostro is absurd. The home products you'll spend two hours on hold and another two hours with them insisting the problem must be something you did wrong and there can't possibly be an issue with the computer...until you get frustrated and hang up and go through the same routine all over again tomorrow. But if you call about business line products they'll have an RMA box on its way in fifteen minutes flat.
Of course, the OTHER reason I always suggest the business lines is they're often a bit cheaper. :)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday July 10 2016, @04:32PM
Not exactly "tech support" but the same stupidity applies. This one was with a company I'd done business with for fifteen years with no problems.
The Parts Order from Hell [mcgrewbooks.com]
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday July 11 2016, @05:37AM
"You can send me what I paid for; what I asked for and paid for. Send me a PCI video card or an AGP motherboard. And I don't expect to pay for shipping or anything else, either."
I think it's exactly these problems that line-item purchase orders are supposed to prevent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2016, @12:54AM
ROFLMAO
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday July 10 2016, @05:32PM
One of the main reasons people have always cited for choosing closed source over open source is tech support. I have always found said tech support to be absolutely, completely worthless. So I've always chosen open source, because finding a solution or hacking one yourself is less painful than relying on closed source tech support, and will almost 100% of the time result in a solution.
But I have experienced phenomenal tech support with one company: EmperorLinux. They sell linux laptops. I've bought several from them because their tech support is so great. I'm no slouch with linux, but Lincoln Durey there is a magician.
Washington DC delenda est.