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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: 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.