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[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[jecook]

Some people need to be beaten severely.

I would have hung up on them after about 30 seconds.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

.....ooooo-kay.... Now, the tech was being deliberately obtuse because the caller started out the call irate and yelling? Yes?

Okay. My next question:

Why?

Why the fuck not just get the abusive fucker off the phone by telling him at the outset to hold down the power button? Isn't that WAY more productive? I understand wanting to be irreverent and teach the pottymouth clueless luser a lesson, but this is just fucking stupid.

OTOH if this was posted to illustrate Dell's shitty-assed customer support... good job. I fucking hate talking to robots too; if I wade through a half hour or more worth of robots and hold messages, that tech I finally get to talk to damn well better get my question answered and get my ass off the line QUICK, or he can bet he'll personally be receiving my Dell equipment in the mail postage due.

[fnordx.livejournal.com]

Sadly, for a lot of call centers, if you don't go through and ask all of this information, they can shit-can you on the spot.

Those QA people don't care that the customer was irate, they don't care that he was upset and he wanted just a quick answer to a simple question, or anything like that, they just have their checklist, and if you don't go through every single item on that checklist, they grade you down, and that can affect your performance review, your chances for a raise, or get you fired.

It sucks, but, when you have those QA people listening to your calls, they're like robots, and they're looking for ANY reason to grade you down, because that's their job. They don't care about you, they don't care about the customer, they just care about their checklist.

[codevixen.livejournal.com]

But he could have at least explained that he was required to ask the questions; he was pretty much ignoring the guy's question the whole time. :( I say fuckers to both of them.

[liber-cogito.livejournal.com]

Except, most of us can't do that.

I'm tech support too, and even if it's a five second question, we HAVE to follow a certain checklist. We don't and QA hears it? Termination.

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the kinda job where you get the job, and immediately start looking for another one. I know that ain't easy though. Man, I'd drop dead from stress.

[liber-cogito.livejournal.com]

It's really not that bad. At least not compared to retail, which is what I did previous to this. I mean, come on. I get to sit on my ass in air conditioning, listen to music, throw a football around and tell idiots where to click. Yeah, the (l)users drive you sorta crazy, but it's really not that bad of a gig. Besides, I have quite possibly the coolest group of co-workers ever.

(And yes, our call center is lax. Mostly because we're night crew, and all the important people are gone already when we come in.)

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's cool then. Our place is pretty relaxed too - but if we ever get any QA people asking us why we haven't completed our TPS reports, I'm goin' postal. = )

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Oh Jesus God Almighty, that's just Neanderf*cking stupid. Ah well, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Jesus, how long since the QA people forgot that short call times are a good measure? Where I work it's "helpdesk, [name], how can I help?" and solve the damn problem and get 'em off the line. Screw the rest of that crap, why does anyone need to know it?

[xforge.livejournal.com]

well, we do record their name for our tracking system actually... heh

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I can see that. Like I said in my addendum, we get usernames for our tracking tickets also. Still, that's a lotta b.s. to have to go through just to be able to tell a guy to press and hold the button with the little circle and line. The tech should have been able to say that: "I'm *required by my superiors* to get this information, so bear with me just a bit more, and thanks" might have gotten him somewhere and at least the user might have been a little less homicidal. Maybe. He was really off the handle altogether.

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

True true.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I've had good helpdesk jobs and bad ones. The ones where all actual technical ability and creativity are crushed in favor of checklists, QA, red tape, endless fields of drop-down lists on tickets, SLAs set by salesweasels and tools that were ancient in the 1970s, are not, by my standards, tech jobs. They're mindless factory work. They're the kind of job where I deliberately start arguments with my managers just to engage in some kind of nonprescribed conversation.

For some bizarre reason I can't quite fathom, I've never been fired. Despite my best efforts, in a couple of cases. Possibly the Crimson QA don't know how to react when I tell them that while they're listening to me, I'll in turn be assessing them, their procedures, their policies, their competence and their efficiency. They tend to give up on me after a couple of writeups.

Eh, maybe it's just that one of my hotbuttons is being micromanaged. If I want my managers' opinion, I'll read it in their entrails.

(This irritation is probably a reaction to the current job, where the supe flutters ineffectually about wittering about SLAs all the time.)

[jecook]

+1 BAZILLION.

While I do require at least semi-regular check-ins with the boss, I do NOT need him standing around asking my what the hell I'm doing, and why the hell I'm not doing it faster. I will intentionally slow down and stop what I'm doing until they GO AWAY if they do it too often.

At work, we try to have a "one on one" meeting with our supervisors every other week, if nothing else to check in, make sure that the metrics that are tracked via our ticking system are being met, and to see if there's anything that either side need. I've been there the better part of a year, and I'm finding that this is a style of management that I can run with.

As far as the phone support part of my job? I Love It. I'm allowed to crack jokes, and be silly if need be. The onsite part can be pretty neat too, depending on what it is, and where it is.

[wibbble]

Technically, we're meant to do that too, to a certain extent.

But our calls aren't recorded and we don't have remote monitoring (meaning that if you get monitored, there's someone physically plugged into your phone sitting next to you), so who gives a fuck about it?

The lack of call recording and remote monitoring takes my job from tedious to pretty awesome.

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

I am a Dell customer service rep.

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

Well, tech support, rather.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

Dell's support has made me that angry, but it's not hard to not take it out on the poor people who're stuck working there. Then again after doing tech support I know how assholes like that are. :/

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

I am a Dell tech support agent. We're trying hard to improve our image. We have alot more call centers here in the US now.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

You have my condolences. Heard they aren't that great to their workers, either.:/

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

Oh hell, this is actually one of the best jobs I've had. I get paid more than I've ever made, I have sups that actually care about me, and I actually have some fun.

I know that Dell has a bad rap, mainly because of the mid to late 90's when we outsourced...but we're trying to improve. But we still do have lists of stuff that we have to do before we even address the issue at hand. The customer in this video would have been better served to just go through the inital part (which would have taken 30 seconds) then to just go off and rant!

meh.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Yeah he woulda. Too bad the rep couldn't say "I have to get this info or I'll lose my job, so if you can just bear with me we'll get to your answer," but apparently they're not allowed to say that. Hope things are looking up for you in that area. Our company just switched from HP to Dell 'cuz Dell is *trying harder* so who knows, mebbe we'll talk.

[anamacha.livejournal.com]

points to you for trying to improve your image. Well, I think you know what I mean.

[tecie.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd tell him how to turn it off given his attitude. Seriously, I think one of the biggest problems in th PC industry is that calls like that are allowed. Most car mechanics would have kicked him out of their garage.
One of his rants would have caused me to tell him that he was breaking up... and then... oops, the call dropped.

[martykins-101.livejournal.com]

I have only just started working tech support. But in the short 2 months that i have been doing it i have found the following. If you abuse a tech support say good bye to good service for ever. But most people know this and tend to not yell any more.

[ethereal-dusk.livejournal.com]

I simply adore dude's passive-aggressive behavior. Luckily at our job we can ask them once to stop cussing at us and then we just hang up on them, without getting in trouble even if QA is listening.

Just today I hung up on someone because they started off with a rude tone of voice and she was all mad at me because she had changed her password and it didn't work. I won't bother with the conversation, but everything out of her mouth was rude, with a smart-ass tone of voice. She wasn't cussing or anything. But I asked her if she had waited the 30 minutes for the system to change her password. That's when she got all pissy and said she didn't know she had to wait thirty god damn minutes and how was she suppose to get her work done and blah blah blah... I said "M'am, I can fix your password in about 30 seconds, I'll just need to get a ticket open on this issue." She actually said to me-- in a smart-ass tone-- "That would be just special. Don't go out of your way or anything."

Split-second decision-- Okay, I won't. Oopsy, did I just try to make a conference call without putting you on hold first? Sorry.bout.that.please.call.us.back.kthx.

[slayne-souls.livejournal.com]

LMAO!!!

I think its funny people are that Retarded I prolly would have laughed at him after I hung up.

[wibbble]

I need to buy everyone at work tshirts with your icon on them.

[anamacha.livejournal.com]

sadly, the video has been removed. Care to summarise? Bad support, obv., but ...

[misfit4leaf.livejournal.com]

a luser going apeshit at a poor dell tech BECAUSE HE COULDN'T TURN HIS COMPUTER OFF.

[anamacha.livejournal.com]

seriously? what a maroon.