Some small comfort

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

For all the abuse we take in tech support, it's really nice to hear a thankful customer tell me I'm a genius, I've saved them, and thank me soooooooo very much. =)

Comments

[twistedsyx.livejournal.com]

I have a hard time enjoying that by "saved them" I taught them how to "drag and drop". Maybe I'm a defeatist, but I just don't get the same joy out of them telling me, "man, thanks for teaching me how to use a computer. *WHEW* Really saved my hide"

But. Like I said, maybe I'm a defeatist, misanthropic, or depressed. *sigh*

[xforge.livejournal.com]

I get that about once a day or so. Which is why I still like my job.

That and deskside support with stupefyingly attractive Marketing reps. ::twitch::

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I got their internet back on (all I did was reprovision their modem). =)

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

Can't argue with stunningly attractive marketing women.

[kukla-red.livejournal.com]

It's even better when they show up at your office with yellow roses and a box of really good gourmet chocolates (as one user did for me many moons ago).

Enjoy the glow.

[azurelunatic]

Yes.

[azurelunatic]

I get a heady cocktail of hubris and humility when I have one of those. I mean, I know I'm only moderately technical. I can't program for shit, and I'd make a really lousy server or network admin. But there are so many people out there who aren't even qualified to turn a computer on. My geek pride doesn't get the benefit from those kinds of calls, but my teaching pride does, because it's hard to interact with those people in a meaningful way, and it's harder to do so over the phone.

I really do loathe it when they then get that "maybe I should pick your brains about computer use now!" gleam in their eye after their immediate problem has been solved. Um, no, sir, you shouldn't. They don't pay me enough for that, and that's not part of my job description.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

what IS your job description?

[azurelunatic]

Sales and support. I do (inbound thank gods) sales and product support (mostly support, they pretty much did away with the new customer sales department and made the tech types take it on) for a one-stop registrar/host/email/bells/whistles provider. I explain what a domain is, why they need one, what hosting is, why they need that, why they may have to wait up to 48 hours before they see the new website up, how to hook up their domain with their hosting, how to hook up their domain to their email provider, how to use any of our (insert expletive) products, what they screwed up in their DNS and how they're going to fix it for themselves while I give them a little education on how it works, why they need an index.html and not an Index.html, what that damn bounceback message means, that we are the tech support for $EMAIL and not a) Amazon.com, b) Hotmail, c) whichever of our customers has the bouncing address, and that if they are renting a dedicated server from us, they had damn best know how to admin the thing themselves (although I certainly can browbeat them into actually *reading* the Apache error message that says that they need to shove their webpages somewhere).

Occasionally I get customers who I tell to copy X and paste it in Y, and they have no clue how to copy and paste. So I have to teach them how to do that in order to actually get their domain redirect working, or get their authorization code entered. I don't have to teach them things that aren't relevant to the bit of tech support I'm actually trying to pry them through. (There are a lot of things that I can do for them on my end, but we're not allowed to change a domain redirect that's already set up, nor can we enter their auth code for them, nor can we change their nameservers.)

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

You forgot setting up Outlook. Lots of setting up Outlook.

[azurelunatic]

Yes, although that can be made less painful because a) webmail, b) Not Our Product. (I take it you're a co-worker?) The really fun ones are setting up email on a smartphone that we don't have a guide for. And having someone non-technical call in (NAH) because of their email problem, and discovering that there's something dreadfully wrong with a) the domain, b) the email package, c) the dns.

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

I find I like the comments better when they buy something (we do sales on top of support and get more bonuses for selling shit then for fixing shit).

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

See, I wish I could get away with Not Our Product, but one of the highlights of our service is -supposed- to be the exceptional customer service...and I feel like if I know how to fix something, I have a moral (wtf is wrong with me?) obligation to help them fix it. It tends to make customers absolute raving fans of the service, but also tends to make me lose hair rapidly.

[azurelunatic]

We've got standing orders to not support Not Our Product, even if we do know how, because that'll lead the customer to expect the same service next time, and when (not if) they get some poor sap who came in from a sales background, not a tech background, they'll be Upset. So if we do wind up inadvertently supporting Not Our Product (vs. going over our settings that work for setting up that class of external products), we have to play disclaimer-time and still run the risk of QA docking us for it.

(One of the things that makes me Unhappy about a shared sales and tech staff is that a) we techs are expected to sell, and b) those sales people don't make very effective techs with a few rare exceptions.)

[azurelunatic]

Seconded.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

I don't have to sell anything; it's kinda nice. The important thing is to set proper customer expectations here. It makes them feel happy because they're getting more than they're paying for (and thus more than they deserve), but they understand that we're not at all obligated to help them with $problem.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

Former co-worker :) Worked a similar-ish job previous to there as well, which has led me to a disturbing familiarity with every email client, ever.

But NAH calls end fun. "Go get validation info sir. I can't help you." *cheer*

[azurelunatic]

Heh. Though I am happy to help them some of the time, if it's in our scope of service.

I'll always remember the amazon.com one, though. It wasn't even a bounceback, it was some dotty old lady having printed out the wrong number.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

And then the people who call in because their message to vendor X bounced and they think the number is the vendor's, so they call in and ask where their shipment of washers is.

[azurelunatic]

And that has the unfortunate collision with that one policy about the company name, it really does.

[ateji.livejournal.com]

I had someone offer to bring my batch of coworkers and I muffins as thanks for fixing things for her. Paranoia wouldn't let me say yes, but I did ask her to send a message up the channels to boss's boss's boss or so saying we'd done a good job. They hear enough complaints about us up there.

[calriddia.livejournal.com]

I had a customer bitch me out when I requested her content for her site. The content she had sent in made no sense and I was completely lost. So, i sent her a breakdown worksheet, asked her to fill it out and send it back. She calls yelling and screaming asks for my supervisor. My supervisor tells her the EXACT same thing I did about her content being nuts and tells her to do the worksheet. She gets all nice and tells him to tell me that 'She was sorry for a being a bitch and that she will have the worksheet done ASAP.' She apologized too me a great many times after that when she realized that I just wanted to make sure I got everything right.