Sometimes it's nice...

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

...when you get someone that knows more than you'd expect from an end-user. Observe:

This lady's phone is not working properly. Oddly (i don't quite understand why), our phone service operates via co-ax. The same co-ax that feeds our internet and CATV services. You can probably guess that there are splitters involved.

Me: Ma'am, could you check and see if the phone box (essentially a signal converter) is on a splitter?
She: Oh, it sure is. *rummaging around in the tangle of cables our techs are prone to leaving* Wait...there's another one...and...another? What th...Okay, this is ridiculous. You've got 10 dB coming in, and it goes to a 3.5 splitter, and there's another one even further in...so, *does some math and figures out - in her head - that the signal is way too low to support the phone signal* Yeah, that's probably it. Man, your field guys are idiots, if they thought this would work.
Me: Erm...right. So... i can send in this ticket, and we'll see if we can get someone to straighten that out for you.
She: Oh! Don't worry about it. I've already gotten it straightened out. The only thing i can't do is bring in my spectrum analyzer, but i'm pretty sure i can get it taken care of this evening. Thank you!
Me: Okayyyyy...have a good evening...

Turns out she's an electronics tech with 30 years under her belt. 0.o

Comments

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

Hehehehehe...

Love calls like that. Or, did back when I did frontline support. :)



-Az

[hikari-neko.livejournal.com]

People like that restore your faith in humanity. That and make you go "Uh, I have no idea what you just said, but please could you find some more people like you to be our customers?"

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Damn shame that when it's us calling tech support because Comcast has screwed the pooch for the tenth time in a week, we don't get techs who are as willing to accept that we know what the fuck we're talking about. Hell, I'd be happy if once, just ONCE, they'd ask me a few questions then realise, "Hey, this guy knows enough that I can believe him when he says the problem isn't his router."

Instead I get the assclowns who're arguing that my cable won't work if I have my computers set on static internal IPs regardless of whether the router is on a dynamic IP.

[vortex.livejournal.com]

I wonder if he/she found out if she is single?!?

I think I want to marry her...

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Ugh, why even tell them what's going on inside your LAN? It just confuses them.

I tried to get support for connecting my Mac (HAH!!) to my ISP's Usenet servers. I must've said "It's a Mac" about 195 times, and he kept going right back to the script and saying I need to click on Start - All Programs and open Outlook. I eventually gave up and just cherrypicked the actual data from the b.s. in the script. Bah!! I should've just said "dude, email me your script." Heh.

[lillyflowers.livejournal.com]

That's as good as the "tech" I got last week when I had to call [big insurance company]. Their site was flipping out giving me all sorts of server errors across multiple browsers when trying to access it. One of the gems? "Firefox, they make that for a Mac?" And, of course because "We don't support Macs" was the mantra, it couldn't possibly have been anything on their end. It was all my fault because I was not using Internet Explorer. (which BTW, freaked out every bit as much). *vibrates*

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you probably figured this out by now, but if you're on a Mac, and you've verified that it does the exact same thing in IE6 or 7 for Win, lie like an antique Persian rug and don't tell them you're on Mac. A tech will do whatever he can to get rid of the call 'cuz that makes his stats look better, and the #1 easiest thing for that purpose is "we don't support that" and specifically, "we don't support Mac."

Where I work, we *do* support Mac - but only if they were prepped by me personally. Otherwise, whee, fuhgeddaboudit.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Heh, you probably *do* know all that middle stuff about getting rid of a call - I forgot what group I was posting in. = )

[lillyflowers.livejournal.com]

Oh she was unbelievable — "Mozilla browsers? Whatzat?" And insisting that I have to IE, a browser that hasn't been supported on Mac since what, 2002? The guy I got on callback admitted he doesn't really know Mac, but was willing to help and actually chuckled at her incompetence.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Awesome. I thought M$ dumped IE Mac in 2000 or '01, but I always tell people "1999" 'cuz the "nineteen" has more impact. = )

[lillyflowers.livejournal.com]

"1999" it's so, uhm, last century. ;-) You could be right about it being '01, but I thought it '02. Regardless, the lack of training was astonishing.

[canray.livejournal.com]

That's because said corporation tends to demand that people stick to a script.

You're not going to keep intelligent techs if you force them to stick to a script of any sort.

[theemerged.livejournal.com]

Yes, the scripts. The scripts are the enemy of intelligence.

[kenbrody.livejournal.com]

On one rare occasion when I needed to call my ISP (Cablevision at the time) for support, I got an intelligent person on the other end of the phone and apparently said the right thing somewhere along the way. (Our router failed to get a DHCP connection from their server.) After a brief on-script diagnosis (control panel, networks, etc. etc. etc.), we just cut to the chase and he checked that there was, in fact, an issue with their local DHCP server.

At the end, I thanked him for being able to go off-script and get right to the problem, and he thanked me for being able to do more than drool and say "is that left-click or right-click". :-)

I think the call made both our days. (Despite my being down for another 30 minutes or so until they fixed the problem. At least it wasn't wasted resetting/power-cycling/reading settings/etc.)

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It's calls like this where it would be nice to way to instantly give every possible discretionary bonus to the account... free months of service, free extensions to service, automatic approval on port unblock requests, flag account as "Knows what the hell they're talking about", freebie escalation to Level 2 or a manager on request, put on internal list for any discounts or technical customer freebies that might be going around, one free field tech callout...

I'm sure people can think of others :)

[tragnon.livejournal.com]

Send her a job application...

[arabwel.livejournal.com]

... what did she do to deserve THAT?!

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

HAH! Her hourly rate (of which she informed me when she jokingly said we couldn't afford her rates as a tech) was EIGHT TIMES my hourly pay. I'm still lookin' for the job that'll pay ME that much...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Ask _her_ for a job application :)

[delta_mike]

I've been wanting to add a "Kudos" field to our user database for years..

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

You know... I swear next time I get a job to design a support tech d/b I am so going to add that as feature in the alpha test version at least.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

It'll only work well if everyone with access to the feature is an experienced tech. Otherwise it'll be abused by management and randomly frobbed by lusertechs and salesweenies.

Perhaps access to the feature could be controlled by level 2, or senior L1, or some other source of barely concealed cynicism. Or maybe the techlarvae's flag-tripping could use the same interface, but be reviewed at a higher level before being approved.

Of course, the unsubtle mode would allow everyone to have the full access - useful for small tech teams. And the flags/kudos-adjustments should be able to be rolled back if someone reverses an initial gut decision. Kudos/bonus levels could also be able to go negative (for the less desirable callers), have a displayable total-DB history by user, tech, date etc.

Interestingly, this might even allow charts to be made of callers who cause the most problems/timewasting/cost to the team - something that may be of interest to managers looking to cut costs.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Hmm... that last one's a good point, one that could sell it to TPTB...

If one made the history as read-only, and viewable by all, peer pressure should keep the abuse to minimum...and if kudos can be set by anyone, but only edited by tier 2 or senior, that should do it.

So, not only keeping track on the problem customers, but also on the problem script monkies too. I like that...

[shadowfairy.livejournal.com]

I had to call bell south one time many many years ago because my internet service wssn't working. This was the third time I'd call them for an issue so I knew their routine, therefore I said, "Let me save you the time..." and I went through and answered all the script questions without him asking and then told him what I thought the issue was. As he was running the diagnostic to confirm my suspicions he said, "Can you tell me what this means?" I responded, "Ummm ok." He then proceeds to read a paragraph from an MCSE manual that he is using to study for the test. He says, "I don't get it. What does it mean?" After I explain it he tells me my suspicions where correct and he'd escalate the ticket for me. I had to laugh. Well, at least the poor guys was working at getting out.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

There are two kinds of scriptmonkeys - those with some kind of certification manual on their desk, and those who are wondering who's buying the beer when the shift ends. Or such like.

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

Best. Call. EVER!

It obscurely reminds me of one time when I was getting a cablemodem set up at a new apartment buildling. The tech came in and looked at the wiring in the phone closet in the apartment, and sort of stopped dead. "Well, will ya look at that," he said, "every single cable is labelled. This is going to be the easiest hookup job I've had this month. I wish our guys were as good as whoever built this building."

Or the tech who, evidently not having been given enough tools to do his own job properly, logged into his own Linux box at home to run network diagnostics for me, and didn't even blink when "rebooting" my computer (per the script) took less than five seconds.

[xforge.livejournal.com]

A study in contrasts:

Clueless caller: "I'm locked out!"
Tech: "Um. Of what?"

or

Callers I love: "Can you please unlock (generic user account name for guest internet kiosk)?"
Tech: "No problem; done. Have a good day!"

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

I guess you'll have to LART the techs.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

LARTs are for (l)users.

We need a description for managers and other "techs".

[http://users.livejournal.com/hub_/]

TART

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Orbital anvil...?

[mouser.livejournal.com]

I once got to call in the problem, the fix, the name of the engineer at the other company that was responsibility, etc.

After typeing all this in, the guy wanted to know WHY I bothered to call it in since I fixed it.

"Because when you give me your ticket number, I'm going to save it for the NEXT time!"

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

I just finished talking to an EE in Seattle. It's so great to talk to engineers. They know their shit.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

Sounds like Dilberts mom.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

I always try to be that guy. My stuff is labeled, I know where it is, here is where the bits go, I try and make it easy, I'll do the hard stuff, would you like a beer, etc.

Then the tech leaves you with the last 50' of a box of cable, a bunch of ends, splitters, etc. because you had prewired everything to a system which makes his eyes pop, and if he doesn't reduce his inventory somewhat, the home office will wonder what he did for an hour...