(no subject)

[demented-pants.livejournal.com]

Me: Rockstar tech support professional, exhausted after 9.5 hours of a 10 hour shift.
NBIU: Nice But Illiterate User.

So I take the guy's username and begin the call. He basically just wants some simple Word formatting help. Fine. We're happy to do that; that's an easy call, and I will be off the phone in plenty of time to clock out at 8 am when I'm supposed to.

Only 7:50 rolls around and the man doesn't understand a goddamn thing I say. It took him five minutes to see the little double set of arrows you use to set a left-indent down the entire side of the page on the ruler, even when I was saying, "It's two triangles with the points touching, and the bottom triangle has a rectangle underneath it, to the left of the top ruler."

That was when I finally gave up and said, "Hey, why don't you just e-mail it to me and tell me what you need changed and then I'll e-mail it back?"

Then. THEN it took ten minutes to explain how to open explorer, log into our e-mail system, and send me an e-mail, during which time I must have repeated the part before the @whatever.whatever FIFTY TIMES. It's four letters. It was then that it hit me: when I finally snap, they'll be hauling me away while I scream, "SIERRA CHARLIE FRANK LIMA! SIERRA CHARLIE FRANK LIMA, YOU ILLITERATE FUCK!" I, of course, proceed to feel guilty, because I am a customer service person and there is no excuse for being rude to the customer.

Two or three minutes later, still no e-mail. Even AFTER I sloooooowly spelled it out for him, he transposed two of the letters in the (four-letter) username. So I walk him through forwarding it, get his formatting issues - all half-dozen of them - fixed in a grand total of 25 seconds.

I e-mail him back and by this time I'm already running ten minutes over. I then proceed to have to take the next five minutes walking him through how to download an attachment and open it in word to print out.

Seriously, though. The absolute worst calls are the ones where the user is just an asshole, but only slightly behind them are the calls when it takes 45 minutes to do something that would have taken two if the user had just LISTENED TO WHAT I WAS SAYING THE FIRST TIME.

Comments

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

I know from my work, the less capable someone is, the less chance they know how to dress themselves and not poop on the floor, the greater chance they're in management and making way more money than me.

10 minutes to closing, get a ticket passed on from help desk, for VP of company; needs Acrobat Pro installed on laptop before he heads out on travel this evening. WTF?!!! I mean, sure, it's a 10 minute install but when I call, the laptop's not on or plugged in to the network. Laptop has been offsite for last 2 months and has been removed from domain. Requires tech visit to touch machine with local admin login. And all must be done in last 10 minutes of a Friday. Too many folks view tech support as some kind of animated light switch, and they just have to ask for something to be done and it happens then and there. I hate people.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Never have them email their work for you to fix unless you want to keep doing it.

[demented-pants.livejournal.com]

Honestly, with this particular user, I think I'd like it that way just fine.

We have that scfl email account specifically so users can't stalk our personal e-mails with support questions all the time.

[mirar.livejournal.com]

With this uses, chances are he can never repeat that email + attach anyway, from what it sounds like... XD

[mars822.livejournal.com]

SHowMyPC.com or SOME kind of remote control app? I give (l)users one chance to get it right then I'm on their console so fast it even makes their glacial-moving heads spin fast.

[demented-pants.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately the remote support tool we use is kind of ghetto, and the direct-to-agent queues never work for anyone, so we have to pass them directly into the general queue, which is only open M-F 8am-9pm. So that's not often an option.

[boogara.livejournal.com]

Kind of agree with mars822 :). We use NetMeeting at my work. When, for example, we have to re-create a user's profile...I just do a NetMeeting with the user, fill in all the crap in like 15 seconds (Exchange Server method FTW!), and they're set.

I do feel your pain though. Especially doing the midnight shift from what it sounds like.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Sometimes remoting in is not only the fastest and best way to fix a problem, it can also help you identify clueless root causes once in a while.

I was going to bitch about a user as an example, but I think I'll post it separately. :-)

[black-spot.livejournal.com]

I just had to explain to my mother (74) where the ruler was to change the margins over the phone. I was more successful than you, so you have my sympathy.