You want me to open $program? Oh, ok, sure. Just let me restart the machine 65 times first.

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

Mid-April, I took a job doing phone support for a fairly large law firm. Most of the questions that come across my line are fairly standard, and for the most part, the lawyers and legal assistans/secretaries/law clerks/whatever's PC these days are nice as pie. Few bitches, but you'll find them anywhere. And of course, there are the Golden Children. The selected few who make me want to slam the phone against the desk until they stop calling. The ones who've decided that whatever solution I have, they'll do the exact opposite of. The ones who never read the tech email, and who have specially designed places in their personal Hells for emails dealing with updates and new policies and such.

My question is, how do you deal with these customers and get them to listen to you?

Also, what are the most annoying pet peeves you've come across? My top two are not knowing the difference between logging off and restarting, and talking to me on one phone, a client on another phone, and their wife on a Blackberry.

Comments

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

I always talk to users like they are my 6 year old. I spent a few months teaching kids and they listen so much worse. I think it gave me the patience to deal with stupid adults. I also take a lot of screen shots.

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

I think that's where my problems lie - I have a kind of strong dislike for children that I'm not related to, and a lot of the people I deal with have a 'Me first, me only, me ALL THE F'in GLITTERY TIME' attitude that rubs me the wrong way. I'm tempted to get an air horn and use that to shut them up every once in awhile.

Screenshots though. I'll try that, thanks.

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

Personally I want to get a shirt that says, "Did you log a ticket?"

It's the expectation that people feel they deserve to jump the line and make everyone else wait while I fix their stuff that bugs me.

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

I had one guy that told me, "The online ticket submission system doesn't work for me."
"Sir, here is the trouble ticket desk number."
"I don't like using the phone."

Ah, this explains why you email me with everything you think is "broken" on your computer (translation: you're too stupid to use it, how the hell did you get an engineering degree?), while CCing your bosses (who aren't my bosses in any way, shape, or form), and then wondering why you are my last priority.

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

my biggest issue with this is that I started as a call center rep with my company and then moved up to IT when an opening became available so all my OLD mangers think they should get special treatment. So they all just e-mail me or walk into my office and expect service right away.

I set up a web cam so I am alerted before people get to me so I can pretend I'm on the phone or something.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

So you reply all, including all of his cc'd bosses, explaining the procedure once more, in words of one syllable and explaining that you will not be accepting any job requests directly via email. Then ignore any further requests he makes direct.

And I'm sure he could probably log a trouble ticket via email as well.

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

Oh, someone had the bright idea to assign a pager to us.


Have I mentioned how much I want to put it through our media shredder?

[altorogue.livejournal.com]

My biggest peeve at the moment is my mom yelling at me that she doesn't have any microsoft on that computer. No, mom, the entire computer IS microsoft. You just don't have WORD on there.

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

You could really throw her for a loop and install Open Office.

[altorogue.livejournal.com]

That's actually what I did this afternoon! I haven't tried to walk her through it yet . . . she was like, slow down and show me what you're doing! Um, no, I'm not having you watch over my shoulder while I'm downloading the .exe file.

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

Waaaay back when dial-up was the norm, I was trying to show my dad how to log on and connect and such, and we had a box that would pop up. You could hit 'Connect' or just hit 'Enter'. I hit Enter and he just about flipped his bitch.

"WHAT DID YOU DO I DIDN'T SEE YOU CLICK ANYTHING HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LEEAAARRRRN THIS?"

I love my dad, really. That just added to it.

[starbrow.livejournal.com]

Icon love!

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I didn't create it but my God if that exact moment in the movie didn't just jack up my entire geeky fangirl fantasies. Maybe it was the 2 seconds of fuzz guitar leading into the next scene.

[ace-brickman.livejournal.com]

oh grampa!

[agmlego.livejournal.com]

Speaking of which, may I gank yours? That is pretty much amazing.

[altorogue.livejournal.com]

That is my mom to a T.

(I enjoying using my snarky icons in this comm. :D Good place for it!)

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

God. My mom and computers don't even bear talking about. Hell, my mom and anything more technological than a Walk-Man don't bear talking about.

[wibbble]

I stopped helping my mother and quite quickly she figured it all out for herself, and is now considered the computer expert in her office and the Mac expert in her company and can hold her own in technical discussions with their VoIP provider. (She runs a distributed call centre, so this is more advanced than someone just using Skype.)

Now when she calls up for help I can actually help her because she understands what I'm saying and has already tried the basic stuff.

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

I get this one at work now and again.

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

"I can't log on."
"Okay, what error is it giving you?"
"I'm not getting an error!"
"When you can't log on, there's usually a pop up box that gives you some kind of error message!"
"I just can't log on!"
"Okay, do you need to reset your password?"
"It doesn't have anything to do with my password, I already used that! It works fine!"
"... Wha?"
"I can't log onto the internet!"

/sigh

That, and NIC card, CAC card, PIN number ... ugh. It's a slightly unrelated stupid, but I hear it all the time and it drives me batty.

[4bit4.livejournal.com]

Oh I've totally had that one too. Friggin kills me.

[barbituratecat.livejournal.com]

Or the opposite, 'the internet is broken!', translation 'My PC is fracked/I'm trying to open an unrelated program that is busted, but I refer to everthing on a computer as 'the internet'.

[erunamiryene.livejournal.com]

This is ALWAYS my reaction to that:

(http://s33.photobucket.com/albums/d97/vader_fangirl/lulz/?action=view&current=scotch.jpg)

That drives me INSANE.

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

I enjoy that one XD

One guy called yesterday and said his display was sideways and everything was tilted 15 degrees. I kind of wondered if he just hadn't been hitting the white-out too hard.

[crazycatlady.livejournal.com]

Something else that I 'love' - they'll call and say 'I need to do actions ABC.'
'Ok, here's how you do them.'
'No, I said ABC. ABC. *sigh*'
'O...k, can you be a little more specific?
'FINE, I suppose. *goes on to describe actions Q, G, and 3.*
'....Right.'

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Ideally, this is what managers are paid to put up with so that their minions can solve the next fourteen problems in the queue instead of being held up by one avatar of entitlement.

I'm more likely to use business-fu: I'll run the numbers on how much time/money said douchewoggles are costing the desk and/or company compared to the average caller, and ask a manager or the CIO to make a policy choice from:

1) Ride over caller with verbal equivalent of Abrams tank;
2) Pass caller to higher authority to earn their pay;
3) Take note of length of time caller is spending and charge them or their boss out the wazoo for it until one of them cracks; or
4) Allow other callers, including executives and people likely to loudly complain to executives, to keep banking up in phone queue until brainsucking phonemongler is finally able to be lead through pressing the "on" button for the seventeenth time this week.