Yet another clueless TS article

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

http://www.helpmasterpro.com/community/blogs/entryid/56/professional-telephone-skills-for-the-helpdesk.aspx

Go on, have a look. And groan.

Feel free to comment on the page itself. He's also spammed it to other networks, where I shall be picking apart the multiple problems inherent in the underlying assumptions.

Seriously - if your boss started reading this out at work, would you be too stunned and insulted to reply, or simply laugh said boss out the door?

Comments

[xforge.livejournal.com]

Clearly written by someone who's never worked phone customer service for even one second.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

The primary fallacious assumption seems to be that helpdesks desire qualified, professional, skillful employees in the first place.

Service costs money.

[gremlingirl.livejournal.com]

It's more like, how to be an affective admin/ corp assistant.

Clearly the author has no clue about IVR or call handling and tracking, and that note about making sure your hold music doesn't suck? Yes, because all operators/technicians have control over that.

Clueless.

[tullamoredew.livejournal.com]

that would depend on the helpdesk. I'm working my second techsupport job in a row, after 14 years as a system admin, and I have no complaints, neither about the customers, nor about the job definition

but that's high level support, the lower the level, the cheaper the employees, and the less professional they start off, before they become really good, and either move higher, or move on :)

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite part is instructing no more than 30 seconds go by without checking back on the holding person, and then he lists a shit ton of other stuff to do while they are on hold.

Yeeeeah.



*peers at paragraph* I need my coffee. I'm not entirely sure that makes complete sense. Ugh.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

You're one of the fortunate ones, then.

The overwhelming trend is towards the use of untrained minimum-wage scriptmonkeys who know about as much of technical troubleshooting as they do of advanced theoretical physics.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Perfect sense to me. But yes, supplicate to the caffeine god $DEITY_TYPE for his her its THEIR favour is eminently desireable.


Mmmm. Caffeine.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

"Rather than focusing what is not possible, structure your language and thoughts to express what is possible."

"Well, sir, after your reviewing your request for a special exemption to security policy and the laws of physics... well, I don't want to be negative and dwell on what's impossible. Instead, to keep a positive note, let me tell you what we can do for you. None of what you want."

[digitalraven]

Aye. Right. Bollocks to that.

The only phone manner we need is: "Hello IT have you tried turning it off and on again? *pause* Have you tried plugging it in? *pause* There you go." On a tape.

[tullamoredew.livejournal.com]

I have fortunately skipped that part :)

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I've worked places which had low hiring standards, and places which had high hiring standards (sometimes these were even the same place but different years), and without exception the high-standard places always got more accomplished per budget dollar, even if they were paying higher starting salaries.

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

Thanks to your use of the word "Bollocks" I am now seeing that scene from the IT crowd in its entirety.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Preaching to the choir, my friend.

[jecook]

My only request, my friends, is to be thoughtful when commenting over there.

Otherwise, yeah, I was cracking up reading that.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

The only phone manner we need is: "Hello IT have you tried turning it off and on again? *pause* Have you tried plugging it in? *pause* There you go." On a tape.

This.

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

I was reading that and thought to myself, "Hey! That's us already! That guy needs to be smacked!"

I'm not gonna comment over there... :) <3

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Sadder, we've had a few that SHOULD read and heed this...

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

This week's example:

"Disable the Print Spooler on the printer server to facilitate speed of print jobs."

Not even making that up. Copied it straight from the ticket. He was selecting large numbers of PDFs in Explorer and then just hitting print and they weren't printing out in the order he wanted them.

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

I hope this comment wasn't from someone over here.

"Yeah- this looks to be written by a whiner, blaming IT because the (l)users cannot funtion, and hve driven us over the edge. No balance, no fair play, just "its all the helpdesk's job/fault. HOON!"

[tallanvor.livejournal.com]

It depends on the product. For example, I'm expected to be able to do code level reviews and be able to analyze core files and crash dumps (we offer Windows and Linux (Red Hat) versions of our software. Questions about how to do this will weed out the unqualified people really quickly.

[azleaneo.livejournal.com]

I hate "Use the rule of 3. ie Use the name once at the beginning, the middle and end of the call"

I hated having to do it, and I hate when I have to call somewhere and they do it to me. Stop saying my name. You don't care what my name is, and I don't care to keep hearing it. It makes me feel like you're trying to sell me something.

I also hate that 'keep checking up with the person on hold thing' I don't care if you have me on hold 1 min or 5 minutes without an update, but you better have some kind of information for me when you get back on the line.

Also:

Open

* "What is on your screen at the moment?"
Nothing.
* "What were you doing before the error occurred?"
Nothing.
* "How did you check the connections?"
Don't use that technical jargon with me!

Closed

* "Do you have Excel on your screen at the moment?"
Huh?
* "Did you specify which printer you want to use?"
I already told you what printer I wanted!
* "Have you checked the wall socket?"
Don't use that technical jargon with me!

[dkdeath1.livejournal.com]

While I have been out of support for a bit, ive been through that short end of the stick personally. Its not fun, and theres a lot in the article that doesn't even fall under the control of of the tech.

Really its pretty much a stock article on how you should conduct professional phone conversation. I don't see a single piece of this advice that doesn't directly translate into any other job which involves regular customer contact.

For the under-paid under-motivated crowd, your boss trying to shove these down your throat would truly suck (I know, they did when I was there) but coming from the world of communication, the list could practically come out of the 'guide to phone etiquette' if one existed. The underlying attitude is one of 'let the caller know whats going on, because they think you care.'

So while maybe not given the best focus, I dont think the ideas should be dismissed.

[ashonaut.livejournal.com]

When they did that on The IT Crowd, I began wondering how I could replace myself with a tape..

[digitalraven]

Tch. Kids today. You should be replaced with a tape and a shell script.

[ashonaut.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously - I just figured the shell script was implied. ;)