Support via script VS. Support via knowledge

[apotimber.livejournal.com]

Reading some comments in recent posts reminds me of a story which I shall share briefly. So how many people out there in tech support land are just following scripts as opposed to doing tech support by addressing the problem from an analytical perspective? Given that some questions are very common that a script works great, and other times, we experience the same questions so often it almost sounds like we're reading a script.

Back when I used to do tech support at a large university, where we have centralized services for the big things like email, major networking, etc, and departmental support for quicker response time, the localized needs of the individual school(s)/department(s), etc, we had a situation we as a departmental support could not handle. So I tell my boss, who at this time as our director was responsible for the IT support of 3 different graduate schools, and he calls central computing support. Being tech support folks ourselves, we know there are script kiddies over there answering the phones who deals with the common problems and we have protocol to follow.

So to make a short story that I've overly provided details with making it long, after answering many questions, the person on the other end of the phone follows the script to the final solution he could provide of: sorry, we can't help you, please contact your local departmental support. My boss responds to the kid, "I AM the head of the departmental support. Get me your supervisor, now!"

I've known many people who has done tech support for central services and they were all pretty smart. Somehow, they must have been desperate to hire people at one point.

Anyway, that was years ago. These days, I work at Best Buy. And just because a customer buys a computer from us, does not mean they get tech support from us to tell them how to get 3rd party software to work, or even use it. We sell the computers, we do not manufacture them. We really need to impose something where people should need a license to own a computer, like a gun, which requires a background check or something. And then a second license to use the internet, like in Germany where you have to take a long series of classes and tests to be eligible to drive on the autobhan.

Okay, I'm babbling incohesively in a public post now so I'll just say g'nite. =)

(no subject)

[calriddia.livejournal.com]

Currently, I am building websites for an internet registrar. It's time consuming, annoying but fun and my co workers are great! And I mean that too. Well, we are still a business and we have policies and what not that we adhere to for time and employee sanity sake. The break down is pretty simple. We do interviews with the customers, get ALL their content, build out the site, get various approvals, do tests and YAY, the site is up! Well, we have mixtures of fun customers that make their way in. Those who get through the process quick and simple, those who make the process drag out for any length of time (I am sure you know where I am going with this), those that fall off the face of the planet after purchase (seriously, they just disappear, it's nuts) and those that cause us to laugh endlessly because of their stupidity. This is one of those laughing times...

I was lucky enough to not get this call, but the girl behind me was not so fortunate. I overheard most of the conversation and even helped her out with a few responses. When we build sites we have the customers give use EVERYTHING, text, images, whatever they want on their site before we build. We won't start until we get it all. We do not write copy, we have stock images they can use, but we prefer that they pick them, this way we know they like them and we don't have to keep going back to pick. We build WAY too many sites and different types of sites to do something like that.

The custoer explained that he runs a pool business, like backyard pools. Well, he explains that for his content that he wants her, her supervisors and managers (yes plural) to all go to various pool sites and find the 5 most important topics about pools and build a site. He is SO busy that he just doesn't have the time to do anything for his site. He also tells her to just copy and paste the information from the various sites but to change it a little so that it's different. She then explained that we can't do that and why due to legal and copyright reasons. Of course he blew up, canceled and left us all laughing at his stupidity.