I hate outages.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

Behold the notes for my last EIGHT NINE CALLS.


Issue: Can't log into [$customer_account_management_site] to check e-mail.

Resolution: Advised customer of ongoing maintenance. Redirected customer to [$email.ISP.net].

Plus, the same system that manages the customer logins manages our account management tools, so we're down to notepad for notes. They were upgrading things, and it broke. I mean, entered Enhanced Maintenance Mode, or something equally euphemistic.

*sigh.*

(no subject)

[onyxrising.livejournal.com]

So, for further explanation of last night's post: it wasn't tech tier 1 that escalated the customer to me, but a tier 2 representative.

I'm a "non-technical" member of tech tier 3. By non-technical, we mean I did well at a lower tier, but haven't had tier 3 training. A decent part of my job is making sure that tier 3 is not overwhelmed with stupid requests. If it could have been solved by a lower tier and wasn't, I get to call back and deal with it.

In a couple months on this position, I've had one ticket which genuinely needed to be escalated up beyond tier 2 for technical reasons. Everything else has been tier 1 and tier 2 trying to get rid of customers, or customer service issues rather than technical. For the latter, I do have the ability to rain down fire and brimstone on lower tiers with the same authority a manager in that department would.

Yesterday, I came in to find a ticket for me which said, "Customer doesn't want to troubleshoot, so escalating to tier 3." For some reason, tier 1 and tier 2 in a certain country seems to be frequently under the impression that we can hand out new computers to customers who don't want to troubleshoot, in the name of customer service. Many times they'll tell the customer as much, and stick it in the account notes. The notes on this one also indicated that the customer had scolded the rep for making her troubleshoot. ("Shame on you for making a lady do this!")

I called the customer back, and had her tell me what her issue was. Of course, the account notes weren't very descriptive. The customer was upset that her computer began running slowly a few days ago, after a couple months of ownership. It's mostly just taking a lot of time to load the programs which are set to come up on startup. She rants and raves about how dare we sell her a computer that breaks this soon after purchase. With a little effort, I manage to get her to run msconfig.

The computer still boots up slowly after running msconfig. Okay, let's get the hardware tests out of the way, since tier 1 didn't do any of those, and neither did tier 2. The standard round of diagnostics shows nothing to indicate a hardware issue. Of course, in this process, I have her open the device manager and look for little exclamation points. Customers with her level of clueless like things with pictures. They believe things with little graphics more than they believe me, but that's another story. (See the green light? That means it works perfectly!)

I'm starting to suspect malware. I really, really am, from what's going on and the screechy remarks she's been giving me.

So I have the customer boot into safe mode.
She starts screeching that her screen looks horrible. I assure her that this is a special diagnostic mode. It won't look like that for long. She insists on yelling for several minutes about me making her make her computer look this ugly.

So, the computer appears to be a happy computer with no loading problems in safe mode. I have her boot back into normal mode so that she'll quit yelling about the aesthetic.
It's time to get her a clean copy of Windows. I explain to her that I believe she has a virus or other malware.

"I didn't install any viruses!" she yells at me indignantly.
"Ms. X, you don't need to install viruses. They're quite capable of installing themselves once you connect to the internet. What antivirus do you run?"
"I don't have one."
"You mean you uninstalled it?" her computer was sent out from the factory with an antivirus subscription on it.
"No. I don't have one, though."
I
went through the horror of showing her where, in all programs, the antivirus program was listed. It actually took longer to walk her through than getting into safemode.
I explain to her that we'll be reinstalling windows now. She'll need to back up anything she's saved on her computer.

"How do I know if I put it on, or if you did?"
"Did your computer come with it on it? If not, then you'll need to save it to a CD."
"But how do I tell that?"

And so on.
I walk her through CD burning, only to discover that she claims she's saved absolutely nothing on the computer. This is probably inaccurate, but if she's not going to work with me... well, our warranty agreement says we're not responsible for customer data.
At this point, she starts asking me how she tells if she installed a program, or whether it came from the factory installed. When regular explanations fail, I have her start reading off the listings under "all programs". Surprise, surprise- her teenager has been doing file sharing, in abundance.

At this point, the customer remembers how to open device manager, and demands I show her which device this virus is stored in, so that she can delete it. Several minutes of arguing ensue, wherein the customer insists it must be in one of physical parts of the computer.
I finally got a windows reinstall going.

I could kind of see a stupid tier 1 rep not wanting to deal with her and passing her off, but tier 2? I had some fun entering their employee IDs into the appropriate forms and hitting the "smite" button at the bottom.

That customer made me an hour late going home. It's an hour in which I could have been dealing with things which actually did need someone above tier 1.

Some times, your customers make you dumb...

[mynameisnotreal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was my fault in a way, but seriously. If you run the computer, shouldn't you know a little about what is on it? Or is it normal to be totally clueless as to what operating system is on it?

I feel that after this one, my IQ can only go up. Do I blame them or was I the moron in this case?

What follows in the letter to my customer.

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