techrecovery | touching lives (Reply)

Last night was a hard night taking calls. For the first few hours of the night, every customer I got was unable to communicate in simple English. Now, if someone comes from a foreign country, I have the utmost respect and patience for any communication problems. These people are more fluent in more languages than I am. But the people that I'm complaining about were all (judging from their accents) born and raised right here.

I was losing it. Some techs here literally pull their hair out, and I was close to that myself.
"Is your activity light blinking right now, or is it off?"
(silence on the other end)
Ok... when in doubt, rephrase it a little bit.
"When you look at the modem right now, do you see your activity blinking, or is there no light for activity right now?"
(silence from the other end)
Ok... when in doubt, check to make sure the user hasn't fallen asleep, gone to get coffee, or gone to the bathroom.
"Ma'am, are you still there?" (If I were to look at your brain right now, would I see any activity there?)
"Yes, I'm here"
Ok, we've established that she's awake and can hear me.
Ok... when you're not getting the answers you want, try breaking it down in smaller pieces. Maybe it's too hard for her to think about looking at the modem *and* telling me what the modem light is doing.
"Are you looking at your modem right now?"
"Yes"
"Can you please tell me what your activity light is doing?"
(silence)
Ok... no more open ended questions. Make it close ended, all she needs to say is "yes" or "no".
"Ma'am, is the activity light blinking right now?"
"Yes"
sigh

But it's amazing how just one call can really make a difference in the night. I had a user that started out by saying what a pleasant voice I had, and already she could tell that this call would be better than her last one. She was on a Mac, which... quite frankly, I've technically been trained in, but really all I know how to do is find the appropriate walk through. We keep asking for more training, but so far.... Anyway, I helped her fix her email situation and she said "Wow, you must be some kind of Mac expert" and I said "Not really". She said "But you're a woman.. that's why you could help me.. thank you, you made my night..."

And you know what? She made my night. A night that had been hair pulling awful was suddenly changed into an ok night.