Relay Calls

[ebtb.livejournal.com]

Who has had the distinct pleasure in dealing with Relay Calls? Oh, man. I don't have the problem with the person using the service. They are handicapped and I completely understand . But you have not lived until you have been on a relay call with an operator who is incredibly unfamiliar with tech terms and acronyms.  So not only did he ask me to repeat and spell everything, but he had the poor guy at the other end doing the same.  It did amuse me a little when the operator said "bah sod" for "BSOD", though.

Gewd gawd. That was the longest call in my life.

Comments

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

I hate those too! Again, no offense to the people using them, I really sympathize, but trying to talk to a user is one thing. Trying to play telephone with someone who knows even less than the user is quite another!

Usually what I do at the beginning of those calls is offer my email address to the user so that we can troubleshoot that way (obviously this doesn't work if they're calling about an email problem, but whatever). They nearly always jump at it. Then I can polish off the user's problem between taking more calls and keeping my average call time down.

[ebtb.livejournal.com]

What? My address must not be very enticing 'cause I always do that, too, and they never bite.

[redqueenmeg.livejournal.com]

Maybe our users just liked doing email. I dunno.

Don't feel bad...

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

1) AT&T translators are just as bad. imagine translating "Daemon process" to a Russian! Fortunately my husband knew enough Russian cussing (thanks to his sister who learned it in the army) to interrupt the translator with a sharp "NYET!" when she started describing animals and siblings...*G* Fortunately, the other person caught on... "You mean Computer Daemon, da?" "DA!"

2) I've got one hearing impaired user who REFUSES to call in tickets. OR get called back - even with Relay. She insists on e-mail contact only. It's a pain for getting things scheduled but it works. Deity help her if she ever has to put in a critical ticket though...

Re: Don't feel bad...

[thalionar.livejournal.com]

gods, we have a hearing impaired user who does L3 server support. He has me on Sametime and email. He is one of the few people we are allowed to text message on his pager instead of actually speak to for sev 1/crit issues.

For whatever reason, I am his preferred contact. Possibly because when he *does* have to talk to me via relay, I'm pretty decent at it, and it doesn' bug me like it does a lot of folks.

Of course, very very early in my tech support career, I spent 3 hours and 5 relay techs troubleshooting a cable modem and email. *headdesk* It was *horrid.*

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Funny thing is, last time I had one of these Relay Calls and mentioned it in here, I got bitched out for suggesting that gee, maybe the person on the other end could have used our online chat feature to talk about tech support issues... especially since said person got into the online chat long enough to ask us for a telephone number, only to turn around and do it as a Relay Call. If you're going to be typing anyway, why not go on typing directly TO ME rather than through a Relay Operator?

[conglacio.livejournal.com]

...whiskey tango fuck?

[celyste.livejournal.com]

*LMAO*
sorry... to go phonetic for w and t, and then just use the word for the 'f'. Makes me laugh.

I wonder how bad the auditors would hit me if I used that version of 'f' for an ipconfig? *L*

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

Relay calls are hellish and uncomfortable for everyone involved. Even the Relay Operators. (I know someone who works for one of New York's relay services.)

[celyste.livejournal.com]

I dread relay calls, and envy them at the same time. *L* I work for an isp... I would so love to be able to switch off with another rep on a call and go for my break whenever it was scheduled.

Like everyone else has already said though, I'm not upset about the person using the service, or the operator, just the inefficency of the whole thing. I've had a couple of people come through who were just amazing knew all the answers before I asked the questions or had the tty or whatever they were using in the same room as the computer they were having problems with. Then I've also had the callers where even the operators were wtf'ing and thanking us when we said we had to end the call for language or long wait times.

Everytime I think I have it bad in isp support, I know it could always be worse... relay has to be harder.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I think I had two in eight years. The first one was over quickly, the second one I got the caller onto IM and cut the relay operator out of the call ASAP. Attempting to troubleshoot is bad enough with most users without doing it through a layer of Chinese whispers.

And then I got in trouble for cutting and pasting the IM conversation into the ticket log. Hey, is it my fault the guy on the other end couldn't spell for beans? Source data is almost always better for record-keeping purposes than interpreted data, and I wasn't going to type the damn call out twice.