2 posts tagged “work”

I work in a computer technical support call center.  We are an outsourced call center for various companies, meaning we aren't actually the manufacturers of products or services we support.  We're hired by those companies.  Anyway, I'm the one who listens to those calls who, if you're familiar with the recording, "may be recorded for quality assurance purposes."

Here are the people I couldn't cause to be fired this week:

1.  Agent who, at the end of his shift, got a call he didn't want to take.  So he decided not to greet the customer.  After about 2 minutes of silence, the customer still hadn't hung up.  So the agent transferred the customer back into the queue.  Furthermore, the agent stayed on the line and listened to the entirety of the customer's conversation with the next technical support representative.  He listened to the call until the end of his shift, at which point he disconnected and went home.

Nope.  Couldn't get him fired.

2.  Agent who was talking to a customer who knew vastly more about his problem than the agent did.  When the customer expressed doubt in the usefulness of the (bullshit) troubleshooting step the agent wanted him to take, the agent said "have a nice day" and hung up on the customer.  Oh, and did I mention that I listened to this call as part of a weekly conference call with our client, i.e., the company that pays us to do their technical support?

Couldn't get him fired either.  (But I'm still working on this one, maybe I'll get him fired next week.)

Sad, but True:  90% of technical support phone representatives are deeply, deeply stupid.

Ways to tell you are speaking to a deeply stupid tech support rep:

1. He or she uses big, technical words without explaining what they mean.  This is a sure sign that they are trying to intimidate you into not noticing that they are deeply stupid.
2. He or she childishly anthropomorphizes your technical devices or the troubleshooting steps he or she is about to perform.  For instance, he or she asks you to shut down your computer and explains that they are giving your computer a rest because it is tired.  This is a sure sign that the representative has no clue how your devices work or what the function of their troubleshooting is.
3. He or she immediately starts making you do seemingly random tasks on your computer without asking you any clarifying questions about your issue.  Unless you are extremely technical and knowledgable yourself (or your issue is really really really straight-forward), chances are your description of your issue has at least some level of ambiguity and it is the tech's job to figure out what's going on.  If your tech doesn't ask clarifying questions, chances are he hasn't listened to you at all and is about to troubleshoot the issue he wishes you had, rather than the one you actually have.
4. He or she is at all condescending or in any way makes you feel bad or stupid.  It is not your job to be smart about computers, that's your tech's job.  If they treat you this way, it is because they suspect that you are meek, mild-mannered, and submissive, and they can intimidate you into not noticing that they are  deeply stupid.

Basically, most tech support reps are poorly trained, deeply stupid, and know how to deal with, at maximum, 3 or 4 straightforward problems.  If you happen to have a problem or question that isn't one of those, the best you can hope for is a well-meaning stupid person who will spend 2 hours flailing around on the phone with you but will eventually fix your problem out of sheer determination rahter than skill.  Or, you might be really lucky and get someone clever who thinks on their feet and knows their stuff.  But mostly, you'll get some idiot blowhard who thinks two weeks of training makes them a genius, evidence be damned.

Why, how did you guess?  Yes, I do, in fact, work in Quality Control at a tech support call center?  How did you know???

:-)