Prime example of how tech support should be

[Nick]

I have been working technical support and functioning as a network administrator at local law firms in my area over the past four years as my summer/after-school job. I am often on the phone with computer and software companies regarding returns, software bugs, and so on. Dell, Hewlet Packard, Microsoft, you name it. Every time I call a company for customer support it seems like it just gets worse and worse. Represenatives that assume you know nothing, long hold times, "well let me transfer you over too..." over and over. It's horrible.

Anyways, we were having a problem today with one of the pieces of software we use for legal research. The program wouldn't update, install, or uninstall without going to an error and failing the task. Manually deleting was now the route to take. Took care of all the simple stuff, dug through the registry and found about 2/3 of the entries but couldn't find them all. Great, checked the website to see if this was a common problem, it wasn't. Wonderful... That's all I could think when I realized I was going to have to call the company. Most of the time representaives can't answer a question if it isn't covered in the Help section of the program .

Not today. I called up, within 30 seconds I was transferred to technical support just said "I'm having uninstallation problems. I'm getting visual basic runtime errors, I need all the registry entries for the program and hidden files so I can manually delete them and reinstall." Then the words that made my day: "Sure, are you at the computer right now? .... They are...". The girl on the other end of the phone named them off one right after another without hesitation. I was so suprised. Fixed the problem within 5 minutes of being on the phone. Now I know they're a small company relative to Dell and whatnot but this is how support should be. Not so much the short wait time, but the fact that I actually spoke with someone that knew their stuff was a relief. I had expected to spend at the very least an hour trying to work with it.

Not that anyone really cares, but that made my day and I figured I would post it .

 

[notnamed]

I've had great experiences with DLink tech support. The guy I talked to on the phone was better than the people I talked to via e-mail, but it was all in all a pretty good experience. He spent 25 minutes on the phone with me attempting to debug the router and was obviously disappointed when he couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.

 

[Matt8]

I have had good and bad experiences with tech support. Worst for me HAS to be HP/Compaq. Waited and got transferred 4 times over a 2 hour phone call that solved nothing.

 

[Wojtek]

Videotron has above excellent tech support/service.

Called in for a dead cable modem and got a guy come in 3 hours later and gave me a brand new motorola surfboard 5100

No stupid "are you cables correctly plugged, are you sure? 110%? recheck them, maybe you didnt plug the ac into the wall, do you have an ethernet card, did you wash your hands before handling the modem"

100% satisfied

 

[Epgs]

A positive DLink experience here also. Guy worked with me for 45 minutes until I finally realized that it was my fault.

 

[jmiller]

Beh, I dislike D-Link tech support for the sole reason that they refused to send any overseas drivers for my AP/Router, due to the fact that it would "void the warranty", even though I made it clear I had no problem with that.

Or maybe the guy was just smart enough to figure out my really intentions for the driver, though I doubt that.

 

[Wojtek]

and what were those intentions?

 

[jmiller]

Videotron has above excellent tech support/service.

Called in for a dead cable modem and got a guy come in 3 hours later and gave me a brand new motorola surfboard 5100

No stupid "are you cables correctly plugged, are you sure? 110%? recheck them, maybe you didnt plug the ac into the wall, do you have an ethernet card, did you wash your hands before handling the modem"

100% satisfied

Oh god, you're lucky you don't have to deal with Shaw like I do.

I explained to them a few months back, explaining that the pole outside my house was unstable, and thus causing the crossing of the Telus/Shaw lines.

Guy then asks me about my firewall configuration, my cable splitter, my modem, etc.

I explain it to him once again, and he tells me they'll be over for a reflection test. -- No dice.

Anyways, the next day a Telus worker showed up to fix the problem for a Telus customer who was also affected by the crossed lines, the fix was very temporary though.

I called up both Shaw and Telus to explain that the fix did in fact temporarily solve my problem, but shaw insisted it was my end, and Telus wanted to bill me to come out, again, no dice.

Finally after weeks of this, there was a wind storm, and power crews had to come out, and OH GUESS WHAT, the pole had to be stabilized and have new guide-wires put in place.

Since then, there have been ZERO problems.

 

[jmiller]

and what were those intentions?

Ahem, well you see North American firmware only allows for use of 802.11 channels up to 11.

I wanted to take full advantage of my card and set my router to go all the way up to 14.

 

[Master_tee]

Cox has the worst support ever, i call them for tech support, they transfer me to another department, then that department transfers me again, then that department transfers me back to the department i was at and then they disconnect me...Hurray? [No i dont have cox internet luckily]

 

[tandoc]

Real men don't need tech support, we always take a stab in the dark at the problem.

But seriously.. I never even bother trying tech support.. I always look for the answer on the internet.. last time I tried ringing tech support for my ISP.. they sent my call to like New Delhi...

 

[Nick]

Real men don't need tech support, we always take a stab in the dark at the problem.

But seriously.. I never even bother trying tech support.. I always look for the answer on the internet.. last time I tried ringing tech support for my ISP.. they sent my call to like New Delhi...

Did you even read my post? Tech support is always a last resort. Finding the exact locations of all the registry entries that a program with a small user base consisting of people who aren't technology-inclined isn't as easy just plugging it in Google. Maybe if we were talking about MS Word or something, but this is hardly on the same level of distribution and use by the public.

REAL men swallow their pride when neccessary .

 

[Daniel]

Videotron has above excellent tech support/service.

Maybe over there, but in here, in the west island, they're just as bad as Sympatico.

The worst tech support has to be Sympatico, took 8 months for them to fix my speed problem, but now everything's alright. I never deal with software tech support, only hardware or services.

 

[Matt8]

Ive also had trouble with Cox, and a good experience with DLink

 

[tandoc]

Did you even read my post? Tech support is always a last resort. Finding the exact locations of all the registry entries that a program with a small user base consisting of people who aren't technology-inclined isn't as easy just plugging it in Google. Maybe if we were talking about MS Word or something, but this is hardly on the same level of distribution and use by the public.

REAL men swallow their pride when neccessary .

what i meant was...

you're right, tech support should be like that, but it never is... :cry2:

 

[Nick]

Which is exactly why it made my day and made a thread about it .

 

[diggerB]

No stupid "are you cables correctly plugged, are you sure? 110%? recheck them, maybe you didnt plug the ac into the wall, do you have an ethernet card, did you wash your hands before handling the modem"

:shame: Anyone who has worked in technical support knows that 95% of calls are the result of User Error. Now, the Tier One guys don't exactly get paid a lot of money, so you can't expect to get too many highly skilled professionals with elite certifications and 30 years of networking experience answering your phone calls. What you can expect, however, is somebody who is fairly competent when it comes to troubleshooting for User Error. Besides, you would be surprised at how many so-called "certified technicians" call in for DSL support when the issue could be resolved by cycling the power on the router or typing ipconfig /renew at a dos prompt.

And it doesn't matter if you've got your full MCSE+Internet or whatever other prestigious certifications - if you want any real help, you have to get through the Tier 1 guy. If you come off as arrogant, impatient, or otherwise rude, you may well find your ticket has somehow been misplaced. The best thing you can do is cooperate with Tier 1... don't fight the troubleshooting process, because you're not going to get beyond him until those steps are completed, because he gets in trouble every time an issue gets escalated that he could and should have resolved.

The process makes sense... the Tier 2 or 3 guys are, as often as not, the very owners and operators of the company in question, and already have their hands full just trying to keep the operation running smoothly. They don't have time to be taking calls from every damn n00b and inbred hick that can't figure out how to set up a dialup connection. But they are happy to take those calls that turn out to be real issues.

 

[Matt8]

I am having trouble getting Doom 3 to work (video driver issue) and got the worst support ever from the card manufacturer. The guy could honestly, barely speak english, and he told me the solution before he even heard what the error was.

Needless to say, his soultion didn't work, and Craptivison doesn't know what would fix it either. Ugh....I smell a reformat.