How to do Customer Support Right

After talking about how bad things can be for all those months, I was hired by an organization that did support right.

Paid straightforwardly for the task of helping customers. The phone rings. I answer. And I do my best to help.

No hold time. No blind transfers to unknown departments. No not-being-allowed-to-answer-your-question.

The organization believes in having happy customers, and does its best to make sure I have the resources I need to make that happen.

It's pretty amazing.

The End

This job was supposed to be a quick stop-gap solution while I looked for something with dignity that paid well and was ethical. It lasted about six months. Now I've got a better job. Yesterday was my last day.

I never did hear any sort of acknowledgement from supervisors that I was leaving. I emailed all the HR staff yesterday to make sure they were planning to send appropriate paperwork, and got a curt note that they would.

Over the course of the six months the job went from harrowing and miserable to just tiring. The first few months, with non-stop calls from customers who were all angry from being on hold, were about as bad a work experience as I've ever had. The last month or so, in which the pace has been relatively slow and a large percentage of the customers actually pleasant, has been pretty decent and occasionally almost fun.

But yesterday was my last day. My first call of the day was someone who had been transferred to me inappropriately and got angry when I explained that I couldn't help them without a paid subscription. In the middle of the day I got a call from someone whose computer was totally destroyed beyond help (not because of us; the damage was done before she first called us) and who then sobbed and wept and demanded that we pay for it; and my last call was an hour and a half long and at the end of it I had to explain to the caller that his problem was that his computer was badly damaged and there was nothing I could do about it.

I told one of my coworkers by chat that I was leaving. He seemed incredulous that anyone could want any other job.


Two last thoughts:

The company I worked for provides white-label tech support for other companies. They seem like a decent enough organization. The ISP they contracted with, however, does not. All my experiences have led me to believe that this company thoroughly despises its customers.

Some of my co-workers were themselves customers of this ISP, and said they think the company provides great value (mostly these are people with extremely, extremely fast internet connections, which I just don't see the need for). For my part, I went into this job thinking they were a terrible company to do business with, and I feel even more certain of that now.

And yet... many of my customers talked about how great this ISP was compared to their previous one (including most of the big players). Far more told me how awful 'we' were. Maybe once you account for the fact that folks who call are already having a problem, this evens out statistically. There is a significant percentage of people who are getting a good experience. But there's also a significant percentage of people who are being very badly failed by their ISP.

Also... this country is filled with interesting people. I talked to a lot of folks from all over the compass points, in just about every age, ethnicity and socioeconomic status. Many of the people I talked to were delightful. Many, of course, were not delightful.

Some calls began with a long silence, followed by a guarded, suspicious, "WHO IS THIS?"... some calls began with a maniacal three-minute-long babble of everything the customer had to say, all in a rush. Some began with the sound of the customer cursing.

The job did not enhance my faith in humanity. It may have actually damaged it a bit.

I'm the sort of person who wants to treat everyone with dignity no matter what, because we're all one and we're all worthy of love. And I still believe that. And I had a lot of very sweet and pleasant customers. But a lot of my callers were so blinded by resentment, or so convinced they already knew everything they needed to know, or so intent on proving a stranger wrong, that they kept themselves from being able to get what they needed. A lot of people didn't seem interested in listening to advice. (Which sort of defies the point of paying for tech support). Some were suspicious and paranoid. Some seemed like they had an amazing amount of anger stored up. I feel bad for these folks, but I also feel bad for their loved ones, neighbors, and coworkers.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. May each of you do work that has some dignity and is for a good cause. Be cautious about viruses, back up your files, and be nice to strangers on the phone.

Last Day

Today's my last day on the job.

I'm pretty happy about that.

Click

A lot of customers hang up.

Cellphones drop calls midway through important sentences. Modems that also handle phone connections fail while we're working on the internet connection, and so the call drops too. Or, sometimes, we reset the modem without checking to make sure the customer's on a different phone. Whoops. And sometimes our phones drop calls mysteriously- they're an elaborate software mishmosh of different programs that work together more or less and sometimes get erratic. Or we screw up transfers, so that customers get dropped that way.

But sometimes customers just hang up. Maybe they fixed it themselves; maybe they just got sick of being on the phone.


The customer I just didn't talk to, for instance, was on hold about 45 seconds, but hung up before the transfer could complete. I tried to call back and couldn't get through. So I don't know what she wanted.


I'll never know.

Remote Control

Near the start of most calls, I try to set up a remote access program to a customer's machine. I do this by asking the customer to go to a website.

Often though, customers assume I can already control their computer from the moment I'm on the phone with them. Like just now: After a couple opening questions at the start of the call, I asked a customer to open Internet Explorer.

She said "Aren't you going to do that for me?"

Resignation

I emailed a resignation letter to my supervisor today.

But my supervisor didn't respond.

I asked around, and found out that my supervisor's on vacation.

I emailed my former supervisor, but she now works for a different department and isn't available.

A third supervisor said he'd take care of it.

But I can't help but think that this symbolizes something.

You want to CHARGE me?

My department (really a separate company, Support.com, but we're not allowed to say so) does paid tech support, for a major ISP (Comcast) that treats its customers badly.

Comcast employees tend to clear their own phones and get rid of problem callers by shunting callers to us inappropriately: in the afternoon as each time zone closes offices, we get sudden spikes of folks who have no idea they need to pay... often they have no idea they've even been transferred.

"I was just talking to a nice young man named Steven, he said he'd check on something. Why am I talking to you?"

Then I have to look up their account (sometimes a time-consuming process), then explain that I can't help them without a paid support subscription, and transfer them to our sales department. At which point 75% or more of callers will, understandably, throw a fit and start shouting.

Yesterday was an especially bad day for this. I took 22 calls yesterday. About 15 of them were folks who shouldn't have been transferred to me at all. About 13 of them were very angry.

The Long Wait

Yesterday, a customer called because of a problem with her computer.

She got a salesperson with poor English comprehension. That salesperson should have set up her tech support subscription, and then transferred her immediately to a tech like me. Yesterday was a slow day, with no hold time, so she should have gotten help immediately.

Instead, the salesperson put her on hold, and then clocked out.

She says she was on hold for over an hour before her phone batteries ran out.

Multitasking

I have to do a lot of things at once during a call.

I'm constantly typing notes, for instance: pretty much everything  I say, everything the customer says, and everything either of us does, has to be noted, sometimes in a very specific format.

I'm also usually looking things up online pretty constantly: customer account info (via a sluggish and user-unfriendly web database), past work provided for the customer (via a different sluggish and user-unfriendly web database), problem-solving suggestions (via Google, or via any of several internal web resources, each slow to respond).

I'm also constantly checking an instant-messaging service, which has my coworkers' banter, supervisors' instructions, etc. If I need help, I may be typing into that instant-messaging service, and trying to ask questions (in the correct format) and hopefully to get them answered.

During this time, I have to try to talk to the customer and guide them through whatever they're doing, without them knowing that I'm doing anything else. I pride myself on doing a good job with this, and work really hard to be attentive to the customer.

So it's a bad sign, at the end of a successful call, when I've felt particular rapport and connection with a customer, when she says, "Are you multitasking? because you seem distracted."

If That Really IS Your Name

I have kind of an unusual first name. In fact I don't know anyone else with my name.

It's pretty geographically neutral- to most people's ears it might sound European or Asian or African or whatever. Who knows. I've never met any others. I like this pretty well.

However, in person I'm pretty visibly white. Genetically I come from southern redneck European-derived peasant stock (with, as usual, a little Cherokee somewhere back there). I generally, to my sorrow, do not ever get mistaken for anything much except a scion of all-American redneck Caucasia.

Even my voice sounds pretty all-American. (Though I once was mistaken for a Scotsman by an old lady who I'd said hello to). When I'm on the phone with old people I tend to cultivate a rootsy folksy persona and use my  'farmer's son' voice. This puts most people a bit at ease- I try not to sound intimidating or strange, and try to speak in a mild-nonspecific colloquial dialect.

There's probably a lot of privilege to that ability. I'm aware of this and try to remember it, and I try not to take it for granted.

However, sometimes, with phone support, someone already knows what they believe and cuts right through some of that white privilege, with their own axe-grinding. Like my last customer, who seized the phone from his wife to demand that I tell him where I was really from (a mid-sized North American city). When I told him, and after he'd demanded I spell my name several times, and repeated it back in venomous tones, he insisted:

"I know you're NOT REALLY from [North American City]. Where are you from REALLY, [strangely accented version of my name]? You can't fool ME. I KNOW you're not from there, [strangely/comically accented version of my name]. TELL ME THE TRUTH."


I explained, calmly and patiently, that I am indeed in [North American City], and asked if I could get back to fixing his wireless router. He cut me off and started making fun of what he apparently thought was some sort of foreign accent. Then he demanded to know exactly what part of town I lived in. I didn't answer, so he seized on the change to say "SEE YOU CANT EVEN FAKE IT BECAUSE YOU'VE NEVER BEEN THERE".

I tried to guide him back to the work we were doing (in fact, I'd just guided his wife through a router factory reset and when he interrupted we were just at the point where they'd need my help to ever get their internet connection back. It didn't seem fair to his wife to let this crazy person prevent me from doing that.)

 But, no, he cut me off again and started shouting "NO ONE WITH A NAME LIKE YOURS WOULD EVER EVER EVER LIVE IN [North American City]. I KNOW YOU'RE IN THE PHILLIPINES OR SOMEWHERE, WHY ARE YOU LYING TO ME. WHY ARE YOU LYING TO ME TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE".

Then his wife shrieked "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I JUST WANTED YOU TO HOLD THE PHONE FOR A MOMENT. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS" and the line went dead.

Timeline

Sometimes customers have a difficult time knowing the difference between the operating system and the internet.

I'll ask them if they're using a Windows or Mac PC, and a large percentage of both Mac and Windows users will say "Google". Because that's what they see in the middle of their web browser.

Or, they'll call in and say "I can't log in to Windows!" when they mean that they forgot their email password.

Just now I asked a customer to look for an icon on her computer desktop, and she explained that she can't see it because of Timeline.

The Way It Works

If you build a sufficiently complex phone support structure, beautiful patterns emerge. For instance:

1. A customer calls because their antivirus program says she's not connected to the internet. She knows that she is connected, because she can see websites and browse the internet. So she calls the phone number listed in the antivirus software.
2. That phone number directs her to call [giant evil corporation], which is an internet provider which has a business agreement with the antivirus company, instead.
3. The person who answers doesn't have a very good grasp on English, and thinks the customer is asking for help with her internet connection. So they transfer the customer to a premium-support department.
4. The premium-support department sales agent convinces the customer to sign up for a $40-plus-$10-per-month service subscription, as the only way to possibly solve her problem. The customer sighs, but really wants to get off the phone, so she agrees.
5. The customer is transferred to me, the support tech, who listens to the customer's explanation, and realizes that: (a) the problem should be handled by the antivirus company, not the internet provider; (b) the support subscription sold to the customer has nothing to do with her problems and couldn't possibly be any use to her (i.e., under the terms of that subscription, I'm explicitly forbidden to do any work that would help).
6. I look up the phone number for the antivirus company (whose tech support happens to be operated by the same company I work for, though in a different division), and transfer the customer to that phone number. Since the customer's paid for my time, I stay on the line and wait to talk to the person who answers.
7. No one answers; that phone line is out of service, but instead has a recorded message advising me to call a different phone number.
8. I call the new phone number. It has a recorded message telling me to call [giant evil corporation]. 
9. I call [giant evil corporation]. The agent who answers advises me to call the phone line I used in number 7. I explain that I just called that number, and it's not a useable phone number. The agent insists.
10. The customer hangs up.

Now, that's customer service.

Teams

I've been shifted to a new team. I actually kept my same schedule, but now I work with a new supervisor and an entirely different group of peers. Everyone in the entire company is in the same situation.

After months of close (chat-room) interaction, suddenly I have no idea who anyone is. I'll never meet any of them in person, but it's still an odd feeling.

Tune 'er Up

One of the services my department provides is a "tune-up".

These cost $50 for anyone uninformed enough to purchase one. Most people ask for them as part of an ongoing subscription. Which makes it slightly less ridiculous because the per-tuneup price can drop to $10 or so.

However:

A "tune-up" explicitly does not include any troubleshooting.
And... there are only three possible reasons your computer might need tuning up in the first place:

1. Your computer has too many crappy programs installed and they're all running at once and starting up with Windows (and/or you have third-party toolbars stacked up in your web browsers). If they're legitimate programs, you can and should uninstall them on your own. It's easy to do.
2. Your computer has spyware/adware/malware/viruses. You're in trouble.
3. You've somehow tinkered with your Windows settings and screwed them up. You're in trouble.

Of these, a tuneup can really only help with #1. We cannot do anything about 2 or 3 without upselling the customer to a much, much more expensive package.

In other words, people are just getting help removing software they could remove themselves.

Today I had a caller ask me for two tuneups, one on each of her two computers. Both were new computers, with all settings at default Windows configurations, and both had the usual amount of junkware for that situation: nothing too bad. The customer didn't, however, want me to remove any programs.

Which means that the tune-ups didn't actually do anything at all.

Shift Bid

They're changing our schedules.

All of us, all 170 or so techs, scattered in our home offices (in my case a closet) throughout North America, working for this dot-com that contracts to support an evil ISP monopoly... we're all getting scrambled into new schedules.

With the new schedules, we get assigned new "teams", meaning we won't work with any of the people we've come to know (know being a little constrained in this case by never seeing each other and only once or twice hearing each other's voices... but still having meaning because sharing a chat room during frustrating work hours still results in a type of knowing each other). We'll also get new supervisors. I've come to like mine, though she's terse and uncommunicative and often absent.

We each bid on our priorities. Our priorities are weighted by our performance metrics. Some folks will get weekends off, others will have their days off split up throughout the week. Some will work 7-5:30, others will work the graveyard shift. Some will get eight-hour shifts, some ten-hour shifts, some two five-hour shifts per day with a five-hour nap in between. All according to the decisions of someone with a large spreadsheet at Central Command.

My metrics are so-so at best. I don't care so much about working weekends. We'll see where I end up.

You Will Be Assimilated

In theory, our department isn't supposed to have any hold time.

In practice, hold time varies from 5 seconds to 20 minutes.

When the calls stack up faster than we can answer them, we call it "The Queue". Or, "The Q Monster".

The Q Monster doesn't like being mentioned. Any time someone says "how nice that it's a little quieter today", the next thing you know there will be back-to-back calls and customers will be waiting for five or even ten minutes.

When that happens, the customers are very angry. And take it out on us.

Cutting the Cord

In order to help someone work on their wireless router, I have to make sure they're plugged into it. With a wire.

This is firm policy, and it's also common sense. You can't change a wireless setting if you're connected wirelessly; you wind up disconnected and stranded. However, customers rarely understand this.

What's worse, our sales department doesn't always understand this. So they take folks' money, then transfer them to me, where I have to explain that I can't help them until they plug in a network cable. (Usually there are several minutes of them assuring me that they are plugged in, even though the way they say it makes it obvious that they're not).

Some customers act like I'm asking them to go buy a new computer when I gently explain that we need a network cable in order to continue. They get furious, even when I explain that Comcast will give them one for free and that every electronics store, big box store and sometimes even drug or grocery stores will have one for a few bucks.

Today when I went through this, I got someone who totally unloaded all her rage about Comcast and told me just what she thought about the whole company... then demanded a refund.

You can't please everyone. Some days in fact it feels like you can't please anyone.

The Specific Problem

If you were a giant corporation with millions of customers, and wanted to have the worst customer support possible.. how would you go about that?

Evidence suggests that the following is a very effective strategy:

1. Make sure all your services are in different departments.
2. Make sure those departments have no way of contacting each other.
3. Make sure customers have no way of contacting any of those departments, but have to click through an elaborate phone tree in which there are many dead ends.
4. Make sure front-line phone support agents aren't trained in basic customer service skills, and don't really understand which department is which.
5. Make sure your staffing is minimal enough that every department has a significant hold time, even for direct transfers.
6. Allow disconnects and hang-ups when a customer doesn't say exactly what the agent wants.

The results? Customers that have long hold times before they can reach a human being, then more long hold times while they're transferred to the wrong department, then more long hold times before they're hung up on. From an evil-corporate-mindset, it's absolutely perfect.

I've had customers reach me, in error, while trying to cancel their account because of the poor customer service they'd previously received. I can't do anything about that. So I have to put them on hold again, so that they can get transferred to someone else... who will hang up on them.

The Main Problem

The main problem with the ISP serving my customers (Comcast) is,

It absolutely does not care one bit about its customers.

It's a giant, giant company that doesn't need you.

So if you should happen to be one of those customers, and call because you have a problem, they don't care.

If you call because you want to cancel your account, they don't care.

In most markets they have the only fast internet around. What are you gonna do, take your business elsewhere?

Just pay up. They don't care.

The Gamble

Customers with odd problems. Sometimes I can solve them, sometimes I can't.

When I can't, it becomes stressful. Am I missing something obvious? Am I recommending the right followup/backup plan? Often the next step could cost the customer large amounts of money. And because I'm phone support I have limited amounts of information to go on; in some cases I need to make a quick diagnosis based on mumbled and extremely incoherent comments. Since the customer has already paid money to talk to me, I'm very conscious that asking them to pay for something else is going to seem like a ripoff.

Am I failing a customer? Or am I providing the best service I can?

It's just not always clear.