Suckerfish on the Side of Your Whale

I can't help but smile when a user tells me that the "rabbit" on their screen has frozen up.

"I'm not hanging up until this is fixed!"

I get the sentiment behind that statement. Really, I do. You have a problem, the problem is frustrating, and you really want it to be fixed.

The only problem is with the way you're telling me. You sound confrontational, like the problem is personally attributable to me. That's not good. And you're also making it sound like you're going to be a difficult and uncompromising person to deal with. That's also not good.

The specific reality of the tech call is that you're at the mercy of the technician. Most support agents will do their best to help you, and will look for the best solution: something that gets you off the phone quickly and solves the problem completely, which ensures that you won't have to call back. That almost sounds harsh, except that it's what the caller wants.

But if you make a declaration like "I'm not hanging up until this is fixed", you end up sounding unreasonable right away, and you make me not want to do my best. It's counterproductive. Instead, I want to find the fastest, most broad way to fix your problem, which may or may not be excessive. Here's an analogy: for most people, I'd kill the spider with spray or just squish it with a paper towl. But because you're being belligerent, I'm going to go find a bulldozer and knock over your house. Spider problem solved!

Sometimes a user will explain something with great detail. I commend their attempts as it can often result in a tidbit of information useful for solving their problem. It's incredibly frustating to get an unusually vague user who describes the following problem:

"The box that used to pop up when I clicked on the thing on my computer has disappeared and then nothing happens."

I'm afraid I don't understand. Do you mean you can't connect to the internet?

As an answer to my question, they repeat the same thing over, this time followed by "You know!". Those 2 words are somehow supposed to instantly clarify the sentence for me. Thank goodness you added "You know!" because for a second there I was lost!

When trying to be detailed, many users will throw in a bit of irrelevant information. I don't fault them for this. It's not always easy to determine what information is relevant when you're unfamiliar with your computer. I simply find it interesting to see what information some people will divulge.

Some like to add that their password is the name of their pet or relative. Others will tell you to whom and why they are sending an e-mail. One woman went as far as saying that she had recently moved and that she was trying to send an email to her pastor. He had helped her move in and then sent her an email a week ago to see how things were going. She wanted to reply and thank him for helping out.

However, there's one call that always stands out in my mind. A woman called in because she was upset that a proxy page had come up to alert her that her account would soon expire. As she hadn't really read the page, I explained what it was about. She quickly calmed down saying "I'm probably just complaining because I'm on my period."

Me: "CompanyName, Terry speaking."
Caller: "Hi. I used to use CompanyName."
Me: "OK."
Caller: "Yeah. I used to use CompanyName."
Me: "Right."
Caller: "So our computer was broken and we got it back with a new window and now our Internet is gone."
Me: "So you needed to have the connection setup on the computer again?"
Caller: "Hold on, I'll ask my mommy."
in the background: "Mommy!" Some unintelligible conversation goes on.
Caller: "My mommy won't let me."
Me: "OK, so what exactly is it that I can help you with?"
Caller: "Nothing."
Me: "OK then, have a nice day!"

I found another work-related entry on my main blog from a while ago, and thought I'd share it.

Just yesterday, a customer demanded to "speak with someone more senior and customer orientated [sic] than you!" He had been decrying the fact that he couldn't find our phone number for a month and a half (he could have checked the phone book, or called 411 and asked) and generally complaining that we should have cancelled his account because he's not using the service anymore. Never mind that he didn't ever contact us to let us know that he wasn't using it... that's our problem, not his. Probably the most bizarre moment came when he threatened to write a letter of complaint to my manager about me, and I offered to give him our address, and when I asked if he had something handy to record the information with, he said "No! I use my mind!" I only wish I could adequately capture his tone of voice, because I almost laughed out loud. Oh, and he was insistent that when he had talked to me on Friday, I was very rude. The only kicker is, when he had called on Friday, I had been gone from work for six hours.

I actually remember the "I use my mind!" part, more than a year later. Awesome.

I have been known to let my attention to detail slack. There have been times where I've forgotten a birthday or an appointment, even though it's written on my calendar. There have been times that I forget where I've put something fairly important. There have been times that involve me forgetting when a payment comes out from my account.

With that last one, though, I usually find out pretty quickly if I've forgotten something, because I look at the statements. I receive one every month from my bank on paper, and I usually check four or five times a month online. That's how I noticed the time that a $400 Visa payment came out of my account, which I thought was curious, since I don't have a Visa.

Anyway, this brings me to CaptainDetail. He called to ask why he was being billed for the service. The reason appears to be because neither he nor anyone else has ever notified us that the account shouldn't continue to be billed. It surprises some people, but we don't psychically know that they've switched to another ISP; we expect our customers to call in or email us or something if they want to cancel the account.

This happens once in a while. Most people understand that since they didn't tell us that they wanted to cancel, the service didn't cancel. Some argue that they should be entitled to a refund. For us, it's a pretty clear-cut issue.

For this guy, he didn't notice for FOUR YEARS. It was way back in 2001 when he'd first called to sign up, but he was still under contract with another ISP, so in early 2002, he started using the service. Apparently, he only used it briefly, but forgot or neglected to ever let us know that he'd stopped, and so the billing continued.

Four years!

How do you not notice something like that? Does this guy not ever look at his account balance? I can understand having it happen for a month or two, but it's been about fiftymonths for him.

Way to go, CaptainDetail!

This doesn't have anything to do with my current job, but it feels like the same kind of customer experience. A few years ago, while I was in school, I had a job working at a party place for young kids, whose ages were generally in the single digits. For the most part, it was a pretty fun job; I enjoyed working with the kids, and since it was mostly used for birthday parties, the atmosphere was frenetic and fun. There were two main aspects to the job, working the floor and working the counter.

The former meant you watched the kids on the various attractions, to make sure that they were being safe and relatively respectful of each other (most six year olds fall in line pretty easily, and they're usually really cute about it). The latter meant serving pizza, taking payments, and answering the phone. I did both at various times, and on one particular Friday night, I was at the counter.

It was the Friday in March break, which meant that it was nearing the end of an insanely busy period for us. As a way of giving the staff a break, the owner had slightly shortened our hours on Friday and Saturday night. Normally we closed around 9, but on these days, we were closing at 6. It was posted on the door in two places, and had been for almost three weeks before March break.

At about 5pm, a couple came in with their two kids. They were regulars. Things were fine, until about ten to six, when I flicked the lights twice to indicate that we were approaching closing time. The mother then marched up to the counter, looking rather upset.

Her: "Why are you closing? We always stay till 9!"
Me: "Well, tonight we're closing at 6. That's been posted on the front door for a couple of weeks."
Her: "But we always stay till 9!"
Me: "I understand that, but unfortunately tonight, our hours are a bit shorter in the evening."
Her: "Well, we're staying till 9!"
Me: "OK. Well, since we're closing at six, we'll be turning off the machines and lights in about fifteen minutes, and I'll be locking the doors and arming the alarm around 6:30."
Her: "We're still going to stay till 9!"
Me: "Sure. When the police arrive because the alarm goes off, you can let them know that you're going to be here till 9."

Today, we've had a few customers call in and decide that they don't want to continue their accounts with us, which is fine. The part that strikes them as not fine is that they aren't entitled to a refund.

Our business works in a pretty straightforward manner. Our policies are simple and blunt and very upfront. They might not be for everyone, but that's why we not only explain the major points on the phone, and explicitly display them on a proxy page before a customer activates, reactivates, or renews an account. In essence, even if there's miscommunication between you and the rep signing you up or handling your billing call, everything still goes through these proxy pages, which explicitly lay out the billing and the conditions.

And that's why I love people who call in and decide that they can break their end of a contract at any time without repercussions. Here are some of the arguments I've heard from people who've signed up on a yearly basis, which is a one year contract with the full amount billed in advance, and call us arguing that they shouldn't be on the hook for the year anymore:

• "I've decided that I need high speed."
• "I don't have a computer anymore."
• "My computer isn't working."
• "I'm going on vacation."
• "I don't want your service anymore."

All of those things are fine, but they don't constitute a valid reason for the customer to break their end of the contract.

From there, the discussion usually moves in one of a few directions (sometimes hitting more than one, depending on the tactics taken by the caller):

I didn't know there was no refund when I signed up. It's an interesting quirk of our laws that ignorance doesn't excuse you from breaking them. Not only that, but it's hard to credibly claim you didn't know when the fact that there are no refunds is mentioned explicitly by every agent when you're signing up, and it's explicitly mentioned in a reasonably large font at the top of the terms and conditions on the proxy pages.

I didn't know how the billing would work. See above; the exact amount of the charges, the approximate time, and the exact date are listed on the pages.

Company X offers refunds! Good for them!

I didn't read the terms, I just kept hitting next and OK. Well, if you're comfortable with giving your legal acceptance to things you haven't bothered to peruse, I guess that's your choice, but it doesn't excuse you from your responsibilities.

You should offer refunds. That's kind of a subjective opinion, isn't it? I mean, I think it's great that in all but the most unusual cases, we don't offer refunds. I spent too long working in other places where anyone who whined and complained at a loud enough volume or for a long enough time would eventually get their way, and it infuriated me. If the company screwed up and didn't deliver on what they promised, then yeah, the consumer should be compensated, but if the consumer is bitching because they had unrealistic expectations or the weather was cloudy or things didn't turn out quite the way they thought, then why should the company be on the hook? Offering refunds to people simply because they've succeeded in pissing off the company seems silly, and it might only encourage that individual and others to try the same tactics.

I thought I wanted a full year of service, but I don't anymore. That can happen, but then perhaps you shouldn't have committed to one year. However, the fact remains that you did commit.

Why not just bill me at the monthly rate for the months I've used? I like this one. Hey, I don't want it for the whole year, so why not just bill me as if I signed up for the monthly plan, which costs more but also gives me the flexibility to cancel at any time? The reason is that if we did that, it'd be pointless to have a cheaper one year plan.

If you have a two-year plan on your cell phone, it usually costs a big fee to break that plan. If you're under contract to build something and you don't build it, you might get sued. If you sign some kind of financial contract with a bank and they loan you money, and you don't make your payments, they might start taking your stuff. We prefer to make it a very simple policy: there's no fee, there's no repercussion, there's just no refund.

I don't mind if people ask about a refund. I would, if I was in their shoes. What gets very frustrating is when people argue and argue when the person on the other end is very obviously not going to budge and when they don't have a case in the first place.

Also funny in a frustrating sort of way is when people think they're sly and profess that things didn't work the way that they were supposed to. I guess it could happen, but it's interesting how I have yet to talk to someone whose story actually held up when I started asking them questions.

I was going to end on a snappy note, but I got nothin' else.

A caller asked how we accept payment. I told him.

Caller: "Oh, I don't have those things. I have a trust fund."
Me: "OK, well, those methods that I mentioned are the ones that we accept."
Caller: "But I have a trust fund."
Me: "Right."
Caller: "So you don't take cashier's cheques?"
Me: "No, I'm afraid not. The methods that I listed for you are the methods of payment that we accept."
Customer: "Oh. See, I have a trust fund, and even though it's my money, the trustee won't let me at it, even though I'm 40 years old.

What am I supposed to say to that? I decided to use my stock non-committal space filler.

Me: "OK."

I decided to dig out an old post from my main blog and resurrect the humor from one of our customers. Basically, he'd been trying to send an email to someone whose inbox was full, so he was getting server messages back saying "the user is over quota" or something similar. Rather than call us or find some other way to contact his intended recipient, he decided to repeatedly reply to the automated system messages. One of our network admins noticed and compiled the emails into a tidy package for our tech staff's amusement.

"Im sick from you people fuck"
"Fuck you guys sacks real hey bad"
"seriesly it is fucted you interneted"
"Fuck you guys sacks real hey bad" [twice!]
"Hi [company] has a very poor technologe it is old 10 years low tek. there n sould be eny error ti is not so socks"
"becaus [company] has a ver poor technologe"

Warning, the above paragraph contains coarse language and rampant stupidity, so don't read it if that stuff offends you!

Last week, we started receiving calls from customers who told us that Internet Explorer was just shutting down on them after being open for no more than 15 seconds. They stayed connected, and it didn't matter what web site they were going to, IE would just die.

At first, we were a bit stumped. We recommended the usual stuff that seemed to make sense: updating and scanning with antivirus and antispyware software. When that didn't help, we cautiously suggested that reinstalling IE might help. However, we knew that we didn't know a specific cause or solution, and we'd say so; our ideas were just that, and we weren't guaranteeing they'd help.

All of that changed when some person called our general reception line.

Caller: "Hi, I heard some people are having Internet Explorer close, have you heard that?"
Me: "Well, yes, some of our customers are having their browser windows close unexpectedly."
Caller: "I heard it had to do with Yahoo toolbar, did you hear that?"
Me: "I had not heard that, no."
Caller: "OK, bye."

I don't know if that person was even a customer of ours, but she'd provided a solution to the problem. When next I had a caller with the same issue, we went to add/remove programs, and lo, that caller did have Yahoo toolbar installed. And so I asked if she'd mind uninstalling it, since we'd heard a suggestion that it might help. She didn't mind. I asked her to restart and call back with the result. Shortly afterwards, that customer called back to say that uninstalling the toolbar had fixed the problem. As far as I'm aware, everyone experiencing that issue had Yahoo toolbar, and uninstalling it addressed the issue.

Now, I don't know for sure if the toolbar itself was the problem, or if it was some other software conflicting with the toolbar, but it was a weird technical issue and one of those rare times where it had us slightly stumped. In fact, if that random person hadn't called and pointed me in the right direction, we might not have found a solution for some time. It just goes to show that sometimes we get frustrated by an actual technical issue.

Caller: "I'm calling about the Internet!"
Me: "Alright."

Time passes.

Me: "So... what is it about the Internet that you wanted to know?"

Here we have the first bit of fun with this caller: conversation skills. As it turns out, she wanted to sign up for dialup service. No problem! That's what we do. I explain the billing options to her, she selects the one that suits her, then I ask if the computer has a dialup modem.

Customer: "No, it doesn't."
Me: "OK, well it would need a dialup modem to connect to a dialup service like ours. You'd mentioned a phone cord before. Where do you have it plugged in?"
Customer: "In the computer."
Me: "And is there one phone jack there, or two?"
Customer: "One."
Me: "OK, that's almost certainly a network card, then. It's got a wider jack that's meant for a high speed connection, or for networking two computers together. You're sure the computer doesn't have another spot with two phone jacks?"
Customer: "Nope, it doesn't."
Me: "Unfortunately, then, it sounds like you'd need to have one installed before your computer would be able to get through to us."
Customer: "But my last computer had a dialup modem!"

Excellent! You know what? My last car had air conditioning. Even though my current one doesn't, I'll just turn on the AC in the previous car, and we'll all be cooler!

And from the very next caller:

Me: "You would need to be sitting at your computer, and we would step you through the account setup."
Customer: "I don't have that."

You don't have what? An account? I know, that's what we're about to setup. A computer? OK, you might want to get one. Something else? I don't really know; the response doesn't seem to directly refer to what I'd actually said.

As our loyal readers have probably seen, it's rare that our difficulties stem from actual computer problems, although I have an update to make about one of those...