Suckerfish on the Side of Your Whale

Caller: "I have been unable to connect all weekend and again today, and I am getting thoroughly disgusted!"

Considering that the problem was that the customer was repeatedly misspelling her own name (in different ways!) as part of her username, I wonder who she was disgusted with?

...our blog would be more like this.

I suppose stupid people are customers of every industry. Despite being terrified of it, I still want to read the sex toy industry's equivalent.

Me: "I'm noticing that on your brother's account, your last name is spelled with an 'o', whereas I thought I heard you say yours was spelled with an 'e'. Did I mishear you?"
Caller: "No, my mom spelled my name wrong on my birth certificate."

With such an auspicious beginning, I should have known what to expect. It'd be cruel to post too much, so here's one of the "best" excerpts:

Me: "What version of Windows are you using?"
Caller: "Windows 95XP."
Me: "Windows 95 and Windows XP are actually two different versions. Do you know which of those two you have?"
Caller: "Uh, no, I'm not sure."
Me: "What color is the start menu?"
Caller: "The what?"
Me: "The start button."
Caller: "The what?"
Me: "The button in the bottom left that says start."
Caller: "In the bottom... the bottom right?"
Me: "No, sir, the bottom left."
Caller: "I see the time--"
Me: "No, sir, the bottom left."
Caller: "Oh. What am I looking for, again?"
Me: "The start button."
Caller: "The what?"
Me: "Start. S-T-A-R-T."
Caller: "Oh. I found it."
Me: "Perfect. What color is it?"
Caller: "Should I click on it?"
Me: "No, sir. Please, just tell me what color it is."

At least things got slightly better after that.

Normally I assume small letters, however, our authentication system allows users to use capitals in the password. In one case, a customer asked repeatedly for "small caps". It went something like this:

"That's small caps"
"Uh... Small letters and capital letters are different things. Did you want small letters or capital letters?"
"Small caps"
"No, it has to be one or the other. Which did you want?"
"Small caps"
"Small caps are when you have capital letters that have had the size scaled down. You can't type those. Small letters are also referred to as lowercase letters. Capital letters are big letters, also referred to as uppercase letters. Your only choices are 'small' or 'capital'. Which would you like?"

To help you appreciate just how absurd this is, I've invented a similar conversation:

"Would you like fries with that?"
"Yes no."
"Uh... Is that a yes or a no?"
"Yes no"
"Sir, you have to choose one of them"
"Yes no"
"No, you don't get it. 'Yes' is an affirmative response, 'no' is a negative response, and according to the law of the excluded middle, you can't respond with both!" *clerk's head explodes*

Clearly the customer is a master of Zen Buddhism and/or logical systems with more than 2 truth values. Or perhaps he actually wanted SMALL CAPS. Though this would of course make you wonder how he planned to type the password.

If you've learned to speak idiot by now, you may accurately have concluded by now that it was neither of the above. He wanted small letters. The worst part is that I've heard multiple people refer to small letters as small caps. Now I'm not normally too picky about mistakes creeping into the public lexicon, but seriously... Can we TRY to keep out mistakes that directly contradict the proper meaning? Or is it just that we "could care less"? Sigh.

Do you live in a rural area?

"No, I live in the country."

A customer came in to complain about our reminder notice today. He says it took him 10 minutes to get through it and get back online. This is certainly possible, dial-up isn't blisteringly fast, our customers aren't blisteringly smart, and it can take up to five minutes for our server to update. I can also understand why, if someone was particularly impatient, that that someone might not want a service that interrupts them for ten minutes, even if it was only once or twice a year.

What I can't understand is the mentality that says "I'm going to spend 5 minutes calling and complaining, then 10 more minutes on another call, then 10 more minutes on a third call, then some amount of travel time (this customer lives out-of-town) plus 5 more minutes on an in-person conversation", all on complaining about that 10 minute interruption. Especially since we clearly explained in the first call that we will not be changing that for next year.

Throw in a few hangup calls where he didn't say anything, and seven comments on his account complaining about this issue, and it just gets incomprehensible. Even if it's not just the 10 minutes that are the problem, and rather that they happen to occur at an inconvenient time, why complain so much? Why not just go with another company that does things the way you want them? They're out there. I ended up having to explain that there aren't many companies out there at our prices, largely because of this reminder notice, and suggested that he seek service elsewhere. He disagreed, and said there are lots. So why isn't he with one of them? My best guess is that he's either lying about the competition's prices, or he just likes fighting.

The sad part is I actually have his best interests in mind. I could be a dick and lie to him, and tell him whatever it takes to make him sign up for another year. I could take his money. But I don't. I suggest that someone else can better serve him if what he wants is to not waste 10 mins of his time every year. But for some reason that doesn't satisfy him. Ironic that all he ends up doing is wasting more of both of our time.

Okay, it's a crappy title, but after Terry started the jack theme I had to follow. Anyway...

In other phone jack news, a customer today had a laptop, which as far as I know always means that the modem only has one phone jack. This is fine. What's not fine is that she plugged her phone into it. What did she think was going to happen? I know we live in a wireless age, but still... This really makes you realize how most people don't stop to give even the slightest thought to how things actually work.

Because our service is a dialup Internet service, we normally ask people who inquire about signing up whether or not they've got a dialup modem. It's usually a simple question! Many people know the answer, and if they don't, we suggest that they take a look at the computer. If it's a desktop, then the vast majority of dialup modems will be a slot with two phone jacks. We tell them to look for two jacks, side by side. If it's a laptop, it'll possibly have one or both of an ethernet jack and a phone jack, and they'll be marked. In either case, the caller needs to look for a phone jack. Most of the time, that's fine. Just not for my last caller.

She had a laptop, so I explained that she'd need to look for a phone jack. She spent the next few minutes asking me what a phone jack looked like. I tried various ways of describing it, and suggested that she look at a phone jack in the wall to get a better idea of what they look like. "I don't know if this spot on the computer is a phone jack or not. How can I tell?" "Does it look like the phone jack in the wall?" "I don't know. How can I tell?"

Um, look at it?

"I'll take my business elsewhere!"

My favorite refrain in the customer service world. People figure that really, what a business cares about is getting your money (true). A business doesn't care about you as a person, how you're doing, how you're feeling, what you're thinking, except insofar as it affects you parting with your money. Consequently, the threat of taking your money with you is supposed to get a business' attention.

One problem is that you aren't really talking to a business when you're making that threat. You're talking to a person. Some people care more than others, and people care about different things. You might be talking to a jaded individual who couldn't give two craps about whether or not you come back to eat at Burger King (or whatever).

Another problem is that your money might not be enough to offset the cost of dealing with you. Let's say I'm at a hotel. I'm really demanding. I haggle and push at the desk, trying to get a better room than I was originally booked into. I get to the room and find some miniscule problem, then complain to the desk that it's unacceptable and demand to be upgraded. When I get to my new, upgraded room, I proceed to ask for everything I can think of that I won't be charged for, and I do it all on separate calls, maximizing the amount of time that it'll take the staff to bring it to me. I order room service, don't tip, and after eating the food, call down to the desk to complain about the quality of the service and food. Through the night, I constantly call down to complain about noise, even though it's just people walking to their rooms and closing their doors. In the morning, I complain about the quality of the stay and demand a discount on the room. I get my discount, and when the housekeeping staff gets up to the room, it's a disaster, although nothing is technically broken or permanently damaged.

The sad thing is that I'm personally aware of people who deliberately do this at hotels (and probably with other businesses) in order to never pay full price. What frustrates me is that there are some businesses who will accomodate people like that.

We don't. It's not worth our time to repeatedly deal with people who constantly complain about things way beyond our control. Other times, we'll reach an impasse with someone who doesn't like the way a certain policy is, and who doesn't like that the policy won't change on their behalf. Obviously, we'll try to figure out a solution to any problem that comes before us, but the nature of our business means that sometimes there's nothing we can do.

For example, if your computer is configured incorrectly and won't start, we can't help you. Yes, it's true that this means you can't get connected, but that's like calling your microwave company to fix the power outage that's preventing you from nuking your burrito.

Yesterday, a woman called us because she's installed a new piece of software. When she installed it, her connection died. We suggested uninstalling the software to see if that fixed the problem, and then possibly reinstalling that software afterwards. She did so, and the connection worked fine when the program was not on the computer, and died again when it was. She called back, so we suggested she check the software's documentation or contacted the vendor for support on why that might be happening, and leaving the program uninstalled in the meantime.

"So you're not going to help me?"

Some people believe that we should do everything in our power to ensure that our service is working for them. I think it's reasonable to expect us to help up to a point, but beyond that point, it's not reasonable anymore. If you've bought some random program that's supposed to speed up your computer and it's causing problems, how are we supposed to know how to help? If we suggest that you uninstall it and the problems go away, then I think we have helped as much as you can reasonably expect us to.

"Fine, then I'll cancel the account and go with someone more helpful!"

OK. You've got to realize that sometimes you're asking more of someone than you can really expect them to give. Sometimes it's worth a company's time to go further and try to retain the customer, but sometimes it's just not worth the trouble.

"I'll tell all my friends to cancel, and I know a lot of people who use your service!"

I hear that threat levied sometimes, and you know what? For all of the calls I've handled where someone wants to cancel, not one person has ever cited a friend's "poor" experience as the reason they're ending their own service.

It isn't that I don't care. I do like to help people fix their problems when I can. It's just that sometimes you bump up against an obstacle that isn't going to budge with the tools you've got at hand, and at that point, all you can recommend is that they go get a better tool.

It's the first few days of November, and for us, that means billing calls! When someone signs up for an account, one of the billing options is to pay by a monthly debit from their bank account. If they do this, the billing is very simple: it goes through on the first of each month, every month. Now, preauthorized payments usually take a couple of days to work their way through the bank's system, so those charges don't necessarily appear until two to four days after the first (longer if the first fell on a weekend or there's a holiday in there somewhere).

Sometimes, people NSF. When they do, our system simply deactivates their account. That may sound harsh, but I think it's better than leaving their accounts running and automatically attempting to take the payment again, since most banks will levy a charge of $30 or more per NSF. Anyway, the fact that people NSF isn't the amusing part. What is amusing is the way that well over half of them respond.

"Well, there's definitely money in there!"

OK, sure. I bet it's very likely that your bank's computerized system made a simple oversight with the numbers and told our system that there wasn't enough money, even though there was.

People get huffy about it. They insist that there was enough money in the account. Our system must be wrong. Every time, I answer more or less the same way: "this isn't an issue with our system. When we requested the payment from your bank, the bank's system replied that there wasn't enough money in your account. If you believe that to be an error, please check with your bank."

Most of the time, if I talk to that person again, there's a sheepish reply that they'd forgotten about this payment or that withdrawl, and they ask to have the account billed again, as the problem has been fixed. Sometimes, however, it never gets to that point. The person refuses to believe that it could be their problem.

"Your system must have made a mistake!"

The good thing is that we don't levy NSF fees, so the customer doesn't end up having much to be upset at us for. If they want to have the billing attempted again, we direct them to connect and turn on their account once more. Either they do, and the attempt to receive payment is made again, or they don't, and the account stays dormant.

What I really like is the embarrassed indignation that comes from being caught without enough money. I'm sure it's happened to almost all of it. Your credit card declines at a restaurant, you're caught without cash at Tim Horton's, your mortgage cheque bounces because you forgot about that orthodontist bill... whatever. Life goes on, usually with your money.

Me: "Tech support, how can I help you?"
empty silence
Me: "Hello? Is anyone there?"
Caller: "Yes!"
Me: "Can I help you?"
Caller: "No, I'm on the phone, but I'm not supposed to be talking to you!"
Me: "O... K..."
caller hangs up

"What does it mean if your monitor is smoking? Like, in the back? Should I turn it off?"