Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The logical order of things
Earlier today, I received a call from a customer who wanted to suspend her account while she gets her computer fixed. OK, no problem, I'll put you through to the right folks. Half an hour later, she called back. She wanted to troubleshoot a connection problem.
Well, here's the thing, ma'am, you can't connect to the internet now because you've just put your account on hold. "Oh... I put it on hold because I can't connect. Can we troubleshoot that?" Well, right now you'll be getting an error with the username and password because your account isn't active. If the problem is anything else, we won't really be able to look at it yet. "Oh... well can you go through all of the options in 'advanced' and we can see if they're right?" The particular section that she was looking at has more than 60 options. I'm not about about to go through all of those with someone unless it's actually necessary. I suggested she just hit the restore defaults button, as that won't hurt anything and will set all options to their Windows defaults. She said she'd already done that.
"Well then, I'm not sure what we can really do with this. If you were having a connection problem, you'd need to be able to connect for us to try to fix it, and if your account has been suspended, you won't be able to connect."
"Oh, that's ok, I'm pretty much on my way to take the computer to a technician anyway."
What?! ARGH.
Well, here's the thing, ma'am, you can't connect to the internet now because you've just put your account on hold. "Oh... I put it on hold because I can't connect. Can we troubleshoot that?" Well, right now you'll be getting an error with the username and password because your account isn't active. If the problem is anything else, we won't really be able to look at it yet. "Oh... well can you go through all of the options in 'advanced' and we can see if they're right?" The particular section that she was looking at has more than 60 options. I'm not about about to go through all of those with someone unless it's actually necessary. I suggested she just hit the restore defaults button, as that won't hurt anything and will set all options to their Windows defaults. She said she'd already done that.
"Well then, I'm not sure what we can really do with this. If you were having a connection problem, you'd need to be able to connect for us to try to fix it, and if your account has been suspended, you won't be able to connect."
"Oh, that's ok, I'm pretty much on my way to take the computer to a technician anyway."
What?! ARGH.
Labels: futility
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Uh, what?
A couple of amusing things I've heard during the day:
"I'm probably the most literate and illiterate person in the world." Uhh... thanks caller, I think you may have reinforced half of your premise, at least.
From a tech: "Do you have all of your filters on the phone? ... Uh oh! Is the dog OK?"
"I'm probably the most literate and illiterate person in the world." Uhh... thanks caller, I think you may have reinforced half of your premise, at least.
From a tech: "Do you have all of your filters on the phone? ... Uh oh! Is the dog OK?"
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I just don't know
One of the things that drives me crazy is when someone doesn't know the answer to a question, and so just makes one up. When you're doing tech support, that's horrible. If the caller doesn't know the answer, you'd much rather hear them say "I don't know". Then you can try and help them find out, and you can be sure that you've got the right answer.
When a caller gives you an answer and they don't know, you don't find out when they're wrong until you've wasted some time. There are easy cases where this happens, and it's just frustrating:
Me: "What version of Windows are you using?"
Caller: "2000."
Me: "OK, please click on Start, move up to Settings, and click Network and Dial-up Connections."
Caller: "It doesn't say that under settings. It says Dialup Networking. Should I click that?"
At this point I know they actually have Windows Millenium Edition. Admittedly, it's stupid that the naming conventions worked out so that there's a Windows 2000 and Millenium Edition, but there is, and they're fairly different.
Then there are other cases where a caller says something, and we waste a fair bit of time figuring out the problem, only to discover that the reason that we didn't look at the cause was because of an answer that the caller gave earlier. Take the case of Lance*, who called and said he wasn't able to send out email. Receiving was working, but not sending.
The first thing we usually do with most email errors is doublecheck the account settings. On our way in, we saw that he had an email account with another company. I asked if he still used it, since if he didn't, we would remove it. "Yeah, I still use it sometimes." Are you connected to that internet provider right now? "No, I'm connected to you guys." The logs seemed to back that up, so we moved on.
We checked the account settings, and they were fine. We checked for software that might be interfering, but turning it off didn't seem to help. We tried to telnet into the outgoing mail server, and it failed. Hmm.
I asked him to try emailing himself from the other email account, and it worked fine. OK... so he's able to get through perfectly well on some other provider's email account but not ours. Are you sure you're connected to us right now? "Yeah." Alright, because it's behaving like the computer is connected to the other provider. "Nope, it isn't."
So we went back to the command prompt and I had him enter ipconfig. Sure enough, the domain was the other provider. "Oh... I don't know how that happened." Well, let's have you try connecting to us, then retry your email. "Oh, it worked. So... I should make sure I'm connected to you before I try to send your email?"
Yes. Yes you should.
The worst part is that it's such a simple issue, and we could have had it resolved in about three minutes, instead of 25. He didn't know who he was connected to, but since he answered surely, I didn't have a reason to doubt him until nothing else turned up a problem.
*Probably not his real name. I don't remember what his name was, but for some reason 'Lance' makes me laugh, and I don't remember laughing at his name, so it probably wasn't Lance.
When a caller gives you an answer and they don't know, you don't find out when they're wrong until you've wasted some time. There are easy cases where this happens, and it's just frustrating:
Me: "What version of Windows are you using?"
Caller: "2000."
Me: "OK, please click on Start, move up to Settings, and click Network and Dial-up Connections."
Caller: "It doesn't say that under settings. It says Dialup Networking. Should I click that?"
At this point I know they actually have Windows Millenium Edition. Admittedly, it's stupid that the naming conventions worked out so that there's a Windows 2000 and Millenium Edition, but there is, and they're fairly different.
Then there are other cases where a caller says something, and we waste a fair bit of time figuring out the problem, only to discover that the reason that we didn't look at the cause was because of an answer that the caller gave earlier. Take the case of Lance*, who called and said he wasn't able to send out email. Receiving was working, but not sending.
The first thing we usually do with most email errors is doublecheck the account settings. On our way in, we saw that he had an email account with another company. I asked if he still used it, since if he didn't, we would remove it. "Yeah, I still use it sometimes." Are you connected to that internet provider right now? "No, I'm connected to you guys." The logs seemed to back that up, so we moved on.
We checked the account settings, and they were fine. We checked for software that might be interfering, but turning it off didn't seem to help. We tried to telnet into the outgoing mail server, and it failed. Hmm.
I asked him to try emailing himself from the other email account, and it worked fine. OK... so he's able to get through perfectly well on some other provider's email account but not ours. Are you sure you're connected to us right now? "Yeah." Alright, because it's behaving like the computer is connected to the other provider. "Nope, it isn't."
So we went back to the command prompt and I had him enter ipconfig. Sure enough, the domain was the other provider. "Oh... I don't know how that happened." Well, let's have you try connecting to us, then retry your email. "Oh, it worked. So... I should make sure I'm connected to you before I try to send your email?"
Yes. Yes you should.
The worst part is that it's such a simple issue, and we could have had it resolved in about three minutes, instead of 25. He didn't know who he was connected to, but since he answered surely, I didn't have a reason to doubt him until nothing else turned up a problem.
*Probably not his real name. I don't remember what his name was, but for some reason 'Lance' makes me laugh, and I don't remember laughing at his name, so it probably wasn't Lance.
Labels: confidence, honesty, wasteoftime
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Complete information
Caller: "It's not working."
Me: "Alright, I'll just need a bit more information to tell where the problem is happening... can you tell me exactly what you're seeing when it's not working?"
Caller: "Nothing. It's just not working."
This is one of those frustrating things that happens on a call. There's a problem, but the caller either won't or can't describe what's happening. In my years doing support, the number of times where it would have been completely accurate to say "there's nothing happening" can be counted on one hand. Having nothing happen and having something happen incorrectly are two different things.
A caller today told me that nothing was happening. As it turned out, what was happening was that he was being prompted for his username and password and he was entering them, but they weren't working. The reason for that was that he had tried setting something up on his own and mistakenly enabled an option that shouldn't have been on. However, this didn't come out till after I'd helped him fix the problem. And I didn't even know what the problem was, I just thought I'd try removing and recreating the account to know that the settings were ok. When I'd done that, he said "oh, that's great! It's working! It wasn't before, but I wasn't sure what to do with this setting and this other setting..."
If he'd just told me that he wasn't getting a response after being prompted for his login information, I would have been able to go straight to the setting that was causing the problem. If he'd said that he just setup the account and it wasn't working, I might not have gone straight to the problem setting, but we still probably would have found it a lot faster.
Why not just say that you tried setting up the account and this one part of it doesn't seem to work? Is it a pride thing? I don't think any less of a person who doesn't know that SSL needs to be unchecked or that authentication needs to be turned on here but off here, or any of the other arcane settings that are confusing to the uninitiated. I do think less of a person who finds some reason not to save his own time by giving us an unhelpful statement about the problem.
"I don't know, it just doesn't work."
Then I don't know, I'm just not sure how to troubleshoot that.
Me: "Alright, I'll just need a bit more information to tell where the problem is happening... can you tell me exactly what you're seeing when it's not working?"
Caller: "Nothing. It's just not working."
This is one of those frustrating things that happens on a call. There's a problem, but the caller either won't or can't describe what's happening. In my years doing support, the number of times where it would have been completely accurate to say "there's nothing happening" can be counted on one hand. Having nothing happen and having something happen incorrectly are two different things.
A caller today told me that nothing was happening. As it turned out, what was happening was that he was being prompted for his username and password and he was entering them, but they weren't working. The reason for that was that he had tried setting something up on his own and mistakenly enabled an option that shouldn't have been on. However, this didn't come out till after I'd helped him fix the problem. And I didn't even know what the problem was, I just thought I'd try removing and recreating the account to know that the settings were ok. When I'd done that, he said "oh, that's great! It's working! It wasn't before, but I wasn't sure what to do with this setting and this other setting..."
If he'd just told me that he wasn't getting a response after being prompted for his login information, I would have been able to go straight to the setting that was causing the problem. If he'd said that he just setup the account and it wasn't working, I might not have gone straight to the problem setting, but we still probably would have found it a lot faster.
Why not just say that you tried setting up the account and this one part of it doesn't seem to work? Is it a pride thing? I don't think any less of a person who doesn't know that SSL needs to be unchecked or that authentication needs to be turned on here but off here, or any of the other arcane settings that are confusing to the uninitiated. I do think less of a person who finds some reason not to save his own time by giving us an unhelpful statement about the problem.
"I don't know, it just doesn't work."
Then I don't know, I'm just not sure how to troubleshoot that.
Labels: information, pride
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Cream of the crop
I used to believe that common sense was something that was ingrained into each and every one of us. Boy was I ever wrong. Every day brings a new counterexample.
A customer called in because his high speed wasn't connecting. Sounds like a typical description of a problem we'd get. There is, however, one catch. We don't offer a high speed service. After explaining to the customer that he no longer has service with us and that he should contact his high speed provider, I sent him on his way.
I can understand that when someone has just recently switched services, if any difficulties arise, they will just call the phone number on a post-it note nearby that says "Technical Support". Simple mistake. Now what makes this customer "special" is that he stopped using our service a year and a half ago to switch to high speed.
He called back the next day because his e-mail wasn't working...
A customer called in because his high speed wasn't connecting. Sounds like a typical description of a problem we'd get. There is, however, one catch. We don't offer a high speed service. After explaining to the customer that he no longer has service with us and that he should contact his high speed provider, I sent him on his way.
I can understand that when someone has just recently switched services, if any difficulties arise, they will just call the phone number on a post-it note nearby that says "Technical Support". Simple mistake. Now what makes this customer "special" is that he stopped using our service a year and a half ago to switch to high speed.
He called back the next day because his e-mail wasn't working...
Monday, February 12, 2007
Of course you did, now let's find out what REALLY happened
When I'm asked what skill is most important for a tech support agent to have, I'll generally reply that it's an ability to figure out what the problem is. It requires some amount of visualizing, and so a familiarity with how computers work is pretty important, but more important still is the ability to communicate with a caller. For example, I hear this far too often:
Caller: "I get through to the first screen and I do everything I always did, but it's not working!"
This statement tells me nothing. This particular caller was adamant that nothing at all had changed and that probably her account had some kind of problem or we were having a problem and not letting her on. By carefully asking questions, I found out that she was getting an error 691, which means that her username and password weren't authenticating properly. The problem was that she'd replaced her username with her actual name, all typed out properly, with capital letters and spaces and all that stuff that you don't put in a username.
And so we find that the "first screen" was the connection window, "everything I always did" was a mistaken belief that she'd always entered her proper name as her username, and "it's not working" was not, in fact, due to an account problem, but due to the ever-present PEBKAC epidemic.
Caller: "I get through to the first screen and I do everything I always did, but it's not working!"
This statement tells me nothing. This particular caller was adamant that nothing at all had changed and that probably her account had some kind of problem or we were having a problem and not letting her on. By carefully asking questions, I found out that she was getting an error 691, which means that her username and password weren't authenticating properly. The problem was that she'd replaced her username with her actual name, all typed out properly, with capital letters and spaces and all that stuff that you don't put in a username.
And so we find that the "first screen" was the connection window, "everything I always did" was a mistaken belief that she'd always entered her proper name as her username, and "it's not working" was not, in fact, due to an account problem, but due to the ever-present PEBKAC epidemic.
Labels: communication, pebkac
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Try to make it funny next time
Hey, someone's still posting to this blog! Today's lucky entry is a caller who was fairly nice, and he wasn't notable because of any severe technical problems. Instead, he was noticeable because 1) he couldn't see very well and 2) he couldn't tell jokes very well.
The fact that he couldn't see made it tough to troubleshoot is problem, since it was most likely just a cord that had come loose or something similar. However, he couldn't identify his modem or router, or really anything else. He was OK with having someone who could see a little better give us a call back. And someone who either didn't tell jokes or picked better ones. Here's a choice morsel.
Caller: "Can I ask you a question?"
Me: "Sure."
Caller: "Why don't you take a blind man skydiving?"
Me: "Um, I'm not sure."
Caller: "His dog will go crazy!"
Me: "..."
The fact that he couldn't see made it tough to troubleshoot is problem, since it was most likely just a cord that had come loose or something similar. However, he couldn't identify his modem or router, or really anything else. He was OK with having someone who could see a little better give us a call back. And someone who either didn't tell jokes or picked better ones. Here's a choice morsel.
Caller: "Can I ask you a question?"
Me: "Sure."
Caller: "Why don't you take a blind man skydiving?"
Me: "Um, I'm not sure."
Caller: "His dog will go crazy!"
Me: "..."
Labels: jokes
