Monday, July 02, 2007
You think?
Caller: "I moved my desk and knocked the cable out, and now the internet doesn't work. Can you help me?"
Me: "Sure. Have you plugged the cable back in?"
Caller: "Oh. No. That would probably help, huh?"
Me: "I'd imagine so."
If you call into support and wonder why agents often ask you very basic, obvious-seeming questions...
Me: "Sure. Have you plugged the cable back in?"
Caller: "Oh. No. That would probably help, huh?"
Me: "I'd imagine so."
If you call into support and wonder why agents often ask you very basic, obvious-seeming questions...
Friday, May 11, 2007
Redundancy and stupidity
I was talking to one of my former coworkers, Marcus, and he asked if OurCompany installs any software. Usually we don't. He had been talking to a woman who used to be our customer, and she was saying that she kept seeing stuff from OurCompany when she was checking her email with her new provider. Marcus asked a few more questions and figured that what she was seeing was just old email that she'd received on her email address from OurCompany. Obviously, that email stays there, even if you change providers. I mean, you can delete it if you want to, but why would you? Anyway, she was probably just seeing that it said OurCompany somewhere on her computer and panicking.
Fast forward 30 seconds. I get a call, which turns out to be from the same woman, who's describing the exact same problem to me. Now, at the time, I didn't realize that the woman was the one that Marcus was just talking to. She said that she kept seeing stuff from OurCompany. I checked for old accounts, and there weren't any, so I asked where she was seeing it, and she just said "when my email comes up", so I figured she just wasn't connected when she was opening her email program, and was being prompted to pick a connection.
I don't know for sure which is the case, because this woman couldn't really describe a problem to me. Repeating that "it just comes up on my screen!!" isn't really helpful from a tech point of view. I hope she either doesn't call us back or, if she does, that she's got some kind of newly discovered descriptive ability.
Following her call, I got two more winners. The first was a caller who didn't realize that after he connected to the internet, he needed to do something. He connected, then just sat looking at the screen for 15 minutes, expecting something to happen. I let him know that he needed to open Internet Explorer or something else. Once you connect, you have to tell the computer what you're doing. And after that, the next caller needed to be told that she had to be connected to the internet to check her email. "But why? I'm checking my email, not going on the internet!!"
Good times.
Fast forward 30 seconds. I get a call, which turns out to be from the same woman, who's describing the exact same problem to me. Now, at the time, I didn't realize that the woman was the one that Marcus was just talking to. She said that she kept seeing stuff from OurCompany. I checked for old accounts, and there weren't any, so I asked where she was seeing it, and she just said "when my email comes up", so I figured she just wasn't connected when she was opening her email program, and was being prompted to pick a connection.
I don't know for sure which is the case, because this woman couldn't really describe a problem to me. Repeating that "it just comes up on my screen!!" isn't really helpful from a tech point of view. I hope she either doesn't call us back or, if she does, that she's got some kind of newly discovered descriptive ability.
Following her call, I got two more winners. The first was a caller who didn't realize that after he connected to the internet, he needed to do something. He connected, then just sat looking at the screen for 15 minutes, expecting something to happen. I let him know that he needed to open Internet Explorer or something else. Once you connect, you have to tell the computer what you're doing. And after that, the next caller needed to be told that she had to be connected to the internet to check her email. "But why? I'm checking my email, not going on the internet!!"
Good times.
Labels: communication, pebkac
Friday, May 04, 2007
Hey, I didn't tell you to do that
Yesterday, a caller got really frustrated at me, and she almost had a good point. Her contention: her monitor was working fine before she called, and now it isn't.
As any good statistician knows, the fact that one event follows another does not necessarily mean that the first caused the second. In this case, it's a bit more complicated than "you messed up my monitor!" Let me explain.
The caller was having connection problems. After a couple of basic steps, things still weren't working, so I had her open a command prompt to try to ping a couple of sites. By default, the command prompt is a black window with grey text. The caller couldn't read the grey text, so I asked her to turn up the brightness on her monitor. She wasn't sure how to do that, so I explained that her monitor will probably have a few buttons on the front, and those buttons would allow her to change her monitor's settings.
Now, in retrospect, maybe that was a mistake. People sometimes get frustrated with tech agents who refuse to help them with anything outside of the immediate problem that they'd called in about, but this story is a perfect example of why we often won't help.
The caller said that she couldn't make out the items on the monitor's menu. This tells me one of two things: either the monitor's color is fading (remember that she also couldn't read the command prompt) or her eyesight is. I let her know that if she couldn't read the command prompt, we were at a bit of an impasse, and if she could turn up the brightness, we could proceed.
Perhaps I should have approached things differently and explicitly said "don't mess around with settings you can't read", but before too long the caller said she couldn't make out anything on her screen. Apparently she'd found the pincushion setting, as she said that the top and bottom of her screen were narrow and the middle was fat... then she said that the color was screwed up, then she said that the monitor menu was completely black. This also offers up two possibilities that I can think of: the monitor is shot or she managed to change a setting that affects the monitor's menu.
Now, in my experience, most monitors will let you change settings, but those settings won't change the way that the monitor's menu displays. There's a reason for that: if you render it illegible, you're screwed. I suppose if she changed something like the monitor's display timing, it might have made even the menu unreadable, but usually if a monitor can't do a timing setting, it reverts on its own.
Anyway, the point is that her monitor ended up being messed up, but I didn't ask her to mess with settings she can't read. Blindly pushing buttons is often a bad idea. Making educated guesses is fine, but it's hard to make those kinds of decisions about things that you can't read. One of two things appears to be at fault: she changed stuff, or she's got a dead/dying monitor.
She was pretty upset by the end of it, blaming me for making her change stuff, and I can see why she'd think that, but if she replays events in her mind, she'll realize that I didn't ask her to fiddle around. I didn't discourage her either, but it was entirely her doing. The alternative was for us to be stymied and unable to do anything, so I thought that if she was comfortable trying to adjust the brightness it was fine to let her try.
Obviously in the future I'll be more abrupt. "Can't read the text? OK, call back when you can. Thankshaveanicedaybye."
As any good statistician knows, the fact that one event follows another does not necessarily mean that the first caused the second. In this case, it's a bit more complicated than "you messed up my monitor!" Let me explain.
The caller was having connection problems. After a couple of basic steps, things still weren't working, so I had her open a command prompt to try to ping a couple of sites. By default, the command prompt is a black window with grey text. The caller couldn't read the grey text, so I asked her to turn up the brightness on her monitor. She wasn't sure how to do that, so I explained that her monitor will probably have a few buttons on the front, and those buttons would allow her to change her monitor's settings.
Now, in retrospect, maybe that was a mistake. People sometimes get frustrated with tech agents who refuse to help them with anything outside of the immediate problem that they'd called in about, but this story is a perfect example of why we often won't help.
The caller said that she couldn't make out the items on the monitor's menu. This tells me one of two things: either the monitor's color is fading (remember that she also couldn't read the command prompt) or her eyesight is. I let her know that if she couldn't read the command prompt, we were at a bit of an impasse, and if she could turn up the brightness, we could proceed.
Perhaps I should have approached things differently and explicitly said "don't mess around with settings you can't read", but before too long the caller said she couldn't make out anything on her screen. Apparently she'd found the pincushion setting, as she said that the top and bottom of her screen were narrow and the middle was fat... then she said that the color was screwed up, then she said that the monitor menu was completely black. This also offers up two possibilities that I can think of: the monitor is shot or she managed to change a setting that affects the monitor's menu.
Now, in my experience, most monitors will let you change settings, but those settings won't change the way that the monitor's menu displays. There's a reason for that: if you render it illegible, you're screwed. I suppose if she changed something like the monitor's display timing, it might have made even the menu unreadable, but usually if a monitor can't do a timing setting, it reverts on its own.
Anyway, the point is that her monitor ended up being messed up, but I didn't ask her to mess with settings she can't read. Blindly pushing buttons is often a bad idea. Making educated guesses is fine, but it's hard to make those kinds of decisions about things that you can't read. One of two things appears to be at fault: she changed stuff, or she's got a dead/dying monitor.
She was pretty upset by the end of it, blaming me for making her change stuff, and I can see why she'd think that, but if she replays events in her mind, she'll realize that I didn't ask her to fiddle around. I didn't discourage her either, but it was entirely her doing. The alternative was for us to be stymied and unable to do anything, so I thought that if she was comfortable trying to adjust the brightness it was fine to let her try.
Obviously in the future I'll be more abrupt. "Can't read the text? OK, call back when you can. Thankshaveanicedaybye."
Labels: communication, pebkac
Sunday, March 11, 2007
What makes the job so much fun?
All from the same customer:
Me: "What kind of error message are you seeing when your email doesn't work?"
Caller: "There's no error, it just says 'Contact CompanyName.'"
Me: "Your computer doesn't know who we are, so I don't think it can give you an error that says that exactly. Do you know what else that error message said?"
Caller: "No."
...
Me: "So that setting was most likely causing your computer to hang up after it checked your email. Now that we've turned that setting off, that should no longer happen."
Caller: "It still says it can't find the server."
Me: "Have you connected again?"
Caller: "Yes."
Me: "Where does your computer indicate that it's connected?"
Caller: "I dunno."
Me: "How do you know that it's connected?"
Caller: "It said 'connecting' before it said it can't find the server."
Me: "So that means it was trying to reach the server, then gave up because it couldn't find the server, which probably means your computer isn't connected to us right now."
Caller: "It should be."
Me: "What did you click on to tell your computer to connect?"
Caller: "My email."
Me: "That doesn't tell it to connect to us. Before you open it, you need to click on the
CompanyName icon. Go ahead and try that now."
Caller: "Oh, now it says CompanyName is now connected."
...
Caller: "I'm in Outbox Express."
Me: "Do you mean Outlook Express?"
Caller: "No, I'm in the inbox."
...
Me: "Now click on the sent items folder so that we can see if those messages went out successfully."
Caller: "I can't. Nothing's happening."
Me: "What are you clicking on?"
Caller: silence
Me: "Sir? What are you trying to click on?"
Caller: "Sent items, but nothing's happening. It just stays there."
Me: "Try clicking on your inbox. Does it show you the contents of the inbox?"
Caller: "Yes."
Me: "OK, now try clicking on the outbox. Is it showing you any messages there?"
Caller: "No, it says it's empty."
Me: "Great, that's a good sign. Now just below the outbox, on the left side, you should see the sent items folder. Try clicking on there."
Caller: "Oh, on the left."
...
Seriously. There should be a licensing program for operating these things.
Me: "What kind of error message are you seeing when your email doesn't work?"
Caller: "There's no error, it just says 'Contact CompanyName.'"
Me: "Your computer doesn't know who we are, so I don't think it can give you an error that says that exactly. Do you know what else that error message said?"
Caller: "No."
...
Me: "So that setting was most likely causing your computer to hang up after it checked your email. Now that we've turned that setting off, that should no longer happen."
Caller: "It still says it can't find the server."
Me: "Have you connected again?"
Caller: "Yes."
Me: "Where does your computer indicate that it's connected?"
Caller: "I dunno."
Me: "How do you know that it's connected?"
Caller: "It said 'connecting' before it said it can't find the server."
Me: "So that means it was trying to reach the server, then gave up because it couldn't find the server, which probably means your computer isn't connected to us right now."
Caller: "It should be."
Me: "What did you click on to tell your computer to connect?"
Caller: "My email."
Me: "That doesn't tell it to connect to us. Before you open it, you need to click on the
CompanyName icon. Go ahead and try that now."
Caller: "Oh, now it says CompanyName is now connected."
...
Caller: "I'm in Outbox Express."
Me: "Do you mean Outlook Express?"
Caller: "No, I'm in the inbox."
...
Me: "Now click on the sent items folder so that we can see if those messages went out successfully."
Caller: "I can't. Nothing's happening."
Me: "What are you clicking on?"
Caller: silence
Me: "Sir? What are you trying to click on?"
Caller: "Sent items, but nothing's happening. It just stays there."
Me: "Try clicking on your inbox. Does it show you the contents of the inbox?"
Caller: "Yes."
Me: "OK, now try clicking on the outbox. Is it showing you any messages there?"
Caller: "No, it says it's empty."
Me: "Great, that's a good sign. Now just below the outbox, on the left side, you should see the sent items folder. Try clicking on there."
Caller: "Oh, on the left."
...
Seriously. There should be a licensing program for operating these things.
Labels: frustration, pebkac
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
