5 ms·

Coming from a tech support background. I used to be a top performer at a support company and set most of the records for call times etc. I was hated by most of

by 97s 10y ago

Coming from a tech support background. I used to be a top performer at a support company and set most of the records for call times etc. I was hated by most of my peers, and many of my supervisors because I set numbers to low for most of the other teams and they were under preforming. I am not saying this to brag but to state how awful most support workers are. Most of my co-workers had no idea what they were doing besides reading off a script, any question outside of the box and boom, off to tier 2. One problem is: I found that the quicker I answered questions the more questions I received. If the customer knew that I knew what I was doing and I was able to help them efficiently they had more questions. This led me to ponder how to solve the problem. I ended up getting my supervisor to create a FAQ page based on a ton of the questions that I was constantly asked. I was then able to refer customers to this page and actually say honestly that it would answer their questions. A lot of the problem with these tech giants like ATT, Comcast, etc, they have horrible interfaces. For example Comcast has on demand, but once you watch a show you have to literally go back and search for the TV show name again before you can watch the next episode. It's horrible. I called multiple times trying to figure out how to get around this. They said there is no fix and it is how the system works. I googled it and millions of people have the same issue. It's absurd, yet they haven't fixed it. I don't think they even care, or it cost them money for customers to watch on demand so they want to make it as aggravating as possible. Another interesting aspect of being able to help people quickly is you never get good reviews or people asking to speak to your supervisor. People are so pleased that they were able to get their answer solved in a manner they could understand in a really fast time they just breath a big sigh of relief and say "thank you so much", and then get off the phone. I had co-workers who would spend 20-30 minutes on the phone with someone sitting there trying to explain something to them, and since they were so patient, the customer always asked to speak to supervisor to thank them for their patience. For some reason the customer always thinks they are the problem in this situation. It really boggles my mind. Just a view.

simonebrunozzi 10y ago
You are the Alexey Stakhanov [1] of your era. Unfortunately, there's no love for people like you :( [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Stakhanov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Stakhanov
hobs 10y ago
There is also a large difference between the small fry support and the larger corporate support, especially when you consider the vendor relationship that many large companies have. In a small company the support personell can be really hit or miss but often times can have major impacts on the product or even directly submit patches to the code you are running. At a bigger company they may pay a third party to maintain certain standards; often times they will leave a vendor if they are too good because the bonus structures are often based on how satisfied customers are and how much volume they handle. If their vendor is too successful and they have to pay more money for their cost center than usual, signaling the long end of the contract.
- 97s 10y ago
  Exactly. The company I worked for was a huge customer support company that developed the firmware that went on most of the modems that rural internet companies used. Some of the smaller companies paid on per a call resolution basis. The other's just had large contracts for us to help them no matter how many calls we got. It was a major problem when customers called in for simple questions that were outside of what we were paid to answer. Nothing worse than turning down/playing dumb a super easy question because it is against your policies to help people. It led to some really interesting problems, where you couldn't tell the customer that you can't answer that question, but the customer was confused as why you couldn't answer it, thinking that you were dumb, and asking for the next level of support or something. It also made for some really odd tickets. "Couldn't help customer because question was outside scope of responsibility.(question goes here) Customer got angry, tried to calm customer down. Customer wanted to speak to supervisor. Transferred to supervisor Billy Bob." I would later check those tickets and supervisors would just refer the customer to the customer support of the actual internet company. FFS how frustrating would that be. Call the tech support number 24/7. Then speak to a supervisor, who send you to a customer support for the local company, who pays you to solve peoples problems. It was one of the most confusing jobs on the planet. Another side note, they rolled out a call center check list/call flow application that was developed in house. They required us to use it. I was one of the few who refused to do so. My supervisor came around and asked me what the issue was. I showed him all the problems it had and how it drastically slowed down and erased notes if the customer mislead you down the wrong path and you found out later it was a completely different issue, which happened all the time. (They literally developed this software without having a single person who answers calls on the team, not a single person...) Supervisor said can you write it all down so I can give it to the tech department. I sat there that night(was on night shift this particular night) and wrote up a javascript(notepad) example version on my local machine that was probably 5x better than theirs. I didn't think they would understand what I was saying. My supervisor flipped out and introduced me to the tech team, who now also hated me because I literally did what took them 4 months in a night while taking calls. Man I could go on and on about how bad tech companies and customer service companies are. About a week later they hacked my javascript into their version of the app and rolled it out. My supervisor eventually left due to frustrations of how they ran things. He had no other skills and left a 65K a year job to do manual labor for half the amount per year. He was probably the best supervisor there. I think this is probably another reason customer service industry sucks. Good people don't like doing bad jobs.
wtbob 10y ago
> For example Comcast has on demand, but once you watch a show you have to literally go back and search for the TV show name again before you can watch the next episode. Netflix and HBO are similarly terrible. There's no way for me to click on an actor's name and see all the films he's been in, nor navigate and see a studio's corpus. This sort of thing should be table stakes, but for some reason it's not.
- thearn4 10y ago
  My conspiracy theory lately has been that Netflix's search and basic UI is terrible on purpose, to make us not notice the shifts and declines in the streaming catalog quality. For the life of me I can't imagine why else they would ignore calls to improve it.
  - 97s 10y ago
    I subscribe to netflix once a year and binge watch all my favorite shows during the holidays. I tried staying subscribed to them, but their UI is so bad I never know what is new and what isn't. Why can't they have a list of newly added shows that isn't a huge picture. I don't enjoy horizontal scrolling.
    - pcmaffey 10y ago
      Instantwatcher.com is your answer, with direct links to watch on netflix.
      - meowface 10y ago
        The sliders for dates and ratings are awesome. Now that's how you do a UI. And they're running this for free, while Amazon and Netflix are supposed to be spending billions on this.
      - 97s 10y ago
        Thanks for this. It is fantastic.
  - 10y ago
vacri 10y ago
Doing general inbound customer support (not tech) for a telco for a couple of months, I had the opposite time-related experience. I had a low number of daily calls, and was occasionally upbraided for it. But when I got a customer, either their issue got fixed, or it got escalated to the next level[1]. They didn't have to call back unless there actually was work to do on their side. The usual experience was a couple of callbacks, as note-taking was seen by the couple-of-hundred staff as somewhat optional. A colleague of mine came through the same training process and was terrible for the customers - didn't know what he was doing, transferring calls to the wrong department just to get rid of them, never left any notes at all... but his daily call count was high, so the higher-ups loved him. Nice bloke, we'd go drinking together, but he wasn't who you'd want to get on a call. [1] Arthur was the escalation point. I loved Arthur. I would go to him with a messed-up customer problem and he'd say "hand it to me, you don't have to worry about this anymore". I'd hand him the paperwork and I'd never, ever see the problem again (he actually did something with it, he didn't just bin it :) ). It reminded me a bit of the jedi mind trick: "You can go about your business..."
- 97s 10y ago
  It's crazy isn't it. Did your higher-ups think he was doing a better job because he was working more on calls all day, where you were off them quick? In my job as soon as you got off a call you got right back on another one with a new customer. So I would have like 2-3x the calls per day of another person. I think that is one of the reasons the other people took so long, they figured whats the point, this person is nice and old I will just stay with them over getting a rude person. Who knows the logic behind it all. I tell you what though, I have some incredible stories that I will never forget. Some insanely funny customers and some hilarious co-workers. When I first got to my job I had quick call times right away. Several supervisors told me they were going to listen to all my calls because they thought I was just hanging up on people. After they listened to them all, they told me to slow down and take more time. I was like, but I am rewarded for doing a better job and having faster call times. Literally that is how bonuses are given. WTF... None of my customers ever said "slow down please to me." I think they didn't want to pay me more for doing a good job. I just needed to do average so I met their agreement numbers with the internet company.
drdeadringer 10y ago
> For example Comcast has on demand, but once you watch a show you have to literally go back and search for the TV show name again before you can watch the next episode. It's horrible. Oh my God. I'm not even sure if search in 1996 was this bad. I'm almost thinking that this is by design for some sadistic reason, like there's no way that this is this way out of natural happen-stance.
abalashov 10y ago
I found that the quicker I answered questions the more questions I received. A kind of Jevons Paradox for tech support? :)
- 97s 10y ago
  = )

by 97s 10y ago

simonebrunozzi 10y ago

You are the Alexey Stakhanov [1] of your era. Unfortunately, there's no love for people like you :( [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Stakhanov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexey_Stakhanov

hobs 10y ago

There is also a large difference between the small fry support and the larger corporate support, especially when you consider the vendor relationship that many large companies have. In a small company the support personell can be really hit or miss but often times can have major impacts on the product or even directly submit patches to the code you are running. At a bigger company they may pay a third party to maintain certain standards; often times they will leave a vendor if they are too good because the bonus structures are often based on how satisfied customers are and how much volume they handle. If their vendor is too successful and they have to pay more money for their cost center than usual, signaling the long end of the contract.

97s 10y ago
Exactly. The company I worked for was a huge customer support company that developed the firmware that went on most of the modems that rural internet companies used. Some of the smaller companies paid on per a call resolution basis. The other's just had large contracts for us to help them no matter how many calls we got. It was a major problem when customers called in for simple questions that were outside of what we were paid to answer. Nothing worse than turning down/playing dumb a super easy question because it is against your policies to help people. It led to some really interesting problems, where you couldn't tell the customer that you can't answer that question, but the customer was confused as why you couldn't answer it, thinking that you were dumb, and asking for the next level of support or something. It also made for some really odd tickets. "Couldn't help customer because question was outside scope of responsibility.(question goes here) Customer got angry, tried to calm customer down. Customer wanted to speak to supervisor. Transferred to supervisor Billy Bob." I would later check those tickets and supervisors would just refer the customer to the customer support of the actual internet company. FFS how frustrating would that be. Call the tech support number 24/7. Then speak to a supervisor, who send you to a customer support for the local company, who pays you to solve peoples problems. It was one of the most confusing jobs on the planet. Another side note, they rolled out a call center check list/call flow application that was developed in house. They required us to use it. I was one of the few who refused to do so. My supervisor came around and asked me what the issue was. I showed him all the problems it had and how it drastically slowed down and erased notes if the customer mislead you down the wrong path and you found out later it was a completely different issue, which happened all the time. (They literally developed this software without having a single person who answers calls on the team, not a single person...) Supervisor said can you write it all down so I can give it to the tech department. I sat there that night(was on night shift this particular night) and wrote up a javascript(notepad) example version on my local machine that was probably 5x better than theirs. I didn't think they would understand what I was saying. My supervisor flipped out and introduced me to the tech team, who now also hated me because I literally did what took them 4 months in a night while taking calls. Man I could go on and on about how bad tech companies and customer service companies are. About a week later they hacked my javascript into their version of the app and rolled it out. My supervisor eventually left due to frustrations of how they ran things. He had no other skills and left a 65K a year job to do manual labor for half the amount per year. He was probably the best supervisor there. I think this is probably another reason customer service industry sucks. Good people don't like doing bad jobs.

wtbob 10y ago

> For example Comcast has on demand, but once you watch a show you have to literally go back and search for the TV show name again before you can watch the next episode. Netflix and HBO are similarly terrible. There's no way for me to click on an actor's name and see all the films he's been in, nor navigate and see a studio's corpus. This sort of thing should be table stakes, but for some reason it's not.

thearn4 10y ago
My conspiracy theory lately has been that Netflix's search and basic UI is terrible on purpose, to make us not notice the shifts and declines in the streaming catalog quality. For the life of me I can't imagine why else they would ignore calls to improve it.
- 97s 10y ago
  I subscribe to netflix once a year and binge watch all my favorite shows during the holidays. I tried staying subscribed to them, but their UI is so bad I never know what is new and what isn't. Why can't they have a list of newly added shows that isn't a huge picture. I don't enjoy horizontal scrolling.
  - pcmaffey 10y ago
    Instantwatcher.com is your answer, with direct links to watch on netflix.
    - meowface 10y ago
      The sliders for dates and ratings are awesome. Now that's how you do a UI. And they're running this for free, while Amazon and Netflix are supposed to be spending billions on this.
    - 97s 10y ago
      Thanks for this. It is fantastic.
- 10y ago

vacri 10y ago

Doing general inbound customer support (not tech) for a telco for a couple of months, I had the opposite time-related experience. I had a low number of daily calls, and was occasionally upbraided for it. But when I got a customer, either their issue got fixed, or it got escalated to the next level[1]. They didn't have to call back unless there actually was work to do on their side. The usual experience was a couple of callbacks, as note-taking was seen by the couple-of-hundred staff as somewhat optional. A colleague of mine came through the same training process and was terrible for the customers - didn't know what he was doing, transferring calls to the wrong department just to get rid of them, never left any notes at all... but his daily call count was high, so the higher-ups loved him. Nice bloke, we'd go drinking together, but he wasn't who you'd want to get on a call. [1] Arthur was the escalation point. I loved Arthur. I would go to him with a messed-up customer problem and he'd say "hand it to me, you don't have to worry about this anymore". I'd hand him the paperwork and I'd never, ever see the problem again (he actually did something with it, he didn't just bin it :) ). It reminded me a bit of the jedi mind trick: "You can go about your business..."

97s 10y ago
It's crazy isn't it. Did your higher-ups think he was doing a better job because he was working more on calls all day, where you were off them quick? In my job as soon as you got off a call you got right back on another one with a new customer. So I would have like 2-3x the calls per day of another person. I think that is one of the reasons the other people took so long, they figured whats the point, this person is nice and old I will just stay with them over getting a rude person. Who knows the logic behind it all. I tell you what though, I have some incredible stories that I will never forget. Some insanely funny customers and some hilarious co-workers. When I first got to my job I had quick call times right away. Several supervisors told me they were going to listen to all my calls because they thought I was just hanging up on people. After they listened to them all, they told me to slow down and take more time. I was like, but I am rewarded for doing a better job and having faster call times. Literally that is how bonuses are given. WTF... None of my customers ever said "slow down please to me." I think they didn't want to pay me more for doing a good job. I just needed to do average so I met their agreement numbers with the internet company.

drdeadringer 10y ago

> For example Comcast has on demand, but once you watch a show you have to literally go back and search for the TV show name again before you can watch the next episode. It's horrible. Oh my God. I'm not even sure if search in 1996 was this bad. I'm almost thinking that this is by design for some sadistic reason, like there's no way that this is this way out of natural happen-stance.

abalashov 10y ago

I found that the quicker I answered questions the more questions I received. A kind of Jevons Paradox for tech support? :)

97s 10y ago
= )