What to do when you don't
know what to do:
Call Accent on Computers! 203-625-7575.
March 23, 2007
And They Call This Support?
Dear Larry,
I’ve had it with technical support. First, you have to
locate the phone number, which is hidden so well most people give up right away.
After making the call, you have to wade through a menu that’s been designed to
be extra complicated just to get you to hang up. Then you get to wait on hold
for an interminable amount of time listening to horrific Muzak and repeated
messages reminding you how important your call is. Yeah, right. When you do
reach a real person, often times you can barely understand him or her. And
fifth, the quality of the support you do receive is mesmerizingly bad. Tell me
there’s a way out of this morass!
A. G.
Dear A. G.,
I can only say you’re preaching to the choir here. And dare I
add how sad it is that my business is booming thanks to this mess.
The trouble is, it all comes down to economics. Profit margins
in the computer industry remain extremely tight, and customer support is an easy
target for lowering expenses. Did you know it costs American companies 75% less
to outsource their support calls to places like India, while at the same time,
an Indian citizen working in such a facility earns far more than other laborers?
As for the quality of technical support, I ask what technical
support? There’s no way anyone can truly be trained to come up with educated
answers to your questions unless they’ve been in the computer business for a
long time. In virtually all cases, when you’re asked to wait on hold while your
technician checks his resources, what he is in fact doing is looking up your
question in his scripted response book. It reminds me of the old “Eliza” system
I worked on back in college in the 70s whereby a computer masqueraded as a
psychoanalyst by responding to requests for help with scripted and programmed
responses that made it appear it understood and empathized with you (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eliza).
While there’s no solution to the problem, there are some steps
you can take to help mitigate your frustration. Here’s some advice from me as
well as the kind folks at www.gethuman.com:
To locate support numbers, try going to the company’s web site
and looking for a “Contact Us” link. Or try Googling <Company Name> Technical
Support Telephone Number. If you’re forced to call directory assistance, call
800-FREE-411, which costs you nothing except the time it takes to listen to a
ten second advertisement.
To bypass a bad interactive voice response system, try
interrupting the recorded voice by pressing 0, optionally preceded or followed
by “#” or “*.” Or when it’s your turn to talk, try mumbling or say “get human,”
“agent,” or “representative.” As a last resort, pretend you’re using an old
rotary phone and just hold. You might also request sales or the collections
department; you can be sure they won’t keep you waiting. For more help getting
to a real human being faster, visit
http://www.gethuman.com/us.
Last but not least, for real technical support, call someone
like me. And realize that the sad truth in life is, you get what you pay for.
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
