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Tech Support: Sucking Even More
from the -screwing-consumers-online- dept.
Tech support has become synonymous in most consumers' minds with corporate arrogance and greed, the dehumanization wrought by technology, and the frustration millions of people have felt at being hung out to dry by computer makers, access providers and online retailers. People struggle to assemble products, to install software, to access the Net and the Web, to locate passwords, codes and IDs they belatedly discover they need (or have just misplaced). No other business would survive a month operating this way.
Customer service and tech support are the contact points between the public and much of contemporary technology. It causes the greatest fear and anxiety, generates the most anger and resentment; it's become a scandal, branding the computer industry as perhaps the most insensitive and exploitive in America. Computer manufacturers and software-makers make used-car salesman look thoughtful and concerned about their customers -- at least you can go back and find the lot where you bought the car.
Customer service and tech support are constantly being promised and invoked, even as they are rarely delivered. Extortionate service contracts are now routinely offered -- special arrangements by which people who spend thousands of dollars on hardware and software spend hundreds more just for "priority access" to get the kind of minimal support that's standard in other businesses, and that ought to be included free with their purchases. Can you imagine paying extra to call up the store that sold you a sofa to ask where the legs are?
This week, the research firm Jupiter Media Matrix will release the results of a survey showing that while some companies doing business on the Internet are actually responding more quickly to customer e-mail inquiries compared to previous studies, those gains have been more than offset by a sharp increase in the number of companies that don't respond at all.
Of the 225 U.S. companies Jupiter surveyed in February, 38 percent responded within six hours or sooner to an e-mail message sent to customer service. That was an increase from 29 percent in Jupiter's previous survey in September. Only 16 percent of the companies responded with 6 to 24 hours, compared with 25 per cent last fall. The percentage of companies that responded to customers within a day, therefore, remained static at 54 percent; note, though, that many of those responses were in the form of automated e-mails. That doesn't mean the customers complaints were addressed or satisfied.
And here's the truly shocking and maddening finding: 24 percent of those companies surveyed didn't bother to respond at all, up from 19 percent last fall.
But nobody really needs a survey to know that tech support is a nightmare. Support and customer service jobs are often considered boring, low-paying and difficult. The more noise companies make about providing customer service and tech support, the worse they seem to treat the people they hire to do it, paying them little and overloading them with cases -- almost ensuring high turnover rates and bad service. It's hard to keep good people in those jobs, and those who stay are generally miserable and stressed out.
Small wonder they catch the brunt of consumer wrath at the outrageous way in which computers and related products and products online are sold and serviced.
The average consumer, according to a Jupiter analysts, expects a resolution of her complaint or query within six hours. They're not likely to get it. At a minimum, consumers are entitled to e-mail response within a business day, instand and equal access to customer service reps if they need it, and prompt resolution of their problems.
From my personal experience, and that of others, some companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard stand out. They answer e-mail queries and complaints promptly, and provide instant and knowledgeable support. (Microsoft, though, charges customers extra for those "priority" contracts which put them on the top of long phone queues. Hewlitt-Packard takes calls as they come, spares customers complex and eternal phone menus, and even helps customers who haven't paid extra. Dell customer reps stay with customers throughout the life of a complaint. Consumers actually have a name and a number to call, even if the problem takes days to resolve.)
But as the Jupiter survey suggests, tech support generally remains miserable for most people who buy products online or need technical assistance. I'd love to see a survey of how much time and money has been spent by people trying to reach companies that abandon them to elaborate phone menus, keep them waiting for hours on hold, then often can't or won't help even those who survive the access process. As bad as it's been, apparently tech support sucks even more than it used to.
I know what you mean! (Score:5)
Problems began when schematics no longer included. (Score:5)
This allowed:
(1) people to fix problems themselves or
(2) allowed local "fix it" shops to proliferate and do repairs.
Ditto with software. Source used to come standard. In the early days, on Unix for example, it was a given that "/usr/src" always had source in there. Now the direct is there but is empty on any non GNU/BSD Unix unless you (an one of many buyers of the product) pay enough to cover an entire years salary of one of the vendor's programmers, and then have to sign NDAs up the ass.
Today source and schematics are all considered "proprietary, burn before reading" secrets, with laywers ready to have you bankrupted and jailed for reverse engineering anything on your own.
The result? No one but the company that made the product can help fix it when it breaks, or troubleshoot problems. And they get swamped since lots of 3rd party tech support (software) or 3rd party repair shops (hardware) can no longer exist because their tools have been taken away by the mega corps.
The mega corps want things to break so you will buy a new frob or buy their $599 "upgrade" to Adobe Premier. Heaven forbid you should be able to fix things yourself, or have shops sell "pre debugged" software that they BOUGHT, modified and recompiled and are now selling.
And don't tell me how "everything's ASICs" and how schematics are useless today. Most electronics that fail, fail in the standard components OUTSIDE the ASIC (e.g., regulator burns out, resistor melts, etc.)
Re:why tech support sucks (Score:5)
First off, you get to be the "hero" on a daily basis. Maybe some hotshot coder made the fix, but he made the mistake in the first place, being shot for being the messenger is one thing, but it also feels good for being praised for being the messenger too. That's what I love about this job.
Also, I just like working with computers, and I've tried programming, and frankly, I just don't have the time and patience for it. I understand it, but I don't want to spend months of my life getting involved in trivial API details that are going to change the minute Microsoft feels paranoid that the competition is catching up.
And let me tell you that the worst thing about being a support rep has nothing to do with dealing with retarded or frustrated customers. It has to do with dealing with retarded (sales) managers, and primadonna programmers who take it personally when you suggest that their code is flawed, or needs to even be looked at; and all the political fallout that results from that. You have to handle these people with kid gloves, all the while, commiserating with the customer to make them happy, and trying not to let that feeling rub off on you. The second you "go native", is when you get screwed.
I've been doing support for years, and I think I'm going to keep doing it. I do love it. I really don't see myself becoming some anal IT jerk who gets off on modeling his life on BOFH, and while it would be nice to be a programmer and try to code things "right the first time", trying to do that would shatter my illusion that it can actually be done right the first time. (I have a strong subconsious suspicion that in reality, that's impossible - in THIS computer industry).
Re:why tech support sucks (Score:3)
You say consumers are getting dumber. This isn't true. What's happening is, computers are becoming more widespread. Most of the people who are too dumb to use a computer simply weren't using computers a decade ago. Now, in an effort to increase sales, companies have managed to convince those people that they're not too dumb anymore.
On top of this, there is a huge number of people who, for some reason, seem to believe that computers are inherently scary things. Say something that normally makes perfect sense in any other context, and the moment they get the idea that it has to do with computers, they are suddenly reduced to drooling idiots. These are the people who believe that plain-English status and error messages are a secret code that can only be decyphered by computer people. This is the sort of delusion that people need to get over.
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Most companies can't afford tech support.. (Score:3)
So, let's say you provide internet access to a customer at $20/mo. This includes dialup, e-mail, personal home page.
Let's say that most of your clients call tech support once a year and their problems are resolved within 15 minutes of technician time. If your average technician makes $8/hour, that cost $2. You don't mind eating that cost.
Let's say you have clients who call twice a week and haggle for a half hour. That's $32/mo. Wouldn't YOU drop this customer?
Most companies have no interest in providing quality tech support. The companies that do find it essential because while that loses them money, it at least reflects positively on their organization and can hopefully bring on larger business. But even they can draw the line.
We provide decent quality tech support because it makes us the friendly neighborhood ISP that you can count on for everything please consider speaking highly of us.
These impressions don't matter at all to companies that saturate the market with advertisements and try to scoop up commodity dialup customers at an already discounted rate.
We must be the only tech company today that has a human being answer the phone within the second ring when you call tech support. We'd like to believe that our customers will see this as a gesture of good faith and speak well of us. Most companies find it pays better to just ignore their existing customers and keep advertising instead.
Re:Schematics and buying heaps of trash... (Score:3)
You must not buy American cars. . .
Schematics and buying heaps of trash... (Score:5)
Throughout my childhood we had Zenith televisions and radios. A 26" color console in fact.
Did he have schematics?
Yep, we had the schematics, he had the design specs. He knew exactly how this thing was built from his work at Zenith.
And the fact of the matter is... YOU HAD TO KNOW THIS BECAUSE THAT TELEVISION WAS A HUNK OF TRASH!
I'm not saying it wasn't a good TV for the day, but once a year some tube would blow out, and we'd make the regular trip down to Radio Shack or wherever to get a replacement. This was pretty common for televisions of that day and age.
They finally replaced it with a Magnavox 26" which used transistors around 1980 or so. That worked for 15 years before the powersupply went bad and couldn't be easily repaired.
The point is, over the years the quality of the televisions improved to the point that you no longer need schematics... BECAUSE THEY DON'T BREAK ONCE A YEAR!
The same is true of automobiles. The VW Beetle used to be regarded as a wonderful car. Not because it was good to drive, not because it was comfortable to ride in... it sure didn't have a working heating system, etc.
The reason it was regarded as a good car at the time was because you could overhaul the engine on the side of the highway with a small box full of tools.
And once again... You had to do this because the blasted thing would break down on the side of the road once a year and require an overhaul. IT WAS A HUNK OF TRASH!
I don't have to do that with my car today. Yes I change the oil, yes I put air in the tires. But in 28 months of ownership I have not yet had it break down, stop working or otherwise require maintenance outside of oil changes.
As a consumer, I should not need schematics...
I should not need source code. Your product should work as designed. If there is an API call into the OS it should be well documented with defined inputs and expected outputs. It should work exactly as documented.
If I need source, if I need schematics, if I need service manuals... Your product is a hunk of trash and I don't want it.
Re:I can't believe I am saying this...... (Score:3)
For example, the situation in January when, after 2 weeks of having my cable modem installed, I was still getting randomly dropped packets, and a generally unstable connection (cable link light flickering).
After troubleshooting it myself (hooking up a local network and testing connectivity and file transfer with >1gb files, replacing every bit of coax and cat5 I could get my hands on (out to the wall socket - I would replace the line from the socket to the basement, but it goes into a lockbox, so I can't get at the basement end of it) - I couldn't fix the problem. So, I assumed it was either a bum modem or problems down the line. Either way, I needed to call support.
So...I gathered up some logs, did a few traceroutes, and basically got as much evidence of the problem as I could. Then I started the process.
The problem continues to this day. I've called them 3 more times, and gotten the run-around each time. I've asked SPECIFICALLY if I could get a tech to come to my apartment, open the lockbox, and allow me to replace the coax that drops from the apartment to the basement - nope - they can't do that. Even if I supply the cable, run it to the basement myself, and have their tech watch over me as I make the switch.
DSL won't be available until August - even then I am leery of getting it, considering the recent troubles in THAT industry. I can't get a stable connection to a dialup ISP through the 50 year old copper in the building anyway...
I've been considering 2 way sattelite, but that is MONSTROUSLY expensive out here.
Re:the source of this... (Score:5)
So it's really no wonder that the techs don't want to be there. Overworked, underpaid, non-respected employees have a valid REASON to not want to be there.
So they bide their time until they have the skills to move elsewhere. Then they quit, and move on to a job with better pay, better hours, better respect, and less "public" contact.
This isn't to say that tech support should suck - it's just saying that there are valid reasons why it sucks, and until those reasons get addressed, things aren't going to get better.
And this doesn't even touch on the fact that the people you need to deal with, as support personnel, are generally VERY clueless - to the point that seemingly SIMPLE instructions are NOT simple to them. I'm not even going there. You've all heard the war stories before.
It's too complex (Score:5)
Imagine a computer with three buttons: Send Mail. Read Mail. Browse Web. And a keyboard, a one-button mouse, and a big 'Go' button for when the message is composed. You could support that easily enough, except when the user goes to a website which itself is broken. You'd need to certify websites to some standard which says they will work with your software, and (trickier) that their user interface works the way the user expects. And of course you can forget all about third-party software.
Does a sofa have any of these problems?
Tech support and OSS (Score:4)
The "community" isn't enough for many enterprises and organisations, either. They need to be sure that they've got 24x7 access to tech support for the applications (and OSes) that they rely on, and until we have a robust model for providing that support, it's one area that will continue to hold back take-up of OSS software. None of the models we see at the moment see to provide enough yet: Linuxcare and their ilk are having difficulties (maybe because they cast their net too wide, and didn't concentrate on particular apps), IRC and web-based guru services aren't going to convince large businesses. The Sendmail model is an interesting one, but what about scalability? Could it handle Evolution, for instance, when that goes 1.0?
I think that this is an issue which we, as a community, really need to address.
Re:why tech support sucks (Score:3)
It's common in the Northeast USA, at least in the mid level city I work in.
I have a BSAE, and I started as a contract, then became a direct hire tech support person. Now I'm called a Technical Support Engineer, and rarely talk to customers.
Some of my coworkers on the hotline have:
as well as lots of 2 year degrees.
Most of the 4+ year degree people I know have moved on to become developers, debug engineers or managers.
Cynically, I think our hotline prefers 2 year degree people, since they have a much harder time moving on, as the other divisions demand a 4 year degree before you can transfer. If you get into the hotline with a 2 year degree, you're stuck forever.
Re:Weak argument (Score:5)
That's because we're arrogant enough to assume our products are usable without support, and elitist enough to not care whether the people who need support get it or not.
They're "lamerz" or "lusers", and should "RTFM" before they call support, right?
Jon has, as usual, hit it right square on the head for the exact reason that he's not a part of our industry.
You can't see the forest because you're a tree.
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Re:why tech support sucks (Score:3)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Liquid Audio laid off Customer Care dept. today (Score:3)
Shows you how much they think of Customer Care.
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re: why tech support sucks (Score:3)
It costs money to provide tech support. Therefore, companies that have good support must charge more for their products. This gives consumers a choice: buy from the cheaper vendor with no support, or from the more expensive vendor with adequate support. Consumers routinely choose the cheaper alternative, even when they know that the support will be terrible.
Witness the runaway success of vendors that have a reputation for having flagrantly bad service. Fry's electronics is a perfect example. Everyone who goes to Fry's ends up saying that they will never go back. Then Fry's runs an ad for RAM at $5 less than their competitors, and all those consumers who swore them off go right back to Fry's.
If people were willing to pay money for support, and people flocked to the vendors offering more service, then companies would be climbing on top of each other to offer more support. People don't actually want support, despite what they say. People say one thing and do another. What they prefer is to save the $5 and forgo the support, then bitch for 2 hours about how badly they were wronged and how bad support is nowadays, then they pocket the $5 and repeat the process.
Knowing Casualties of Tech Support (Score:3)
One currently has lasted two years, and is completely burnt out. He gets paid pretty well and gets good benefits, but over time the demands have gotten higher and the management more insane. At this rate he's ready to quit and find a different job rather than put up with it.
In my experience Tech Support is getting worse all over. It's a nasty cycle:
Your best alternative is to make sure you, your office, your company have knowledgeable people on staff. You can't count on many companies out there - and if you find those you can count on, hang onto them.
Re:It's too complex (Score:3)
"Make it idiot-proof, and somebody will make a better idiot"
Imagine a computer with three buttons: Send Mail. Read Mail. Browse Web.
Making a very-limited-choice interface is not a solution for dealing with intrinsically complex problems.
"Send Mail" button. OK. Wait, my mail returned to me with the "address unknown" message! The button doesn't work!
"Read Mail" button. OK. But where is my "Print" button, and "Reply to" button, and "Delete" button, and "Move to folder" button, and how do I deal with make-money-fast messages a hundred of which is sitting in my inbox...
"Browse Web" button. Hmm... You mean it is just a shortcut to Internet Explorer? Or is it supposed to do something else? And what are all these buttons on websites? I was promised I would need only three buttons and this site has four! Oh, here is a simple site, it just says "type your AOL password here and click OK" -- that I can do...
Kaa
Web Sites the worst (Score:3)
Nowadays I don't even bother to send in bug reports for anything, except on the Sun Java JDK, which has an excellent and completely public bug-reporting system. If I reported every crash in every piece of software I use, I'd be a full time beta tester.
Anyway... what was the point of this article? Oh yeah, tech support sucks. So do taxes, death, nukes, and movies with Julia Roberts.
Most tech support people are lucky (Score:3)
They don't have to deal with The Terminator [sekurity.com], aka Arnold Schwarzenegger [sekurity.com]. (These are MP3's of prank calls using some movie clips, they're great.) I really admire the tech support people here who kept their cool and kept trying to help despite Arnie's insolence.
(See more fun non-tech support prank calls at http://badlinks.brutal.com/arnie/ [brutal.com]. The limo driver is one of the best. To get the links to work you might have to manually change spaces to "%20"s)
And Too Much Is Expected (Score:4)
The need for tech support (Score:5)
The problem with the tech industry is the lack of knowledge of the end consumer. It is the complexity of the technology that is causing the need for tech support unlike any other industry. You don't see a sticker for 24hr technical support on a couch now do you?
Until the end user is better educated in how computers work (read: take a fuckin class), tech support workers will be overworked and the quality of tech support will look poor because of the sheer volume they must process.
When I worked as a tech support person I received 30-50 calls per 10hr shift, the majority of which required long periods of time to resolve due to the damage originally caused by the customer's trying to do things they didn't understand the consequences of and then their infamiliarity with the technology when I was stepping them how to fix it. If customers were only contacting tech support for 'real' problems as opposed to ones caused by user error and lack of knowledge, the perception of quality of tech support (specifically in response time) would drastically rise.
If you want good support, you have to pay for it. (Score:3)
However, it's a double-edged sword.
1. Most Companies do not want to pay for technical support of their products. Therefore, the least competent people are put into it.
2. The companies that do put competent people in tech support charge you a lot of money for it.
Speaking as an Oracle customer, who spends $2,500+ per server per year on silver-level support, it's nasty. I have to spend that to get an operator on the phone with a decent wait time who knows what they are doing. However, I don't consider Oracle as inherently complex as Windows 98, simply because there's less stuff to break. Oracle also doesn't bundle Internet Explorer, the bane of support operators everywhere because it can and will break anything in a system.
This ties in with the fact that there aren't even dependency lists for what things a program installer screws up. Most software manufacturers just don't let support communicate to the developers.
Did I mention how much developers and engineers usually despise the end-user support people? There is a definate hatred there, and I've seen it way too many times.
Technical Support, in most cases, is isolated from the rest of the company. Microsoft is especially guilty of this, unless you pay $250 per incident for support. Oracle is better, when you pay them a lot of money for Silver or Gold support.
However, most users don't have that money. They also are stuck using extremely buggy products, like Internet Explorer, and software that can and will change every DLL and system library to the version it was built against (ICQ, Visual Studio, Internet Explorer, and Office 2000 are especially guilty) and not run if it doesn't find the right version. It's an unfortunate situation here, and not even the best tech support operators can handle these issues over a phone.
What needs to happen is for software to be built right, documented, and then supported right. Unfortunately, the consumer technical support is not there because the margins must be the same as computer hardware as they are for software, razor-thin. Ideally, stable build environments for the software made these days too would help, since 90% of the problems I have run into are because of version dependencies.
Then, maybe, I won't have to pay out the nose to get support like I do now on non-enterprise products. I'm more than willing to pay for support if I get extremely competent people on the phone.
From the front line. (Score:5)
The stupidity of some people in our industry (and I am talking about IT professionals here.. I support a large CM product) is incredible.
The people who really suffer are the clever ones, who have read the manual, checked the FAQ, understand the product in the first place, and only call when they have a -real- problem. By the time I get to them I am generally fried from saying RTMF 25 times and the speed and completeness of my response to them suffers as a result. Plus you have the disconnect between what marketing/sales will sell, vs. the actual capabilities of the product, guess who is expected to sort that one out (hint, it's not the salesman, he already has his comission).
I'm getting out of support and going back to sysadmin, at least I can call someone an idiot and then justify it face-to-face with their manager.
EZ
Customers even more clued-out than before... (Score:4)
I am sure anyone here who has worked with end users has answered calls along the lines of "I have a foppy here that is too powerful for my version of the internet. Can you help me make my connection to hotmail faster? I think that there is a problem with the server."
There is just too much information and too many words being bounced around for the average joe user to handle... It has almost become the case that to operate a computer without hassles, you must understand how to build one. Can you imagine if Ford said that they expected everyone to know how to build a car before they could expect to be able to drive?
I had a friend call me up the other day who had gotten the "mystical spiral" on his screen from the haha@sexyfun.net virus... It was impossible for me to explain over the phone how to fix it, like this:
As things get more and more complicated with individual PCs, I thnk that there will be a lot of money to be made for the first person who starts an app-server like network in which there is NO maintainence to be done on the user side. If you do person-to-person support it is easy to see the gulf of knowledge that is creating the unquenchable demand for tech support...
Congratulations, you just reinvented the Mac! (Score:5)
Re:The need for tech support (Score:5)
Re:why tech support sucks (Score:3)
Re:Yea...but... (Score:5)
Re:why tech support sucks (Score:5)
i'm convinced there are few jobs as thankless as technical support. Nobody you talk to is glad to hear from you, even when you have a solution for them. If the company you work for has in any way wronged that customer, you will hear about it. In my particular form of technical support, it often involves cleaning up colossal messes the customers have made of their own files, due to not understanding the (admittedly complex) software. But that's my fault too. All of it.
I have been insulted, sworn at, i have had my intellect questioned, and heard every possible form of invective that doesn't involve my mom.
Maybe technical support does suck. Maybe all of it adds up to be poor service. However, just because you only talk to people that tell you to reinstall windows and reboot, doesn't mean that all tech support people are incompetent. Sometimes they're hardworking, knowledgeable people that bend over backwards and work weekends to help you. So don't pay them back with your anger.
Re:I know what you mean! (Score:3)
"Bill? I just have a quick question this time. I know you said stop calling but this will just take a minute."
Redials
"Bill - yeah, it's me. I know, I know. Hey why do I have to reinstall NT if Publisher crashes and burns? Since Microsoft wrote both the OS and the app can't you release a patch? Bill? Bill?"
Re:why tech support sucks (Score:3)
One major problem is that whether or not there is a problem, customers tend to be unable to articulate what they're experiencing in an adequate way to the support representatives. This wastes a lot of time on the rep's part, because they need to ask a zillion little questions in order to slowly build up a picture of what's going on.
Another major problem is customers who try to diagnose the problem. Sure, you and I may be able to determine something like "the SMTP server is down" but most customers can't... but that won't stop them from saying it. I've encountered customers who describe every problem as "The printer is broken," because ultimately someday they would want to print the document they were working on so no matter where the entire computing process went awry along the way, it must be the printer's fauly. I encountered one customer who called and told me "The terminal is broken" and refused to give me any more detail. Every question I tried to ask was answer with increasingly angry responses of "The terminal is broken and I want you to fix it!" I couldn't tell what sort of machine they had, what they were seeing, what they thought was wrong, whether they were trying to get help with hardware or software, or if indeed anything was actually wrong.
As a customer support rep, one of the first things you learn is to discard anything the customer tells you about what they think is wrong (no matter how calm or logical they may sound) and diagnose entirely from specific solid facts (like what the DHCP control panel says). If you don't, you'll be able to help power user customers more quickly, but you'll spend eternities trying to make sense of what everybody else says. It's not inherently obvious to the rep whether you are a power user or not.
But all that said, I agree that tech support sucks, but for different reasons than stated here. What I have always hated about most tech support is that it seems designed not to help the customer, but rather to make the customer go away. If you call the application vendor they blame the problem on Microsoft. If you call Microsoft they blame the application vendor, or the hardware manufacturer. If you call the hardware manufacturer they blame Microsoft or the application vendor. Nobody will take responsibility. I once had a PDA from Sharp. One morning it wouldn't turn on. I called tech support, thinking they'd tell me how to get it repaired, and they told me it was a software problem and I'd have to call the OS company.
I don't call tech support any more. I keep my own computer running. (Easy enough, I use a Mac.) If I get any additional hardware or software that I can't make work with the help of the manual, I return it. My time is too valuable to waste in vague hopes that the tech support rep will be able to help me.
Tech support doesn't have to suck (Score:5)
Believe it or not, tech support is my chosen profession. I *like* helping people fix their problems. Fortunately for my sanity, I've gone from taking calls about why a cheap PC that someone bought for their kid to have for Christmas doesn't work out of the box, to managing a small group that supports extremely high-end storage on *nix servers. The difference is profound, both in the type of support offered, the business model behind the support, and the level of expertise exhibited by the end users. All of these things are important when you talk about tech support's deficiencies, or lack thereof.
The business model for the world I live in is that you pay to play. Yes, the product comes with a one year warranty, and we will cheerfully help (on the phone) anyone who's ever bought our product if they call during business hours. But that's where the good part ends, unless you've purchased a support contract. The company I work for has set up my group as a profit center. They pay us very well, and we work as hard as it takes to keep all of our customers happy. But good support (from the vendor's point of view) can't be overhead costs. Having former *nix admins man your support center is really expensive, and that's what it takes to do the type of support we provide. This cost is passed on to the customer. But in turn, the customer expects (and receives) a very high level of response.
Since the stuff we sell is fantastically expensive, and gets attached to very high-end big iron, the people who call us are never without a clue. We're pretty confident that any time the support hotline phone rings, we won't be walking someone through how to move a file off a CD and into their file system. Yes, they can still be irate, but that's a reality of the support world. But the frustration of trying to help people who really need an education, rather than tech support, doesn't come into it.
All of these things add up to a great support group, for our customers, the company I work for, and the people who actually provide the voice on the other end of the phone. Take away just one part of it, and tech support goes back to being the nightmare job that NO AMOUNT of money will make worth doing.
"Moral" Responsibility? (Score:3)
My question is this: Is Katz correct when he asserts in the first paragraph that standing behind a product is the "seminal moral responsibility of any manufacturer, both in terms of what's smart and what's right"?
Is it possible (and I know this sounds bizarre, but it's the argument that Katz is making, I think) to make a moral argument for tech support? My initial response is no, it can't be done.
His is essentially a "meta-ethical" argument: an attempt to apply ethics and morality to entities other than humans. I'm no expert on meta-ethics but I'm curious about it. And I'm curious about whether or not Katz is right and, if he's right, where "corporate ethics" are derived from.
What does it mean, for example, when you say a "person is responsible for his actions?" Or when you say: "A person ought to do this?"
And how is this different when you replace the "person" with the corporation: a corporation ought to do this? Or "a corporation is responsible for its actions?" (Is the corporation responsible for its actions only when those actions conflict with or harm the larger social matrix in which corporations play distinct roles?)
I'm not vexed by the genesis of morality when we're talking about humans. Morality is derived from structure of human relations. It strives for goodness, or virtue, or whatever you want to call it. This makes sense to me.
But when you're talking about corporations -- and especially critiquing a corporation when it fails to do what it "ought" to do -- then here, at this point, I find the genesis of "rightness" to be murky.
Corporation are created by humans but their very nature makes them into a quite different entity. They're a collection of humans, yes, but legally (and here's another problem, I guess) they're defined as a "thing".
Where is the "ought" located when we talk about a thing that's not human? A corporation "ought" to do this or that -- but based on what?
Its relation to other corporations?
Its relationship to law?
Its relationships to captialism and democracy?
It relationships to its customers? ("It makes good business sense. Ergo, that's the way the moral compass should point.")
It's possible to define morality -- or at least narrow its scope -- when we talk about non-human species that are very close to humans in their genetic makeup. Chimps, for example. Or apes.
But how in the world do we define the "morality" of something far, far different than human beings? And who in the world can say that a corporation has a "moral obligation" to do something.
I guess you could argue that lack of tech support harms the public; therefore, corporations must provide tech support. But this seems a narrow argument: it depends on how you define "harm" and it depends (I assume) on whether or not the corporation made a good faith effort to create a usable product. Is it the corporation's fault that you (specifically) can't get their product working? Have they fulfilled their "obligation" by simply making a good faith effort to design a competent product? (And how do you prove incompetency? "Smoking gun" memos?)
Re:why tech support sucks (Score:4)
(1) fixing a faulty product and
(2) explaining the complexities of a working product.
Case (1) is problematic because it's not always the case that the product is at fault when a fault occurs. (The OS, for example, can cause a working product not to work.)
Case (2) is problematic because a complexity -- or subtlety, however you want to spin it -- is sometimes misdiagnosed as (1).
One could (and while I do, I don't like it) make the logical leap that what Microsoft is doing with t