Representing The REAL nerds... the ones that don't suck.
In the course of my job I handle a lot of tickets and work orders
for internet customers that originate from my company's
customer/technical service call center.
Today I got a trouble ticket with the following notes:
"Problem:Customer could not access the internet. Cheetah showed a good score, so we did a recycling of the sytem. Didn't work. Ping test was sucessful, we optimized IE, lowered security settings, flushed dns, reset IP, reinstalled the NIC. None of this worked. We scanned for spyware and did a netstat test. This came back indicating that there was spyware on the computer. A supervisor suggested possibly trying to switch out the modem for a new one."
I used to work at a technical service call center where this sort of
stupidity would never fly. Although I knew that the call center
I worked in was better, different, and exceptional I never really
knew just how much better we are. I can shamefully say that the
above quote does not represent something different than the
average customer experience with my company's call center. In
fact it doesn't represent a departure from the level of ridiculous
stupidity I experience every time I call ANY company's customer
service line.
I have had occasion, once or twice, to call Charter's customer service and in every instance but one I was near suicide by the end of the call. I've had similar experiences with Cingular, AT&T Wireless, AOL (that was the worst), Xcel Energy, Qwest, Wells Fargo, Bank Of America, Dell, Hewlitt Packard, and on and on and on. Of couse, not many of those calls were technical service related but if you've ever called a customer service call center you know what I mean. It's embarassing, though, to work for company with a call center that is as bad as these, if not worse.
There is one up side, though. I now know why people always looked at me like I was an idiot when I told them I worked in a call center and why employers very rarely took my experience in said call center seriously. NOT EVERYONE WHO WORKS IN A CALL CENTER IS AN IDIOTIC TRAINED MONKEY OR A MOUSE DRIVING A HUMANOID CYBORB WHILE THINKING ABOUT CHEESE. There are at least 15 people I know personally who worked in a call center and were not stupid and actually knew what they were talking about.
posted by Unknown at 2:38 PM
15 Comments:
Yeah! Who to judge.
The more I think about it and the more I experience what it's like, as an American in a country where companies care more about milking every last dollar than maintaining longevity by supplying customers with reliable and quality service, I think the call center I worked in was probably the only one of its kind. Astound definately had a progressive, customer focused, and responsible attitude towards customer service. I bet you could search 1000 years and not find another company where the customer service employees are not only competant but also empowered, reliable, and helpful. Shame on the whole world. And also... Scottie.... Huh? What did you mean?
I couldn't agree more wackly! That place was definitely one of a kind. Best in class - by far. Am I one of the fifteen?
cheeeeese!
Jumper,
Oh hell yeah....
I have to say, that the Microsoft Call Center is best in class as well. When I had my 360 Meltdown, the guys at Redmond were competent, and my customer service experience was a 10 out of 10. The wait queue for a regular business hours call was literally 2 seconds...They handled everything all the way down to arranging for the shipping of my xbox to the repair center...and none of it cost me a cent!
It's weird to me that people still don't know what the fuck spyware is and that it's not part of their modem.
I would do customer service again, and hell, I might do so quite soon, but between dumb companies/co-workers and dumb customers, I just don't know.
One of the best parts of my current job is getting to say, "I'll transfer you to customer service. Just a moment."
I hear you Dirty. I love transfering calls. When I first started it was so wierd to me cause when we were at Astound we were told not to transfer calls. I do have to take some calls but they're from people who know what they want to know. They know how to ask the question and don't complain or try to skirt around the issue. They know they owe money and that's that. I get questions like, "what's my balance?" or "what's the invoice number?" Ez Pz. Other than that just a lot of computer stuff. I love it. I would never want to work in retail/with residential customers again. Yes Frankles, we talked about the killing part - never materialized though. lol.
Not that you know of, anyway. Nick did have an excellent plan to release a bucket of squirrels on Mary Evenson. You want to hear something really crappy? Some of Astound' most notorious customers are now customers where I work now in order to avoid Charter... I still have to deal with these people sometimes. I just curl up under my desk and cry when I get something with their name. On the ohter hand there are also a lot of former Astound employees that are customers where I work now (and as you can tell I'm trying not to say the name of where I work since I bashed the crap our of their call center) and I feel aweful when I see their names come up and realize they've called our 888 number and talked to our call center reps. They know I work there and I feel like it reflects poorly on me that our call center reps are so aweful.
Not your fault Wackly. If they/we were to let the fact that you work where you do change our opinion of you, well, we wouldn't be worth shit. It's a job - at least you have one - and can keep one. I feel sorry for the Charter reps at the Sundial building. I talked to one of those ladies the other day and she said that people are not happy at all with what has happened and as you can imagine they get shit on everyday because of it. I tried to be nice despite my resentments. I told her that it wasn't her fault either - she didn't decide to buy us - she's just trying to support her family too. Down with Xcel Energy - they're the ones who need to be held responsible for the poor decision, not to sell us, but to sell us to THEM!!!
Will everybody hate me if I admit my dark secret? I like the fake computer lady you have to go through for internet tech support at Charter. I don't know nothing 'bout no computers so she helps me. Somehow when I reboot and go through all that bs with her gentle prompting and reassurances it works better.
I haven't had to call yet. When I do I'll pay more attention to her. And no Dirty, we could never hate you!!!
If you think Best Buy is the worst you've obviously never had to call AOL.
I had to call AOL today. OMG. First wtf is with the voice recognition crap - it doesn't work worth elephant dung. I'd rather listen to stupid music rather than go through that crap. Then finally someone comes on to help and I can barely understand her. I speak english - I didn't hit #7 or whatever for some language I can't even pronounce!! Aaarggh - how frustrating. You're right about your previous comment, Wackly. Corporate America doesn't care about quality service, it's about the bottom line - making our money theirs.
Check out consumerist.com
They have a lot of shit about disgruntled fomrer AOL 'retention specialists'
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