An amazingly surreal online conversation between a customer and Earthlink’s tech support folks, which, were it me, would have had me banging my own head against the wall until I fell into a blissful coma.
Matt: and it says that it was shipped or billed on July 27
Matt: 2nd day air
Matt: it’s Aug 9
Val P: Yes, you are correct.
Matt: well why hasn’t it been shipped, this is getting ridiculous
Val P: But the tracking number for the new modem is not generated. As the shipping method is in 2 day, it should be generated in 2 days.
Matt: so it still hasn’t been shipped?
Val P: I am sorry, it is not yet shipped.
Matt: why?????????
Val P: The request has been sent to the appropriate department to send you the kit. I request you to wait for 2 days.
Kafkaesque doesn’t begin to describe it. The disadvantage of online support chats like this is that the other person can blithely key away without any sort of coherent response. The advantage is that you can keep a log …
In the last year, I can only recall requesting tech support from Earthlink and HP. Neither one was able to solve the problem I asked them to help me with, and both were pretty miserable to deal with. I even tried Earthlink’s online chat feature, and the degree of miscommunication between me and the support person was amazing.
I wonder if the following business strategy is in use anywhere: hire a bunch of clueless idiots to run tech support. This strategy has two advantages: (1) they’re clueless idiots, so you don’t have to pay them very much, and (2) they tend to drive the customers away, so you don’t need as many of them anyway.
A complimentary strategy would be to put your tech support people behind a nasty automated call-direction system that was so frustrating to use that people would give up before they got to talk to a person.
Now that I think about it, this all sounds like something Dogbert would come up with.
Actually, it sounds pretty much like what the folks have decided to do.
Tech support is expensive and, unless you are charging for it, it’s dollars straight off the bottom line, so companies have a short-term incentive to skimp. A case in point.