People call technical support and say
“It doesn’t work”
[You’re the genius, you know everything, fix it!]
In reality these people are not as technical as you think. Technical support is not some fantasy, cinematic with Star Wars like CGI projected displays.
They are offices, with generic Herman Miller or Steelcase cubicles, with generation or two old enterprise class desktops probably running Enterprise class Windows 7, and telephones that are DCP or ISDN, two wired landline like terminals functioning as Automatic Call Distribution as the telephone.
When you call a technical support, you go to Tier 1, and depending on your rap sheet with your brand (or vendor) it may route you to a better or worse “agent” because the special PBX and the computer that handles the number and your case history are plugged together.
How do you “throw away the script”?
SPECIFIC INFORMATION REQUIRED
- When did the issue occur? Was there another incident prior to?
- What happened at the time of the incident? Did this happen at the same time?
- Can you reproduce this problem?
- Can you elaborate the way of reproducing the problem?
- If this is an Internet provider and you don’t have access to the “internet”, can you “Ping” through a “console”, “terminal” or “command line prompt” to Google’s Well Known IP Address of 8.8.8.8? Do you see success or error messages?
- If you have any understanding of any technical matters, mention that.
If you can be coherent and explain things in a thought out manner without acting like wishy-washy or “well something is working, but I am not sure, because I dunno something may not work but I do not know for sure” will delay the line of communication to the goal of restoration.
Answer those specifics, you can get to Tier II or III. Tier III for most vendors Tier III is developer, engineers, the VIP circle. They will highly respect you if YOU continue Proper Line of Communication of Specificity. Acting like girl in Clueless back to Tier I in less than New York Second!
Assume all call centers are not local. The agent doesn’t now East Manchester, NH to Manchester, California. They don’t have access vital information to the “last mile boxes” or the cell tower, or the code in Office 365. You want the keys to the VIP, you prove yourself to show you know something.
Take responsibility. The Vendor has no right to treat a high schooler full access support if that high schooler minded person cannot explain themself. It’s called advocacy. Consumer class people, under-informed (do not confuse this as under-educated), people living in poor communities, are not fully aware that enterprise class companies are at larger scale and are unfortunately less “neighborly” and is not as fully intelligent to basic levels of technology.
Act like an adult, talk logically, think methodically. Filter yourself. Think about what is going on at the “agent’s” end. Ignore the TV commercials of what contact center looks like. Think boring thoughts. That’s how society works in an Enterprise World.
#EnterpriseYOURself
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