Yep. I hate having to phone support lines to be told to run basic troubleshooting like turning something off and on again when that’s the first thing that I’ll try.
“I recently had someone ask me to go get a computer and turn it on so I could restart it. He refused to move further in the script until I said I had done that.”
tbf, customers have a near-infinite number of different issues and problems. those ‘flow charts’ and scripts are designed to start at a baseline and work up from there and they start with the most common ones. you’d be paying more for whatever it is you’re calling in about if they hired only fully-qualified persons that can ‘think on their feet’ without the flow charts and scripts wrt whatever issue it is you have, troubleshooting it, and coming up with the specific solution for you… a hell of a lot more. and yes, the first thing you should usually try with tech items is a power cycle. ::insert itcrowd-turnitoffandonagain.jpg::
No one is asking for a gaggle of full-time engineers.
The flowchart is designed to fix the vast majority of problems top down. If 90% of the problems are solved by rebooting you’re going to reboot. It doesn’t matter if the ONT shows your fiber line is not connected. Wow that sucks I understand and don’t have a problem with that. But most support these days can’t even connect you with an actual engineer once you break the flow chart.
You spend 30 minutes on the phone having them check off check boxes when they get down to the point where there’s actually a level two problem, there’s no one there to talk to you. Here let us take down your information and we’ll get back to you within the next 24 hours.
A couple of decades ago this really wasn’t a problem. Level 1 technicians would run their flowcharts if you broke out to a level two technician you wait on the line for 10 to 15 minutes and you’d end up with a level two technician, It almost always solve the problem if it was solvable. Honestly the products I call for support on haven’t really gone down in price with the lack of support provided these days. They used to be able to provide me multi-tier support live on the phone with just their existing margins. It’s the same thing screwing over pharmacies and retail. They found they can get by with giving less support and having less people work the lines so that’s what they’re doing.
Yep. I hate having to phone support lines to be told to run basic troubleshooting like turning something off and on again when that’s the first thing that I’ll try.
If only shibboleet actually worked…
The alt text on that XKCD is even better:
tbf, customers have a near-infinite number of different issues and problems. those ‘flow charts’ and scripts are designed to start at a baseline and work up from there and they start with the most common ones. you’d be paying more for whatever it is you’re calling in about if they hired only fully-qualified persons that can ‘think on their feet’ without the flow charts and scripts wrt whatever issue it is you have, troubleshooting it, and coming up with the specific solution for you… a hell of a lot more. and yes, the first thing you should usually try with tech items is a power cycle. ::insert itcrowd-turnitoffandonagain.jpg::
No one is asking for a gaggle of full-time engineers.
The flowchart is designed to fix the vast majority of problems top down. If 90% of the problems are solved by rebooting you’re going to reboot. It doesn’t matter if the ONT shows your fiber line is not connected. Wow that sucks I understand and don’t have a problem with that. But most support these days can’t even connect you with an actual engineer once you break the flow chart.
You spend 30 minutes on the phone having them check off check boxes when they get down to the point where there’s actually a level two problem, there’s no one there to talk to you. Here let us take down your information and we’ll get back to you within the next 24 hours.
A couple of decades ago this really wasn’t a problem. Level 1 technicians would run their flowcharts if you broke out to a level two technician you wait on the line for 10 to 15 minutes and you’d end up with a level two technician, It almost always solve the problem if it was solvable. Honestly the products I call for support on haven’t really gone down in price with the lack of support provided these days. They used to be able to provide me multi-tier support live on the phone with just their existing margins. It’s the same thing screwing over pharmacies and retail. They found they can get by with giving less support and having less people work the lines so that’s what they’re doing.