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Why Tech Support Is Purposely Unbearable

85 点作者 kanamekun将近 9 年前

16 条评论

97s将近 9 年前
Coming from a tech support background. I used to be a top performer at a support company and set most of the records for call times etc. I was hated by most of my peers, and many of my supervisors because I set numbers to low for most of the other teams and they were under preforming. I am not saying this to brag but to state how awful most support workers are. Most of my co-workers had no idea what they were doing besides reading off a script, any question outside of the box and boom, off to tier 2.<p>One problem is: I found that the quicker I answered questions the more questions I received. If the customer knew that I knew what I was doing and I was able to help them efficiently they had more questions. This led me to ponder how to solve the problem. I ended up getting my supervisor to create a FAQ page based on a ton of the questions that I was constantly asked. I was then able to refer customers to this page and actually say honestly that it would answer their questions.<p>A lot of the problem with these tech giants like ATT, Comcast, etc, they have horrible interfaces. For example Comcast has on demand, but once you watch a show you have to literally go back and search for the TV show name again before you can watch the next episode. It&#x27;s horrible. I called multiple times trying to figure out how to get around this. They said there is no fix and it is how the system works. I googled it and millions of people have the same issue. It&#x27;s absurd, yet they haven&#x27;t fixed it. I don&#x27;t think they even care, or it cost them money for customers to watch on demand so they want to make it as aggravating as possible.<p>Another interesting aspect of being able to help people quickly is you never get good reviews or people asking to speak to your supervisor. People are so pleased that they were able to get their answer solved in a manner they could understand in a really fast time they just breath a big sigh of relief and say &quot;thank you so much&quot;, and then get off the phone.<p>I had co-workers who would spend 20-30 minutes on the phone with someone sitting there trying to explain something to them, and since they were so patient, the customer always asked to speak to supervisor to thank them for their patience. For some reason the customer always thinks they are the problem in this situation. It really boggles my mind.<p>Just a view.
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Animats将近 9 年前
I like &quot;Fast Customer&quot;, which waits on hold for you. I was thinking of something like that years ago, and was going to call it &quot;Holdmaster&quot;. It makes sense as an app; pre-smartphone, it would have required a box attached the phone line.<p>Microsoft once had customer support lines where you could call in for about $195, but if it was their bug, you got a refund. Fun gamble.
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ranveeraggarwal将近 9 年前
It&#x27;s worse when you have the exact problem laid out and the customer support guy knows less about the product than you do. Two years ago, I talked to the Dell Customer Support about my failing hard drive and showed him the tests I ran to verify it.<p>He: What do you mean by failing hard drive? Is it not booting?<p>I showed him bad sectors in my hard drive.<p>He: Is the problem solved?<p>I: No! You have done literally nothing to solve my problem.<p>He: But your laptop is booting now, right?<p>I: Yes, it is, for now. But it won&#x27;t in a few days.<p>He: I think your laptop has no problem. Have a good day.<p>I did take a backup and my hard drive did fail completely a week later. So much for tech support.
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wccrawford将近 9 年前
&gt;To get better service by phone, dial the prompt designated for “sales” or “to place an order,” which almost always gets you an onshore agent, while tech support is usually offshore with the associated language difficulties.<p>I ended up doing something similar the other day. I wanted to cancel my TV service, and was considering upgrading my internet speed. I called in and chose the option to cancel a service. I was on hold for 30 minutes.<p>I had to hang up and then called back a little later, but this time I asked for &quot;upgrades&quot;. I got someone <i>immediately</i>. He was a little non-plussed when I immediately asked to cancel a service, but didn&#x27;t scold me. I did then upgrade my speed.
keithpeter将近 9 年前
<i>&quot;The most egregious offenders are companies like cable and mobile service providers, which typically have little competition and whose customers are bound by contracts or would be considerably inconvenienced if they canceled their service. Not surprisingly, cable and mobile service providers are consistently ranked by consumers as providing the worst customer support.&quot;</i><p>UK: significant problem with adsl broadband, kept going round in circles over a period of weeks, was advised <i>by the tech support</i> to phone the sales number and ask to cancel contract. Issue escalated in minutes and solved in an hour.<p>Apparently customer <i>retention</i> has higher priority to customer <i>support</i>.
arbuge将近 9 年前
&quot;“It’s utterly maddening because the thing about conversations is that when I say something to you, I believe I’m having influence on the conversation,”<p>....<p>&quot;AT&amp;T, Comcast and Verizon Communications did not respond to requests for comment.&quot;
madebysquares将近 9 年前
I worked tech support for 6 years for a large telco in the northeast it was the most miserable, mundane part of my life. They were so poorly managed and so focused on bottom line that customers wants and needs were not important. Helping customers was the least important thing as long as you didn&#x27;t talk to them for more than 8 minutes and you didn&#x27;t appear to be rude.
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michaelbuckbee将近 9 年前
The article focuses mostly on big incumbents. If you&#x27;re in more of a startup mindset doing awesome support has tremendous ROI.
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passenger将近 9 年前
A smaller response time actually leads to more requests from customers IMHO. Customers are more likely to contact you for &quot;mundane&quot; tasks when they are assured of a quick response.
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brownbat将近 9 年前
Reminded me of Julie Snyder&#x27;s ten month battle with MCI over immense charges she never incurred. Agents seemed to make up new offices and procedures to assure her that her issue had been elevated and this time it would be different.<p>It was only fully resolved after she put the story on This American Life.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thisamericanlife.org&#x2F;radio-archives&#x2F;episode&#x2F;253&#x2F;the-middle-of-nowhere?act=2" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thisamericanlife.org&#x2F;radio-archives&#x2F;episode&#x2F;253&#x2F;t...</a>
beyondcompute将近 9 年前
A solution? The good ol&#x27; government regulation. If companies &#x27;cannot&#x27; achieve acceptable standards of customer support service, those standards should be imposed on them. This game where ordinary customers are so often the victims must be put to an end.
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sllabres将近 9 年前
Reading the article and comming accross the obviously true line of “Don’t think companies haven’t studied how far they can take things in providing the minimal level of service” this came to my mind: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=YfkPcTNnGNk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=YfkPcTNnGNk</a>
Zigurd将近 9 年前
Both Hover and Squarespace have amazing, wonderful, useful tech support. They are selling somewhat technical products to what are, at best, a &quot;power user&quot; level of customer. They make it work.
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GnarfGnarf将近 9 年前
For examples of excellent Tech. Support, I recommend GoDaddy, Infusionsoft, Managed.com (PowerDNN). These people know their stuff. And they speak English.<p>For execrable support, see Google.
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AtlasLion将近 9 年前
A differentiation should be made between b2b and b2c. B2b support is way better with much higher SLA&#x27;s.
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michaelbuddy将近 9 年前
Clever headline. Almost makes you think the NYTimes is telling the truth. But the places I&#x27;ve worked, the desire was always to resolve the phone calls one and done. Get the answer, get them resolved so they don&#x27;t have to call back. The conspiracy theory the NYT is cooking up is clickbait.
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