Hi Kemble!! Info, FWIW! There is always room for improvement in customer service!
Tech support: Not quite at our beck and call
Tom Mariam boasts an Ivy League education, but by his own admission is no techie. So when the owner of a Port Chester, N.Y., communications firm booted up his Dell and received a warning relating to a possible virus, he hit "terminate" and attempted to boot the PC again. The same error message popped up. Mariam wasn't sure what to do next.
Permit me to present to the court yet more evidence, if needed, of the woeful state of support.
Tech support report card
How did your favorite company fare?
Expert advice, in advance
There are no guarantees, but you can take measures to improve your chances of avoiding tech-support hell. A few (some admittedly offbeat) tips:
Never upgrade, never add software. Clearly not a strategy for everyone, and it seems to defeat the purpose for having a computer in the first place. But many problems arise from conflicts or driver issues that occur when you upgrade and add accessories. If your PC is working fine and you have no ambitions for doing more, don't mess around. Should a problem occur, your hardware maker can't blame it on a third party.
Do Web research. If you are thinking about purchasing any program (or hardware), peek at the support areas ahead of time to determine if resources put up to help you out are coherent and easily assessable. Plus, you'll get a surface feel for the kinds of problems customers are having.
Call tech support. Yes, this is what you are trying to avoid. But before buying, see how long it takes to reach a live human. You may even learn a thing or two from the voice menu presented - or at the least hear catchy elevator music. Warning: The experiment may cost you long distance charges
Mariam became an unwilling participant in the Blame Game. He called Dell, which told him it was a software issue and he'd need to contact Symantec, maker of the Norton AntiVirus software on his machine. But, Mariam says, "You can only get help from Norton online. How do I contact Norton if I cannot boot up my computer?"
Mariam finally used an old laptop to reach the Norton site, where he was referred to a chat room "of people with similar but not the same problems. It's useless, at least to an amateur like me," he says. "Eventually, after many forced steps, you can send an e-mail to Norton, but there was a warning that it could take several days to get back to you by e-mail" — and possibly longer, because of July 4.
Only after all this did Mariam stumble upon actual tech support phone numbers — and the fact that he would have to pay either a flat fee of $39.95, or $3.95 per minute, to solve his problem that way. Mariam had recently paid more than $20 to upgrade his virus protection for a year, so he wondered, "Why should I pay for help?" He didn't. A friend eventually bailed him out.
Sadly, most of us have been in Mariam's sorry shoes.
For all the steady advancements that have been made in personal computing over the years, tech support still lags and might even be slipping. As PCs evolve into digital darlings that do music, pictures, video and home networking, the likelihood of a meltdown would appear to increase.
"People end up buying the cool toys that have a lot more functionality built in, which makes them a lot more complex and (makes it) harder to figure out what's wrong," says analyst Tony Adams with research firm Gartner puts it. He believes, and I agree, that tech support staffers should be involved in product planning and design processes. "What's missing is a lot of advance thinking," he says. "That is the crime of the century."
The aptitude test
When I informed Chris Monnette, who heads tech support for Symantec, about Mariam's episode, he was surprised Dell didn't handle it. "Our arrangement with them is that they would provide that support." (Blame Game, round two.) Though the company provides free phone support for installation problems or known defects, handholding on how to use or interpret the program will cost you. "There's a certain level of computer savvy that we expect the customers to have when using our products, and if they need help beyond that, we have to charge for it," he says.
Come again? Folks should pass an aptitude test before pulling out their wallets?
I'm certainly not out to finger Symantec — its issues are emblematic of an industrywide problem. Microsoft charges $35 per incident for phone help with Windows or Office, though since the arrival of Windows XP, the fee only kicks in on the third support incident. (You also get unlimited free support during the installation.)
Microsoft reports that 97% of customer support contacts take place on the Web these days. But "if you're a relative novice, you won't get near the (Web) knowledge base," concedes Matt Fingerhut, director of Windows client support, who says phone help is free on most Microsoft entertainment and reference titles.
I am not naive. I recognize that providing phone support (and the requisite manpower and infrastructure) is extremely expensive, and it doesn't help that the economy is in the toilet. Indeed, Monnette says the average support call dealing with just one particular virus last year exceeded 79 minutes — and the longer the call, the more it hurts the business financially. That's why most companies would rather have you seek assistance on the Web. And for some lucky customers, that works out just fine.
But try explaining that to the poor schnook who paid for a working product, only to get milked the moment the thing starts acting up.
I hear stories of frustration all the time. Having worked with countless products over the years, I've experienced more than my share of problems — issues no sane person should be expected to comprehend. I'm certain if I didn't have corporate contacts to harangue, and if those same contacts hadn't been trying extra hard to make nice with me, I'd have spent hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours keeping things running.
Fewer repairs needed
And yet there is some reason for optimism. Industry execs are mindful of negative press and recognize the correlation between user satisfaction and repeat business. "We know that if we spend a dollar on support, it comes back to us in reduced marketing expenses," Gateway CEO Ted Waitt told me recently.
The latest PC Magazine service and reliability reader survey, due on newsstands in the next few days, reports that the average overall satisfaction rating among desktop PC users (on a scale of 1 to 10) registers a respectable 7.9.
Fewer machines require repair these days. Editor in chief Michael Miller says increasingly stable operating systems, integrated motherboards, fewer separate components, easier connections and color-coded ports are all leading to improvements. "I'm not going to tell you it's perfect," he says. "I don't think it is good enough."
By itself, desktop PC tech support rated a mediocre 6.7. That may reflect a more dire condition when you consider that PC Magazine's readers are more technically proficient than the market at large.
Among desktop PC makers, Dell continues to be the perennial service and reliability champ. But even Dell is slipping: Its notebooks dropped to a B+ from last year's A, and some respondents complained that Dell's phone staffers speak English poorly. (In an effort to cut costs, many companies "outsource" phone centers overseas.)
Dell also received worse than average scores on "in-warranty" repairs. I've noticed that Dell is scrimping on the length of warranties supplied with some models.
The results are even more daunting for the newly combined Compaq and HP. Measured separately in the survey, Compaq received an E (failing) for its desktops, with HP a barely better D-.
What kind of service should an end user ultimately expect? Says Waitt: "What's realistic is that if you have a problem with a PC, you have some great tools online and get it resolved quickly, (or) if you engage in a chat session you get a response very quickly. If you want to pick up the phone, your call should be answered within five minutes, guaranteed."
Waitt says Gateway is besting those marks already, on average, with most people (but certainly not everyone) getting their issues resolved on the first call. I trust those of you who haven't been rescued quite as swiftly will let Gateway (and any other company) know — loudly.
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