What gave people bitter fits of frustration before technology and tech support came along? Probably things like the weather, ornery farm animals, their children.
Here’s the thing: Day 7 without a vital suite of products working on my computer. That’s frustrating enough, scouring the internet for fixes, trying them, failing, tweaking container proxies and failing in a whole different way. There are tons of sites that address the very issues I am facing, so I know I am not alone. Cold comfort.
Let’s contact the company which is headquartered five miles from my house. In the old days I could have probably taken my $2400 set of software to HQ and had someone get under the hood. They might have even offered a tour, a chicken dinner, some compassion. Those days are long gone, and I’m pretty sure the security force is wise to such schemes. After all, who wants to get THAT close to their customers?
Instead, I am talking to people 12,000 miles away. We’ve done a lot of talking lately, all instigated by me. Over the course of this past week, the issue has been escalated numerous times with promises of a call-back within 24-48 hours. Those windows have passed repeatedly, without a peep. So I call back and the issue is escalated again. I went from level 1 to level 2, and today I skipped right up to level 5. No matter how high it goes, no one is actually helping me. We customers are such pesky creatures.
Whatever the problem is, they assure me, it is not with their products. It’s with my system or some other widg or gadg residing within. Ah, the last refuge of a tech support scoundrel. They boast that “thousands of people use our products without any trouble.” The second-to-last refuge: blame the customer.
So I ask: If you make such great products, how come the pre-recorded message warns of “especially heavy call volume”? Are people calling to say how smoothly their software is running? That they are amazed at how well it plays with the tick-plagued OS? When can I pay you another few grand for the new not-ready-for-market upgrade?
Of course, such lousy support is not isolated to this company. There are plenty of companies with deplorable customer service in defense of their buggy products.
Speaking of buggies, I bet those could be pretty frustrating things to make work.