To be honest, there are a growing number of highly savvy consumers who are perfectly able to troubleshoot and fix their products. These people can be infuriated by the traditional customer support model of assuming you're a stupid bag of bricks.

There's a place for both approaches.

60% of the time, it works every time

My company does not do this, but the users(10s of thousands for this product) have setup their own local, regional, and internet based support groups for themselves. It's interesting the things they come up with as solutions to their problems, but, really, the biggest issue is when they start talking about problems that they have themselves that are caused by their environment and then everyone else calls because they have a problem they believe to be related to the same thing, but doesn't apply at all. "bbut I saw on the usergroup that this was caused by that, so you need to fix it!"

Some are also onshoring the work and charging $65.95 for the privilege of speaking to an American (or Canadian in some cases).

Oh, and I almost forget.

You get enough people complaining on your official forums, you eventually have people avoiding your product because of all the negative stuff on there, or get backlash for heavily editing and moderation of your forums.

I used to do tech support for laptops. While I am tech savvy I still ran into some obscure software issues and I had no idea what was causing the issue. We weren't supposed to but I would just google that shiat, read through some forums and usually have the issue solved in a few minutes while I was chatting with the customer.

If only they would learn to do that themselves. Half the people that I worked with new less about computers than your mom.

Only real reason to call support is if you need to use the hardware warranty.

Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]

60% of the time, it works every time

This, sir, is going on the wall at work.

Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]

60% of the time, it works every time

Either that or read the farking instructions. 95% of the time, it works every time.

Back in the day, when tech support was a domestic industry, I answered phones for HP in relation to their ScanJet lines.

I wrote several FAQ type solutions. They got posted to an official HP portal, and turned out to be effective. I'm talking about the solutions that worked for 90% of our problems.

After I got fired from that outsourced call center for telling my manager's girlfriend to let me spend time with a slow customer, the whole site got downsized to India. The supreme irony being that a third of our staff was FROM India.

/Went on to get a BSME
//Further on became self employed because the whole economy sucked.

Good documentation and "INSTALL THE SOFTWARE BEFORE PLUGGING IN SCANNER" on the cord solved most of the problems.

Next job I got fired for telling a DSL customer to get a proper DSL modem instead of downgrading from NT to Win98 to support a USB bastard that hardly worked. And I got fired the day Bell Atlantic became Verizon.

Outsourcing makes sense for processes that are not your core competency.

I wonder, however, about companies that do not consider servicing their customers a core competency. How is someone OUTSIDE of your company supposed to know or care as much about your product as you do?

Ikea?

Goimir: It's no big secret that you're using a flowchart. Why not just publish the flowchart and reduce call volume?

I wish it was as awesome as a flow chart at AT&T. You could diagram most 'troubleshooting' as a flow chart, but the customer would never figure it out based on the contents. There are always tons of steps that are never the problem and one sentence that's the problem about 80% of the time. And even when you tell the customer the problem, they don't believe you.

Sometimes I wish I could say shiat like "Listen, I know you think our Microcell is defective but after the last 30 of these that I fixed by bypassing the router, I'm suspecting that your router like every other home router sucks dick at IPsec."

Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]

60% of the time, it works every time

That point about Googling the problem works almost every time. I have this friend who's convinced I'm a computer genius. (I'm not.) Every time she has a problem she calls me, all I do is take what she says is wrong, type it into a Google search and 9 times out of 10, I find an answer to her problem on the first page of results. I've told her exactly how I do it yet she still calls me first every time.

wildcardjack: Next job I got fired for telling a DSL customer to get a proper DSL modem instead of downgrading from NT to Win98 to support a USB bastard that hardly worked. And I got fired the day Bell Atlantic became Verizon.

If Verizon had nuts, I would kick them, square-dead, therein.
/then I would do a little dance

ongbok: Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]

60% of the time, it works every time

Either that or read the farking instructions. 95% of the time, it works every time.

I'd say 75% of my business is composed of "reading the error message for the customer."

Tax Boy: 60% of the time, it works every time

That can be modified with a step for performing a battery pull or a soft reset and voila, you are now the local phone expert.

ReapTheChaos: Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]

60% of the time, it works every time

That point about Googling the problem works almost every time. I have this friend who's convinced I'm a computer genius. (I'm not.) Every time she has a problem she calls me, all I do is take what she says is wrong, type it into a Google search and 9 times out of 10, I find an answer to her problem on the first page of results. I've told her exactly how I do it yet she still calls me first every time.

Yes, sadly the Internet can make you look like a genius. We deal with some fairly obscure stuff, and I get questions from our staff often. I keep pointing these folks to Google, trying to teach them how to fish. Google "site:" searches are good. I have called companies who reacted to my search-generated questions by saying, "we pulled that down." Um, no, your web folks just took off the public, obvious links. The content is still there.

Back when I had my own home e-mail and internet access before our organization did, I was getting information on-line sometimes two weeks before the paper copies of stuff came through the mailroom. Listservs were great.

These online forums are great.
I have easily Goggled answers to problems with my car, my dryer, and of course anything computer related.

I don't think there's a question or problem out there that someone else hasn't already asked and answered. And I don't have the patience to call anyone's 800 number.

Of course, I'm probably a bit more computer savvy than the average customer - my wife, for example is better off calling the 800 number.

FTA: "India blazed the trail, building a $5 billion outsourcing business on helping Westerners solve high-tech niggles."

Solve? Eh...not so much. Unless your problem is an FAQ that's readily available on their script, or you're more than happy to reboot multiple times or perhaps format and reinstall your OS.

Ugh; I've been drowning in the swamp of user generated tech support ever since I started running Linux.

Linux is almost by definition undocumented software; most tech support is on bulletin boards and in forums written by people who (a) type like howler monkeys on crack, (b) think you're hilarious for not being born with certain technical skills, and (c) don't really want more lusers joining their little club and making them feel less special for not using Microsoft. So you wind up with instructions where "sudo bash -xkit gref then ybar fuction -j. good luk :)" is the entirety of the post.

They also hate whatever version of Linux you got, no matter what version you're using, and you were a complete idiot for choosing that one when real men use this one.

Putting this out there with things like appliances and cell phones can't possibly lead to anything good.

"I have a question about my Nokia 180 on US Cellular, which keeps dropping calls whenever it rains."
"HA HA U SUK GET A T-MOBILE"

"My Kenmore Microwave (model X-A) has developed a timing problem whenever I set it to defrost."
"Once you've removed the front panel grommet flanges, use a multimeter to check the voltage in the contact points along the A-line limiter. If that doesn't work, secure the frammistat with 1/8" bolts and test the line feed. Five seconds should do it."

peasandcarrots: Ugh; I've been drowning in the swamp of user generated tech support ever since I started running Linux.

Linux is almost by definition undocumented software; most tech support is on bulletin boards and in forums written by people who (a) type like howler monkeys on crack, (b) think you're hilarious for not being born with certain technical skills, and (c) don't really want more lusers joining their little club and making them feel less special for not using Microsoft. So you wind up with instructions where "sudo bash -xkit gref then ybar fuction -j. good luk :)" is the entirety of the post.

They also hate whatever version of Linux you got, no matter what version you're using, and you were a complete idiot for choosing that one when real men use this one.

Putting this out there with things like appliances and cell phones can't possibly lead to anything good.

"I have a question about my Nokia 180 on US Cellular, which keeps dropping calls whenever it rains."
"HA HA U SUK GET A T-MOBILE"

"My Kenmore Microwave (model X-A) has developed a timing problem whenever I set it to defrost."
"Once you've removed the front panel grommet flanges, use a multimeter to check the voltage in the contact points along the A-line limiter. If that doesn't work, secure the frammistat with 1/8" bolts and test the line feed. Five seconds should do it."

Good point. However, the power of Google makes it, at least my experience, more bearable. You'll turn up many more helpful and thorough posts than the posts you describe above.

In addition, I see more and more folks posting pictures and videos of how to fix/upgrade things, which beats text by a long shot. I recently used videos to upgrade memory in a notebook and repair a riding mower deck, things that the company's customer service line would be utterly useless in trying to explain (or in the case of the notebook didn't want to explain).

I sound fat: Outsourcing makes sense for processes that are not your core competency.

I wonder, however, about companies that do not consider servicing their customers a core competency. How is someone OUTSIDE of your company supposed to know or care as much about your product as you do?

Simple: Customer support is a cost center, it generates no revenue. Anything that does not direclty lead to the generation of profit is evil and useless. Sure, you may destroy your brand over the course of years by providing shiatty support, but if you'll increase per share earning while you are killing your name, and then you'll be long gone and it will be someone else's problem.

Long term strategy is for chumps.

Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]

60% of the time, it works every time

There's a shorter method that is often tried before resorting to your flowchart:

"Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

I always say that to myself when I work with technology.

Fubini: To be honest, there are a growing number of highly savvy consumers who are perfectly able to troubleshoot and fix their products

I.... find that unlikely. Maybe we're just seeing different trends, but I'm seeing a lot more people who are a lot less equipped to deal with technical problems. Between more disposable technology ($500 smart phone broke after two years? Don't fix it, just take out a new contract and get another one!) and more reliable technology, people seem to be better equipped to use it, but far less capable of responding as soon as it starts to operate outside of normal parameters.

On top of that, the trend is more toward less repairable tech anyway. It's difficult to get hold of the necessary parts to repair an actually broken electronic device, how many people are capable of then soldering in chips or replacing a capacitor?

wingnut396: Sure, you may destroy your brand over the course of years

Pffft. People don't give a shiat about that sort of thing anymore. If people cared about anything at all except the lowest possible price companies like Wal-Mart wouldn't even be able to exist. These companies discovered long ago that it didn't matter if they screwed over 15% of their customers to keep costs rock bottom. The other 85% wouldn't care about the possibility that they'll be the victim of the screwjob next time and a significant portion of the people who got screwed would come back anyway as long as the price was right.

And the small bit of damage they do receive can be controlled by a few carefully crafted scripts that make it sound like the rep on the other end of the line who's already taken a hundred other calls today really does care about you personally for the time he's listening to your problem.

Customer service is dead and customers killed it. And all it's done is improve the long term outlook for the companies that can balance their books around it. It doesn't matter if your revenues drop 10% by abusing your customers if they go up 30% from there because a million other idiots didn't bother to look at anything but the price tag.

TheShavingofOccam123: Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]
60% of the time, it works every time
There's a shorter method that is often tried before resorting to your flowchart:

"Hello, IT. Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

I always say that to myself when I work with technology.

I've been finding myself telling that to OUR support center when it comes to printer issues. They always think it's a networking issues, but a printer reboot fixes it.

/maybe if we stopped using desktop printers for computer labs
//and performed maintenance on them once in a while

Looks like everyone digressed to gushing about the wonders of Google troubleshooting. Which is great, but I think this was forced by manufacturers cutting the service corner first. I don't go on the Internet to troubleshoot because I like it; I go there because most tech support staff aren't even remotely technical.

The thing is, they cut that corner because they realized no one wanted to pay for it. Americans always buy on price. The race to the bottom is so complete that now most devices are designed to just break (i.e., they aren't designed to be repaired).

Here's a thought to keep you up at night: This mentality has spread to industry. I've seen commodity-grade components installed in everything from logistics equipment to medical equipment. It's kind of remarkable how America is deliberately converting its infrastructure to 3rd-world quality because consumers are so obsessed with price. I recently left an industrial component manufacturer that's shifting its warranties from 5-10 years to 3 years for its flagship lines because there was zero market interest in product lasted more than 3 years. None. The people making our infrastructure can't stay in business unless they use cheaper components that aren't guaranteed to last more than 3 years. I left partly because this company was getting its butt kicked by competitors with 1-2 year warranties. For industrial equipment.

Fubini: To be honest, there are a growing number of highly savvy consumers who are perfectlythink they are able to troubleshoot and fix their products and don't know that they are actually making it worse

ftfm

hammettman: My new G.E. oven had the dreaded F7 error. It was under warranty, so GE came out and installed a new control panel. 2 weeks later, the new panel failed again. GE said this new panel must have been defective and replaced it. The repair guy at the time tried to sell me an extended warranty. I said no thanks. A little over 2 years later, the F7 error popped up again. GE wanted over $500 to fix my 2 year old oven, with no guarantee that the new control panel would last more than 2 years, although, if it did fail before 2 years, it would be under warranty and be replaced again (of course, I would still owe a service charge for the labor). They again suggested I buy an extended warranty. I told them to fark off and got on the internet. I found an appliance b-board that cataloged problems. I found the dreaded F7 GE oven error listed. An engineer had taken apart his control panel and diagnosed why the control panel kept failing. He posted the solution: it involved the simple insertion of an index card in between the faulty section of connector tape. Problem has been solved and the oven has not failed in 8 years. I fixed my next door neighbor's oven which had the same problem (it's a tract home development, all with the same shiatty GE appliances) for a couple of beers. It took 20 minutes. I offered to fix another neighbor's oven with the same problem, but he declined. He's more type-a and didn't think he could trust my work. He paid GE, and signed up for the extended warranty. They've replaced his control panel 4 times.

Companies don't really have their customer's best interests in mind. Best do it yourself.

I've identified your problem: you have an oven with a computer in it. I don't even have to plug my oven in. Fancy that.

dragonchild: It's kind of remarkable how America is deliberately converting its infrastructure to 3rd-world quality because consumers are so obsessed with price.

This is why the best place to do business is in the public sector. Price isn't an object.

On the flip side, as a customer, public entities are much more difficult to deal with. Good and the bad.

ghare: ongbok: Tax Boy: [www.webmonkey.com image 580x539]

60% of the time, it works every time

Either that or read the farking instructions. 95% of the time, it works every time.

I'd say 75% of my business is composed of "reading the error message for the customer."

No, your business is knowing WTF the error message MEANS.

Splinshints
Pffft. People don't give a shiat about that sort of thing anymore. If people cared about anything at all except the lowest possible price companies like Wal-Mart wouldn't even be able to exist. These companies discovered long ago that it didn't matter if they screwed over 15% of their customers to keep costs rock bottom. The other 85% wouldn't care about the possibility that they'll be the victim of the screwjob next time and a significant portion of the people who got screwed would come back anyway as long as the price was right.

the solve a customer can have for getting that 15% piece of crap at walmart is just to replace it with another one at walmart. models stay on the shelf for a year or 2 so when the $50 microwave dies after 1 year clean it up and buy the exact same model and throw the broken one in the box and return that for the refund.
this starts another kind of shiate made, shiate bought, profits lost due to returns so new stuff made shiater cycle.

In other news, corporations have discovered the bulletin board method of answering questions.

Apple does this with their message boards and every fifth post on a thread is "Does Apple even read this board?"

hammettman: My new G.E. oven had the dreaded F7 error. It was under warranty, so GE came out and installed a new control panel. 2 weeks later, the new panel failed again. GE said this new panel must have been defective and replaced it. The repair guy at the time tried to sell me an extended warranty. I said no thanks. A little over 2 years later, the F7 error popped up again. GE wanted over $500 to fix my 2 year old oven, with no guarantee that the new control panel would last more than 2 years, although, if it did fail before 2 years, it would be under warranty and be replaced again (of course, I would still owe a service charge for the labor). They again suggested I buy an extended warranty. I told them to fark off and got on the internet. I found an appliance b-board that cataloged problems. I found the dreaded F7 GE oven error listed. An engineer had taken apart his control panel and diagnosed why the control panel kept failing. He posted the solution: it involved the simple insertion of an index card in between the faulty section of connector tape. Problem has been solved and the oven has not failed in 8 years. I fixed my next door neighbor's oven which had the same problem (it's a tract home development, all with the same shiatty GE appliances) for a couple of beers. It took 20 minutes. I offered to fix another neighbor's oven with the same problem, but he declined. He's more type-a and didn't think he could trust my work. He paid GE, and signed up for the extended warranty. They've replaced his control panel 4 times.

Companies don't really have their customer's best interests in mind. Best do it yourself.

...or their own best interests in mind. The cost for GE to replace that panel 4 times is much more than whatever the guy paid for the extended warranty.

We rolled out our forum last year. Surely enough, there are a handful of people who seem to spend all their time answering questions, though most of them turn out to be vendors in other countries who are mostly left to their own devices (ha ha) for supporting their customers. But there are some niche users of our specialty big iron that are starting to gather there instead of far-flung industry boards, and that's helpful since good juicy (read: googlebait) content gets posted.

The US management keeps asking "why are there all these non-US support questions when we intended this to be US-only?" (so they wouldn't have to pay to translate anything, of course). My answer -- same as before we launched -- was "because INTERNETS".

The corporate branding police and SEO mavens get all concerned about "oh no a negative comment is poisoning our search results". Welcome to Web 2.0!

Geotpf: ...or their own best interests in mind. The cost for GE to replace that panel 4 times is much more than whatever the guy paid for the extended warranty.

But they got a deal from their parts supplier. Saved them a bunch of money on the thousands of units sold, and they got a nice bump in their stock price.

The people that made that decision cashed out and moved on already, so why should they care?

Ah, yes, the "let's encourage customers to generate content" approach. It works, but only to a point, because enlightened self-interest without compensation can only go so far.

Here's the fun part - if your company can't figure out a way to compensate customers for generating your content, other companies will happily exploit their knowledge as "consultants." Status within a peer group is handy - just ask the Linux community - but compensation trumps status on a regular basis.

If someone else is paying your customers to tell them about how your product works, what issues & solutions they've discovered, your company won't hear about it until that someone else publishes a book, or spins up a competing product, or builds a consulting business servicing your company's products. I made a ton of money in the late 90's doing just that.