Thursday, January 29, 2009

Tech Support Rants #2: FIRE!

Tech Support Rants 3:

So this is the tech support rant for Tuesday, whatever the date is cuz I don’t really know. I don’t pay attention to things like that. Tuesday, I held off on this one because I thought I would get a little more today. Maybe it’s for Wednesday, I have no idea. Anyway, I’m way behind. I didn’t go on about training, I missed days because I didn’t have any really bad calls. Actually this week I’ve had really good calls until yesterday, which was Wednesday the 27th or something like that. Anyway, so call comes in and customer says, “I’m calling because my computer caught fire.”

The agent sits there and seems to go “Oh, your computer caught fire. Well, that’s interesting. Uh, well, are you at the computer?”

The customer’s like, “Well no. I’m calling for my son who’s not here at the moment, and the computer isn’t here with him.”

And so the agent goes, “Well, oh, let me see what I can do.” And he puts the customer on hold. It’s kind of a long hold. At this point the agent hasn’t asked anything like, “Well is the fire put pout? Is everyone okay?” You know… simple common sense questions, you know. Kind of like… make sure that the customer’s okay and not calling you when they should be calling the fire department instead. They actually train us on that. *sigh*

You know I think the training is worthless. I don’t think it sinks in to half these people that they have, and ….argh… a quarter or half of the other half is just there because they can breathe. And then half of the other half, which is half of the half of the half of the half… I think. Anyway, they’re the ones that actually know what they’re doing and can do the job well. Too bad they can’t infect the others with how to do the job well.

Anyways, the agent comes back and says, “Well it’s Dell’s policy that we can’t help you unless you’re in front of the computer.” Uh… yeah… so uh, of course this guy gets a really low score and basically gets told, “I’m sorry. You did the wrong thing.” So… because there is no policy like that. There is nothing that says you have to be in front of the computer to help to troubleshoot it. Especially when it comes to somebody saying their computer caught on fire. There’s absolutely nothing that says anything about the customer has to be in front of the computer.

But this is what makes it all the better. The supervisor for this agent wrote me an email today saying “I don’t accept this score,” Or this red flag as we call them because that’s what happens, you get so many red flags you’re supposed to be fired because they’re supposed to be severe violations of the policies that are put in place. And so he comes back and says, “I don’t accept this red flag because the agent did exactly what he was supposed to do.”

I basically... had one of those moments where I had my jaw drop open, and I said, “What? How could he have done what he was supposed to do? He didn’t even check to see if the people were all right, if the computer was not on fire anymore!”

He did finally tell the customer, ‘Uh well…..I wouldn’t use that computer anymore.” At the end of the call, but…. First thing; is the computer unplugged? Is everyone okay? Was anyone hurt in the fire? Is the fire out?” Those should be among the first things that you ask, not the last things that you say! But… the supervisor didn’t officially dispute it, so as far as I know he might have by now.

But, you know, it’s kind of the ridiculous that even the supervisor sits there and says, “Well he did what he was supposed to do.” And…uh… I’d like to see where the policy says that he did what he was supposed to do. *sigh*

Jeez… you know, if you ever call and you get somebody in Utah, well… just hope it’s one of the southern places in Utah and not the northern one. That’s all I’m going to say. Uh… yeah it’s kind of obvious where I live, so, you know… I don’t really care. This is, just, it gets so ridiculous, and this has stuck with me for… I don’t know... it’s probably been almost 12 hours. Probably because I sent myself an email to remind me, “Hah! This happened!” Gotta love email. Like it a lot better than phones. But that’s another story and it has nothing to do with this. So there you go…um… I’m gonna shut up and stop saying Um.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

After these messages...

So Lights Off is coming to the App Store.
Probably one of the games I enjoy the most because its a brain puzzle. Those are the only games that I can play over and over again and will always bring me back. I'm sure this will become a permanent addition to my homescreen.
This was the first native iPhone app and now with the SDK everyone can experience it.
http://www.lightsoffapp.com/ for more info and how to buy.