Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!morganucodon.cis.ohio-state.edu!francis From: francis@morganucodon.cis.ohio-state.edu (RD Francis) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc Subject: Re: Another reason to use something other than FastBack II Message-ID: <84049@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 25 Sep 90 21:05:22 GMT References: <1938@mountn.dec.com> <90268.095830RMG3@psuvm.psu.edu> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Reply-To: RD Francis Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science Lines: 75 In article <90268.095830RMG3@psuvm.psu.edu> RMG3@psuvm.psu.edu writes: >In article <1938@mountn.dec.com>, m_herodotus@coors.dec.com (Mario Herodotus - >Digital Customer Support Center (800) 525-6570) says: >>In article <26624@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, johnsonr@spot.Colorado.EDU (Richard >>Johnson) writes... >>> Since the University hasn't seen >>>fit to give lowly graduate students phones in their offices, and I'm >>>often in class, I'm not around when they call back. Three times >>>around this useless loop is too much. >>You've got to be kidding! Your not around to recieve a callback, and you >>blame >>the support staff? Call them when you have some time to be by the phone! > The [>>] comments are from someone who works in 'customer service'. The > [>>>] are from a frustrated user who is trying to get some service. > I always had a sneaking suspicion that > was the attitude of the people >claiming to be in customer 'service'. After the company sends out hardware >or software that doesn't work (not quite the situation here, but it >generalizes) the company then feels it is up to the customer to sit on >hold, or by the phone, until the company feels ready to give an answer. >Obviously nobody would ever have a life other than to wait by the phone >for the customer 'service' people to come off coffee breaks, figure out >why the product doesn't work in the first place, play darts, or whatever. I have to agree here. It's not a simple, clearcut case of someone bitching because you didn't call them when they were there. The customer in this case was willing to try to pass on more information to the support people through their message center; the message center refused to take down the details of the customer's problem. Customer support should be there to support the customer; this includes customers who may have special needs. It's not that much to ask for the message center to take down a sentence or two about the problem. For that matter, it shouldn't be too much for the message center to figure out *when* the customer is available, and include that information with the message, or for the customer support people to put a message back into the queue if a call is unsuccessful. I've had to deal with customer support people who don't seem to agree with me. There was one customer support group (no names, as I don't want to be seen as taking a cheap shot, since I don't think either of the companies I've dealt with most frequently have net access) that couldn't manage to contact me when I was in the office. Everytime I called, I would tell them, "I'll be leaving my office at 5PM my time, that's 2PM your time. If you can't call me then, call me in the morning." Next morning, sure enough, around 7PM my time, their people had called. I'm not allowed to go home? I've got to wait around for these people, who might be too busy to get back to me that day? The customer support person says "Call them when you have some time to be by the phone. I've had customer service people not get to my message for *DAYS*! Find me anyone who needs to call customer support folk and can afford to sit by the phone for days, hoping they'll call! We've got our own jobs to do, however difficult they may have been made by the lack of a callback from a customer service department. Oh, and when you call and I'm not there, what happens then? From my experience, the customer support person must say, "Gee, guess he didn't *really* want support or he'd still be by the phone. I left a message, he can call us back." This is a crock of shit, folks. Especially when I'm willing to give you my availability (you can rarely do more than leave a message for the customer support people when you call in, making that a futile endeavor), I'd think the least you could do is not merely leave me a message, but also, return my request to the queue. I shouldn't have to call three times to get someone to call back and get in touch with me, especially when dealing with companies that have busy customer service departments where I can never get throught o a customer support person on my first try! Finally, as a courtesy, if the person with whom the message is left could give us an idea (it's allowed to be wrong) as to how long before we can expect a callback, it would be very helpful. -- R David Francis francis@cis.ohio-state.edu