Just spent over an hour on the phone getting support for my Dell computer. They seem to have outsourced all of their tech support to India! (no kidding, cuz I asked them).
The support seemed ok but for crying out loud…having to repeat yourself 5 times for each question gets old.
Hello…Dell you gotta be kidding!!
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Replies
Part of the pain talking to someone halfway around the world is the lag for the uplink/downlink from the satelite. I hate that two second pause.
Excellence is its own reward!
"The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.
The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."
--Marcus Aurelius
Pete,
Maybe I'm just lucky but I have had no problem with Dell support or warranty. Monitor puked about a month ago, they helped me troubleshoot the problem and had a new one on my doorstep in 2 business days, I can't complain.
Mark
Hmm. yours is one of a bare few complaints I have heard.
Along this line many credit card companies have moved their billing and routine data handling functions to India, Pakastan, Thialand, etcetera. From what I read there are a few villages in India where handling billing from the USA is the single major industry. They even had classes that taught how to speak American and how to handle irate callers. The Tom Cruise cross examination of Jack Nicholson from "An Officer and A Gentleman" was used as course material.
There are a number of technical call centres in Ireland, billing centres too (due to tax considerations). India is more known for software component development, they were graduating 250,000 new programmers a year when I last profiled IT there in '97. The major hang-up with moving parts of your company there were the ownership laws, they were insisting on >50% Indian ownership, so the best they could hope for were outsourcing deals..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
>> The Tom Cruise cross examination of Jack Nicholson from "An Officer and A Gentleman" was used as course material.
I think that was in "A Few Good Men"
Yup. Your right. Not being a great Tom Cruise fan I flubbed the title. On the up side you, and most people, knew, right off the bat, what scene I was referring to. "You can't handle the truth" remains a classic movie line. :-)
Philips (monitors, etc) has outsourced their tech support/customer service to Jamacia.
I called, I had trouble finding someone to speak English that I could understand.
They also would just listen and not respond. I had to actually ask "OK you agree the manual is missing, now how to I get one?"
Not a very helpful experience.
Philips is saving money but sometimes its cheaper because its cheaper.
We used to have this problem (people speaking 'English' that can't be understood) when we called tech centres in Boston, Maine, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, ..., and especially New Jersey..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
At least it sounded more like English than French!!!!!!
A few small tips for dealing with tech support I learned from an ex-tech support supervisor:
Get names and the name of the position. Ask if this is a pseudonym. Write all of this down. If someone cuts in stop and get their name also. Getting names or operator numbers puts them on notice that they are accountable. Ironically asking their name and if it is fake is so unusual that most will give you the real name without thinking.
The big tip is this: Do not hang up until you have gained satisfaction or at least some portion of it. The tech on the phone typically gets credit for calls completed as defined by receiving a call and the customer hanging up. Notice that no where in this definition does solving the problem come into play.
The tech hanging up first raises a red flag on the monitoring computer which also keeps track of the number of calls cleared per hour. Both of these measures are used to evaluate a techs performance. Ideally the tech wants to pick up. Mouth the minimum polite greeting and corporate platitude. Throw out a likely solution and have you hang up. Total time should be less than two minutes. With a lot of calls like this the tech can have hope of moving out of the trenches and up to tech supervisor or even department head positions.
The trick is to use their 1-800 number and to refuse, by action not words, to hang up. If they want someone else to confer tell them you will hold. If they want to get the supervisor don't call back another number or allow yourself to be transferred. The clock is running and adding pressure every minute you are on the line. Don't cuss or abuse the techs. This is usually the main exception to the hang up rule. An abused tech may be allowed to hang up on you. Be polite but don't hang up.
If the tech doesn't know what to do ask them to get their supervisor on the line. If they don't know ask for their supervisor. Don't hang up. Keep the line open. If they fall silent sing or hum a tune while they figure out what to do but don't hang up. Don't hang up until they solve the problem.
If they hang up call back and report that you were disconnected and all the information you have so you can be reconnected to that all so helpful tech support operator. Don't get irate. Keep it up. Be persistent. Wear them down.
I have had techs beg me to hang up claiming they would get fired and have to live on the streets. I once went up the chain of command six levels and ended up talking to one of the guys who designed the software in question. He sent me out a new CD. It took me two hours and a few choruses of me singing along with Tom Waits when the line went quiet but it was their dime. While I have not gotten perfect results I have gotten a high proportion of problems solved at the businesses expense. My best call was almost three hours where the techs supervisors walked me, step by step, through editing the registry and partially reinstalling the OS, twice.
A second phone line and a headset phone set makes all this, while playing air guitar, much easier. I have one tech support group so cowed they just hand me off to the supervisor as a matter of course. I turn up the music for him as he also likes Tom Waits. Life is a game. Know the rules. Which ones you must obey and which ones you can fold spindle and mutilate.
It MUST be a headset or a speaker phone you use to do this. I like to sing Freddy Fender's "Wasted days and wasted Nights" while waiting.
It CAN be fun when you are the one in control!.
Excellence is its own reward!
What do we do about all those companies with "Enter this, Enter That, Press this and so on and so forth" The real icing is then getting "Voice mail" and call backs are someone else's figment of imagination.
Lets' start a thread on this and how to Handel it.
Phones are for dinks and yuppies; send them an Email !.
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
I thought that was the other way around especally if you can't typ er spel ;)
Wrong, I try to limit myself to not more than 2 calls per week. If you took away diner reservations, dental appointments, et al, it would be less than 1/week..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Good way to go.
No DSL / Broad band. Dial up only. Satillite will eat your shorts! because of the primitive phone lines and their stacking baud rates are in the teens and down loads are less then 1k. Please be nice because now I see suicide as the only alternative to being thought of as a YUPPIE.
Thank God for the small things like spell check. I really should use it more often.
PS Are you the PBS Woodwright?
Although I've met Roy, I'm not him..
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Fax them a complaint in the form of a black piece of paper formed into a continuous loop. They run out of paper and ink/s. Do it after hours. Works well. Or so I hear. Not that I would do such a dastardly deed.
I'd hate to be on your bad side. Do the "slow payers" send extra so you don't GRIND them into the dirt? .....Wow, good advice though.
Very rare information .
Tim Mooney
Oh yea I know all about it they have been doing it for about a year now . Ill tell ya it is the most annoying thing that I can think of to have to have somebody repeat everything you say by spelling it out I don't have anything against Indians but they must be a lot cheaper than good techs here sometimes on the weekends you get the American ones that sound like they were just hired from the hood from labor ready or something . They D as in Dalai O as in ointment I as in India N as in nighttime H as is Hummis A as in apple V as in Vektor E as in elephant have a clue
Do yourself a big favor if you have a problem that cant get resolved in one phone call just bite the bullet and call Microsoft pay per incident pay the 30 bucks or whatever it is and they guarantee it fixed . No idiots , language barrier to deal with etc . They are first rate and they will solve your problems fast .
Roy
My ISP is Mindspring and sometimes I ask them, even issues that are only marginally an ISPs purview, for help. It helps when it happens to be 4AM at their call center. Lady actually seemed glad to have the call. She joked and pointed out some of the rarer potential problems and more obscure settings. Solved the problem. I gave her a glowing recommendation with the questionnaire Mindspring E-mailed me.
Thats good . I had some ongoing issues w/ my computer locking up . I went back and forth several times w/ Dell and they seem to have a solution when they cant find what is the problem easily" Reformat " All that was causing my problem ended up bing certian software that was downloaded w/o my knowlege that was conflicting w/ my Road Runner . Microsoft fixed it quick and I have a list of the programs in my system if it locks up now I know how to fix it myself . Sometimes Dell is pretty good , its hit and miss I always try Dell first cause its free but only one time
Roy
please post more detail regarding the conflicting software/pc lockup problem...
Are you expierencing the same thing ?
Roy
I think aol is all in India now, too. Real sad, when you can't understand a thing they say. Happily, I switched from aol.
Earthlinlk tech is outstanding.