Outsourcing Tech Support – Good, or Evil?

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I purchased a HP laptop 6 months ago and had a tech support problem. I called them and the answer I got was to format the drive and reinstall the os and all the software. Not the answer I wanted. The tech support person was in India of course and could not understand the problem I was having. I did not follow his advice and fix the problem on my own serveral days later and after much researching the problem my self. I did send an email off to HP about the problem with the tech support staff in India and I got no responce. I am not supprised.

The real funny part is the tech support person wanted to sell me more tech support time for just 199.00 for another 2 years. Yea right.

Thanks
John

I used to work for a an outsourced center here in the Philippines - a country in South East Asia. I perfectly agree with Leo's opinion on the matter. Competence plays a primary factor when it comes to Technical Support interactions. Another thing to note that for effective communication to occur, both the agent and the customer must know what they are talking about. Furthermore, customers usually are unaware of the stringent restrictions or the so called metrics imposed on agents by the contracting company. For my center the limit should be 17 minutes to resolve an issue - which is quite long since the medium that was utilized is chat. Usually, problems arise when the customer might think that the problem lies elsewhere - which is understandable given that the customer is on the end where the problem is. In the long run, I would say that much remains to be seen if outsourcing is really a solution or merely a means to cut down on expenditure. Ultimately, this would depend on the center that the company has outsourced their operations to.

I think the real problem lies in checklists.

Before they're allowed to actually listen to you, it seems the support techs are required to run you through a checklist of tasks like rebooting your PC and cold booting external peripherals (not just turning them off, but unplugging them and letting them sit a minute before plugging them back in and starting them up).

If you've gone through tech support a couple of times, these steps are obvious and you've already done them by the time you call and sit on hold for an hour to talk to someone.

But even if you have a highly competent tech support person on the other end of the line, sometimes it feels like they're an idiot because they run you through the list even when you tell them you've already done it.

It would be nice if they had a test online to see if you know what the heck you're doing, and if you can pass it, you get a special code to talk to a tech support person who will listen to you and work with you instead of running you through a checklist.

The last time this happened, I got a DOA cable modem from an online vendor. I knew it was DOA. I'd RTFM'd back and forth and checked online sources and troubleshooting docs.

I had to spend 2 calls and nearly an hour on the phone, plus try to apply a firmware patch that wouldn't go (because the damn thing was BROKEN) between the calls before I could get it certified as DOA and get a reference number I could use to get an RMA from the vendor. And most of it was on-hold time or the following "Did you do X?" "Yes." "Well please do it again while we're on the phone."

Sheesh.

- Greg

I think what's really an issue is incompetent Tech Support. Although at times the accents may be confusing, at times it seems as if (and this is probably 100% correct) they are reading off some kind of flow chart: If they answer yes to this question, ask this one, if no, ask this one on page 5, etc.
What's interesting is this; is the Tech Support that's been outsourced more, less, or equally reliable?

HP's answer for *every* problem is to put that CD in. If there's still a problem, the answer is then to ship the unit to their factory. I quickly learned to back-up my data, live with the default, Windows environment, and build my own computers henceforth.

My problem is of a different sort, and Leo touched on it briefly in his article.

As a hearing impaired person who cannot distinguish between various consonantal sounds over the telephone (with no lip-reading clues to go on), the "I can't understand you"-problem is so common, tech support has become flat-out useless. The moment I hear the accent, I politely say, "Oh, sorry, wrong number!" hang up, and click my Google icon.

Ever since an infection ravaged my otic nerves 20 years ago, I've had to depend upon various clues in order for my brain to choose between one or more probable scenarios as to what has been said. These include the familiar rhythms of normal speech and the correct enunciation of vowels. Most importantly, a speaker must use plain language, that is, words and phrases that one might expect to hear in a discussion about a given topic. Complex, round-about sentences (read: "on-the-fly translations from a different language") just won't do. East Indians, as far as my ears can tell, seem to pull off the entire language using at most two or three vowel sounds. (I must reiterate in an attempt not to offend: this is what it seems like to me, with my hearing the way it is.) It *literally* sounds, to my ears, like they're saying, "Eee-bee dee-HEE-bee dee-BEEE-hee dee-hee-bee." For the most part, I cannot understand a word they're saying.

When I try to explain that I cannot hear what they're saying and ask to speak with a super, they naturally respond with a question or stipulation of some sort: "Eee-bee hee-DEE-bee hee-bee-dee!" and wait for my response. As I shake my head in disbelief, they repeat: "Eee-bee hee-DEE-bee hee-bee-dee!" Then again, sterner this time: "EEE-bee HEE-DEE-bee HEE-BEE-dee!"

(Wha...?)

"I'm sorry, but I cannot understand what you're saying. I appreciate your trying to help me, but my hearing is damaged from an infection 20 years ago. My ears do not work very well any more. May I please speak with your supervisor? Please?"

Occasionally I'll get lucky and happen upon an older person from the middle-eastern regions, Hyberabad or Vijayawada or thereabouts, where my two business partners grew up, and I'll be in more familiar territory.

More often than not, they become offended. Obviously, each worker has struggled for thousands of hours learning our language, and they naturally feel a hurt in their pride when they encounter someone who, after all that, still cannot understand what they're saying. Such people usually just hang up on me.

For this reason, products sold by such companies as Microsoft and HP come on an "as-is" basis, and do not carry any tech support package whatsoever. When I buy this stuff, I am truly on my own.

I'm almost tempted to get a TTY system, even though technically I don't need it. At least I *shouldn't* need it! With my luck, though, that system will be run by someone who grew up where I did, who speaks in a perfect Los Angelean Beach Community accent!

Take care, everybody!

The Cliff-Walking Fool
aka The Zero Card

I bought a Dell back in October and within a week I needed to call tech support. I was unaware of this outsourcing of tech support so was extremely surprised to find out that in the course of our conversation George Varghese was from India. I was able to understand him better than most people and certainly better than the french speaking people of my country - Canada. I was very happy with the service I received. Although it took an hour to *fix* my problem it indeed did get fixed and I have not had a problem since.

I work for a major US ISP's outsourced tech support centre in India.

The two things decide the outcome of any call to a tech support number is the clarity of speech of the tech, and his/her ability to understand whats going on and offer a solution to the caller. Oh, and in retrospect I'd add the caller's mood/attitude to that list.

Scripts? Yup they do exist, they're there to standardise stuff, i mean there almost always is an opening and a closing script regardless of whether tech support is outsourced or not. What goes on in between the opening and the closing scripts depends on both the caller and the tech. Sometimes techs do sound robotic(a.k.a. scripted), it might be because they've been having to work on similar calls repeatedly(imagine walking callers through configuring outlook for the same settings on 10 successive calls).Believe me folks, I am not trying to defend techs who sound scripted here, just listing one of the possible reasons for it. I guess what makes offshore techs sound more scripted is the fact that the callers are not accustomed to the tech's accent.

Is outsourced tech support bad? It should'nt be as long as the caller's issue gets resolved, would love to hear ur views.

Thanks
Mark

> I guess what makes offshore techs sound more scripted is the fact that the callers are not accustomed to the tech's accent.

Whenever I call *anybody*: the bank, the cable company -- whoever -- I usually try to do something that's entertaining at least once: a quick one-liner, a play on words, a wry, sarcastic, or cynical comment about management, etc. This is my way of trying to "humanize" what is, for both of us, a stressful situation.

When I am familiar with the accent, I find it much easier to "read" the other person and to determine whether this behavior on my part is appropriate, that is, whether the recipient will take it in the manner I have intended. If I am not familiar with the accent, I cannot "read" the person as accurately; clues that I usually process on the "automatic pilot" of ingrained habit I must now process consciously and deliberately.

This may account for why workers with (what we see as) foreign accents may seem "mechanical" (that is, not like me). This is not coming from a part of the brain that we can get in touch with, although practice, like with a sport or a musical instrument, can help.

Another example: I live in the Russian section of a predominantly WASP American city with a strong representation among the Native Americans (Portland, Oregon). When the newspaper maps out the crime statistics, this little triangle-shaped neighborhood is distinctly void of the little dots that indicate a burglary. Ditto for the two neighborhoods where large populations of Vietnamese settled in the years following 1975. Why? The burglars cannot "read" Russians and Ukrainians! They dare not assess the risk of getting shot, etc, so they stick to the homes of Whites and Native Americans. All of the prejudices we learned during the Cold War come to play, but this time, it is to our benefit!

I suggest that the appearance of "scripting" has more to do than just the script. There is no room for anything more intimate than the universal "Hello" of all humans conducting commerce, and then it's down to business.

Take care!

The Cliff-Walking Fool
aka The Zero Card

If I may share a secret, having worked in a contact center in the past I could say that most of the things you've stated are true and accurate. Let me give you an in depth analysis:

1. There are many technical support levels that a customer may get passed on to. The first level is what I would call the "filtration level".

There are customers who at the beginning of a call would ask you something like "What are you wearing now?". Blip~! Level 1 techs take care of them.

Generally Level 1 techs take care of the obvious - which is understandably quite an inconvenience for the customer but is nonetheless required. They may ask you really really stupid questions, like "Did you plug the power cord?"

To that, I could attest that the customer should be patient and answer as honestly and quickly as they could since this is a way that the company is ensuring that the problem is a legitimate problem with that specific company's service area.

Oftentimes ISPs have problems with customers asking about Windows or Hardware concerns which they totally can't support since the training that they given the Reps are for the ISPs!

2. YES THERE'S A CHECKLIST. And it is an interesting thing for reps now since it is like the Bible. Lol! I personally try to question it every now and then but the Supervisor would say that this has been given by the contracting company and it has to be followed to the dot!

3. THE CHECKLIST IS ABSOLUTELY INVIOLABLE. You cannot deviate from it even if the customer gets angry and irate. Whew! take into consideration that Customer Satisfaction is one of the things that they measure your performance with. I experienced a customer getting angry because I asked if she did a restart, her response was "No, I haven't restarted my computer and I don't want to restart my computer because it might not start again!"

I was trained for e-mail specific issues at the time.

Lol

Imagine a very enthusiastic ISP rep who asks the customer to do a "Format c:" to alleviate a virus concern. Lol!

4. When everything has been done in the checklist there's a second level of tech support personnel to handle the concern. These are the techs that do the real work. Of course, the level 1 people better be sure that they pass on a legitimate concern from a legitimate customer.

The second level of tech support is greatly benefited by greater accessibility to working tools (software) and more information.

My advise is to get to the next level of tech support. Be kind and sound legitimate to the first level! Follow the instructions and answer as honestly as you could the first level. Otherwise they might transfer your call to who knows where.

Lol!

This is in response to Zero Card.

I have good news for you my friend. Some companies are already using alternate mediums for technical support. Among them would include e-mail and chat!

It's really cool! I suggest that you suggest to the company that you're having problems with in investing to those kind of mediums.

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