I understand that most of the people that call tech support need to have things like ‘reset the router’ explained to them. When I was working a tech support job I had to explain that atleast 5 times a day.

It seems silly, but most people just don’t get it. Never underestimate the stupidity of people.

When I was working the aforementioned tech support job, I always presupposed that each caller was at a certain level of tech intelligence. I found this to be a win-win situation.

If the person calling was tech savvy, they would appreciate me not assuming they were fucking stupid for calling. One thing I’ve noticed about tech savvy people, is that they’d much rather stare at a computer that didn’t do what they wanted than call for help. It requires a certain amount of pride swallowing to admit that you can’t fix a problem.

If the person isn’t tech savvy, they will tell you. Typically by asking how to reset a router, and occasionally, I kid you not, asking how to reboot a computer. Even if they don’t understand right away, using the complicated terms like, reboot or reset, leaves them with a certain level of confidence in your ability to help them solve their problem.

Like I said, win-win. Either way the person gets off the phone feeling relatively good, even if you couldn’t fix the problem. The tech savvy people really like it when you can’t fix the problem, it proves that they weren’t stupid. It’s all about the attitude you have going into the call, I kid you not.

You can usually tell from how the customer describes their problem what level they’re on.  For example, if they say the thing (i.e. the thing with the lights) when descibing the problem.  It’s pretty safe to assume that you’re gonna need to expain how to fix the thing with the lights (i.e. the modem) like you would to a five year old.

I swallowed some pride yesterday. My internet hadn’t been working. Like usual, I checked my router settings, reset it, reset the modem, even rebooted the computer (the tech guys hate it when you tell them to reboot). Nothing worked. So it was, I’m sure, a problem with the server or wet lines.

Finally last night I couldn’t take it anymore. Let me rephrase. I couldn’t take my parents bitching anymore. You’d think that I would be the one with the biggest issues about being cut off from the internet. Instead I sat back and delightfully enjoyed three weeks of bit torrented television I hadn’t watched yet.

So I called. Now, I’m not saying that I’m a tech golden god or anything. I mean, I am… But that’s not the point. This chick gets on the phone and from hello, treated me like an idiot.

And seriously, idiots really shouldn’t treat people like idiots. I understand you don’t troubleshoot routers, I really wasn’t calling you to ask you how to use my router. And telling me that you can’t connect to the internet using a router, just really pissed me off.

Just for future reference. Treating a tech support person like an idiot, feels great.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.