ISP (lack of) Support Helplines

[Painless]

I'm sure we have come across this situation but I have to have a bit of a rant.

A customer called me to say he had lost his internet connection - so i called to see him yesterday. IE8 just gave us the message that it could connect to the webpage. Since his copy of MacAfee kept disabling realtime protection and all the lights on his router looked OK I thought possible malware so had a look at the proxy setting but they looked OK. Using CMD prompt I tried ping & tracert but neither got further than his router. So I linked up my netbook to his router and got the same result. After rebooting and then resetting with no improvement there was nothing for it but to phone his broadband provider Orange.

There then followed an hour of being led like an idiot through clicking of IE settings and rebooting the PC & the router. Nothing I could say would make her deviate from her script and she refused to pass me to 2nd level tech support. I eventually lost the will to live and my patience and insisted on talking to a tech person. Of course nobody would be available for 2 or 3 hours but they would phone me back but if I just continued with with her help she would have everything sorted in a minute (having failed for the last hour!!!).

They never did call back - surprise, surprise.

Why do ISPs think that farming their call centres overseas, to a country where english is not their natural language, represents any type of customer service.

There I've had my rant. I called out to the customer this morning with a new router incase that was the problem and everything is now working fine.

 

[Knightsman]

Been there done that, I normally spend 5 minutes max being their puppet and say, ok, this is whats going on, I have already tried everything, im not oging to keep doing things when I know its not whats wrong.

Its either this or this, so please lets get this fixed so this customer can get back online, and stop wasting each others time.

Always worked for me .

 

[Martyn]

I've had these conversations many a time and even though you show you know what doing they will not deviate from the script. All I ever want is a line check and to check I have the correct settings for their specific connection

Actually the last conversation I had was with a client that used The Post Office as their provider. I spoke to someone who was clearly in this country and within a few of minutes of non script dialogue it was found the filter was at fault at my end. He quickly diagnosed the problem to be my end and I was installing a new router but using the old filter. Lesson learnt, new router, new filter.

 

[Painless]

Thanks Knightsman I think I'll try the ' let's not waste customers time ' approach and see if it works.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

 

[AdamsAPlus]

I told the lady at AT&T once that the customer was paying my by the hour and that If she didn't connect me to a tech asap then I will just advise my customer to change to Cable Internet. I got connected real quick.

 

[K007]

I got quite a few of this, but I remember one of them:
an Indian guy who told me his name was "Tony", no more no less and his English was good enough, but he would't get away from the script either.
After about 30 minutes of following his instructions (stuff that I have already done before calling), I don't remember the exact words but I told the guy something like this:
"Mr X here is your customer, correct?"
"Correct" replies Tony
"Well hes is my customer too, and so far he is paying me to talk gibberish techie jargon. I don't believe this is what he expects from me. Tell me what I need to hear or I'll direct my customer towards a more responsive ISP".
They put me right away through to a tech guy back in UK and the problem was solved. This was "Virgin Media" by the way.

 

[MobileTechie]

So depressing. They insist on taking you though THE most basic troubleshooting like checking to see if the modem is turned on. I don't know if it's the companies or the Indian psyche that cannot deal with anything off-script.

 

[4ycr]

I have had this call with a few ISP's and even BT business call centre is rubbish. A client lost internet connection and after changing filters and checking everything my end I phoned BT. I got through to a UK call centre and they did not read from a script but had to do a line test. After 2 attempts she had to escalate it and they would call back in a few hours. I left but they never received a call but their internet was working by the next morning.

Thanks for saying about Orange, I was going to consider them.

 

[wimwauters]

I get great business out of endusers with horror stories like these, and transfer them to my favourite ISPs or email/webhost.

The kind of ISP I like does great tech support (i.e. they don't have any tier 1 script monkeys), and Zen even has techs answering the phone on Sundays

So when your customer is ready, just switch them to:

chicane-internet.co.uk

zen.co.uk

or a Virgin/NTL/Telewest business service: you pay a little more for the same (or even lower 'peak'/advertised rate), but in return you get better customer service and a much better guaranteed speed.

 

[xparasite]

Hello from the other side, I am part of an ISP support myself here. I feel your pain, but its a vicious circle with ISP support. For the most part we are trained to read from a script since most people arent actually tech savvy (Which I know, doesnt make sense). Those that do like myself, we are rare. We have what are known as LOQs (Lines of Questioning) which is sometimes useful, but rarely. Usually we are told we need to be following these on every call which is what most people run in to when they run into someone who is taking them through things from the start.

Personally I dont believe in them because a script cant think for itself and sometimes you need that freedom. I dont particularily need to check A, B and C if something my customer has said has already tipped me off that solution D would be the right solution. Though I am sorry to say some of my most frustrating calls are from IT pros themselves (Or at least those claiming to be). It is very hard to tell the wanna-bes from those who know what they are doing most of the time, and usually when I get someone like that I know whats going to happen. I have to verify certain steps are done at least, and I get that customer on the line that just thinks I am a retard when I am not. I am doing my job because I dont know if you, the customer are a retard when it comes to computer troubleshooting.

I do enjoy however when I get someone on the line who calmly introduces themselves as a tech for the customer, and I can just feel that they do know what they are talking about and feel confident in their answers. Those are some of my smoothest calls and I really do wish I had more like that.

 

[K007]

Hello from the other side, I am part of an ISP support myself here. I feel your pain, but its a vicious circle with ISP support. For the most part we are trained to read from a script since most people arent actually tech savvy (Which I know, doesnt make sense). Those that do like myself, we are rare. We have what are known as LOQs (Lines of Questioning) which is sometimes useful, but rarely. Usually we are told we need to be following these on every call which is what most people run in to when they run into someone who is taking them through things from the start.

Personally I dont believe in them because a script cant think for itself and sometimes you need that freedom. I dont particularily need to check A, B and C if something my customer has said has already tipped me off that solution D would be the right solution. Though I am sorry to say some of my most frustrating calls are from IT pros themselves (Or at least those claiming to be). It is very hard to tell the wanna-bes from those who know what they are doing most of the time, and usually when I get someone like that I know whats going to happen. I have to verify certain steps are done at least, and I get that customer on the line that just thinks I am a retard when I am not. I am doing my job because I dont know if you, the customer are a retard when it comes to computer troubleshooting.

I do enjoy however when I get someone on the line who calmly introduces themselves as a tech for the customer, and I can just feel that they do know what they are talking about and feel confident in their answers. Those are some of my smoothest calls and I really do wish I had more like that.

Nice to finally see how someone "on the other side" thinks. lol
I have years of corporate after sales support under my belt, 1st, 2nd and third line. I am with you there, "I feel you man"
Personally I first tell the "script kiddie" that I am a tech guy and then I tell him/her what's wrong.
Following that, I humbly follow whatever the steps necessary for him/her to identify the problem.
But many times I catch them moving in circles, not knowing where to go from there, and this is when I usually get impatient and ask for a real support person.