Are you dumb enough to talk to me?

POP QUIZ!

1)Your stupid adhd kid who constantly screams while you're on the phone knocks over your tv, the screen cracks, what do you do?
     a)call your cable company
     b)buy a new tv
     c)don't buy a new tv and dont call me

2)There's been a tornado, half your house has been ripped apart, you dont have electricity so your tv and internet wont work. What do you do?
     a)call the cable/internet provider
     b)call the insurance company
     c)fix your house

3)One of your catches on fire because you let it over heat. What do you do?
     a)fix your computer
     b)call the internet company
     c)go out side

ANWSERS
1)b or c
2)b or c
3)a or c

If you answered just one of these questions wrong, you might just be dumb enough to talk to me! Something that I've noticed, is a lot of people dont know who to call when hardware XYZ breaks, they just call the service provider. The delivery of there service maybe be fine but for some reason people still call us when hardware (or software) that uses the service breaks. Here's an example

Me:"Welcome to tech support how can i help you?"
Member: "You done broke my internets"
Me:"whats wrong?"
Member:"the internets is different and i cant use it, you done it"
***20minutes elapses, I finally figure out what she did***
Me:"so it looks like you updated from internet explorer 6 to 8"
Member:"durrr, do i get an account credit?"

So basically even though, her service is fine she expects IE8 lesson and free stuff for compensation. We have no affiliation with microsoft or internet explorer, why would i ever do that? I mean how different could the new UI really be anyway?



The amount of calls we get that are out our scope of support is insane. Imagen if people did this with other service and utility companies! Like when your toilet breaks, do you call the water company and yell at them? NO! you call a plumber! When your dryer breaks, do you call up the gas company and yell at them? NO. When your A/C unit stops working, do you yell at the electric company? NO! Why is this such a hard concept to understand with cable TV and internet?



Why is this such a hard concept to grasp?

The Psychological Effects of Call Center Work

Everyday i go to work, I get atleast one person who calls up that makes me say "wow can people get any dumber?", low and behold the day after i get someone who's even worse. It's like an endless cycle of people calling up and me listening to someone a little closer to brain dead each time. Soon enough Im expect most of my call volume to consist of brain injury patients on life support. I even made a graph:



Anyways I think this constant exposure to idiocy has a psychological effect on employees, an effect that makes you disregard personal appearance. I remember in my training class they mentioned the "call center beard", at time i laughed it off thinking it was a joke. Now, as I walk the office floors I see about 80% of they guys working there do actually have beards, even some of the women have them too! Even I have one! I don't understand it, it's like a collective call center swarm consciousness commands the entire hive to grow facial hair.



So in summary I grew a beard because being exposed to stupid people on a daily basis has caused me to be subjective to the will of the mighty call center collective intelligence. Kind of like how ants and bees work, check out this national geographic article

Old Men and Internet security

Member calls up
Needs assistance installing antivirus.

I get this 70 odd year old man on the line who's norton subscription just ran out. He heard we offer free anti virus. So as the call goes on Im trying to get this old guy to navigate though our site to the download link. Normally this is how it works

Me: "go to web page XXXXYYYY.com"
Member: "ok"
Me: "do you see a download link?"
Member: "yes"
Me: "click it"

However this time it was more like this

Me: "go to web page XXXXYYYY.com"
Member: "Im going to use capitals, ok?"
Me: "what ever works, are you on the site yet?"
Member: "no"
Me: "..."
Member: "ok, I think im there, is it an blue web page with size 12 times new roman font? it has a section with contact info, Im going to read it *reads contact info out loud*"
Me: "... ok, do you see the download link"
Member: "I see terms of service *reads me entire terms of service*, i see system requirements *reads entire system requirements*, I also so a section on FAQ let me read the entire thing..."

SO basically every time i asked this guy a question he responded by giving me ever single piece of information he could possible give me, even if it had nothing to do with what we were doing. Like if i ran into this guy at a subway and if i asked if he was eating a ham sandwich, instead of giving me a simple "yes" or "no" he would read me the nutritional information of every component in his sandwich.

After an hour and a half of instructions I finally got the old antivirus uninstalled and the new one up. Right now it's 5:51pm, about 9 minutes before the end of my 9 hour shift, at this point he mentions he owns 3 other computers one of which is a mac. I almost strangled myself with my phone cord, there was no way I was going to listen to this guy's irrelevant yet very detailed descriptions of stuff i dont care about until like 9pm. Granted i didn't actually mind helping this guy, i knew what to do and he wasn't yelling at me. Right now I'm considering "accidentally knocking my phone off my desk" in the hope we might get disconnected. Luckily the guy seemed to be confident enough to try the others by himself.

Holy close call batman! I probably would of cried if I would of had to see that to the end.

Nah Dwag

Member calls up.
Internet's down.

I ask for name and account id three times before he responds. At this point i realize he's a really high black guy from Florida, like he was the embodiment of all negative black stereotypes. It's almost like this guy was trying to be as useless and uncooperative as possible. Like every response from this guy was either a simple "yeh" or "nah" delivered in a super soft voice with a touch of gansta. After 20 minutes of probing questions i finally figure out whats wrong with this guys service. I put him on a brief hold to research causes and solutions, when i get back to member he greets me with "yo, who dis nigga on the phone?". I don't even know, he legitimately didn't know why he was on the phone. After I get him back up to speed I ask him "Are you the only one who lives here?" he replies "yeh" I ask "Did you touch the back of the modem?" and i get a "nah bro" in response. Regardless of his responses, at this point i know someone's been messing with the wiring to the modem. So i ask him to check out the wiring, surprise surprise its a mess. So i say "ok, it looks like some wiring to the modem has been altered, are you sure you didn't touch anything?" "nah dwag, dat ain't me" he replies *click* the line goes dead.

He hung up on me, i spent almost an hour taking to this guy and he hung up on me. Normally that'd piss me off, not this time though, I can't even describe how funny that it was.