Tech Support/Customer Service

I've been doing tech support for a major international hardware company now for just over year. And before that, I worked at Wal-Mart for 3.5 years. I lately felt soo obliged to help the rest of the world in how-to get effective customer help. There are some tricks of the trade that I would like to pass along to the world to help you as the customer out more and help my fellow techies/nerds out.

1. Everyone has emotions and they can be hurt. We're humans too. I understand that when you calling me, you have a problem and issue that needs to be resolved. That doesn't merit you the right to have a lousy attitude and cuss and chew us out for your problems. I'm sorry your computer is acting up, but that doesn't give you the right to yell at us. I've found its much better for all parties involved to act and respond in a calm and collected manner. The tech on the other end of the line is doing their best to understand and handle the situation. Your yelling at them is probably going to hurt you in the end. I understand that you may have a business to run and need to get your equipment up and running again. And I want to be able to help you out. But please remember that a little bit of manners can go a long way.

2. Complaint department. The techie on the phone probably has little to no control over the companies policies. Your whining to them about the stupid policies probably won't help. It will probably feel better for you to get it off your chest, but that doesn't mean it will help your case. There is a good chance that the person trying to help you doesn't like the policies either, but they probably can't say that on the phone lest they want to keep their job. It's better for you as a customer to do this leg work yourself. It's one thing to voice the complaint, its another thing to berate it and demand immediate answers, which probably isn't going to happen.

3. Treat them like a human being, and your probably going to get a lot better help. I'm a people person, and i love to help others out. I can usually tell in the first couple minutes if i'm going to like the person or going to want to accidentally on purposely hang up on them. Usually, when the person is being civil about the situation, I love to bend over backwards and help the person out (even if that means bending the rules a bit in their favor).

Unfortunately, computer problems do happen. Usually anything man makes will break down after a time. It's an unfortunate thing about life. Hopefully, I can be of help to get it working again. Put yourself in their shoes.