Thursday, December 18, 2008

Why Computer Books Are Better Than Help Lines

Made a call to a computer software or hardware company's technical service/customer help line lately? If not, you know someone who has. And you know the complaints: hour-long waits, people whose English is difficult to understand, the frustration of dealing with someone who has no real knowledge and instead is reading to you from a list of canned responses--none of which have anything to do with your problem.

Tired of it all? Here's a thought: Instead of calling help lines buy a book! Or borrow it from your local library.

Imagine! All the answers you need to be an effective Excel user in one place, literally at your right hand. When you get lost trying to set tabs, margins and columns in Word, just flip through a few pages and the answers are there--in minutes rather than hours.

The odds are good that the book will be written by someone for whom English is not a second language. Some are, but that fact is not discernable once a skilled editor finishes with the manuscript. Either way, the books are almost guaranteed to be understandable.

Hm ... perhaps customer service people on the other side of the planet should consult computer books. Just a thought.
--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com

1 comment:

Carlene said...

Well, in my opinion, there are still some good customer service representatives. Even though fixing stuff is hard on the phone as it is hard for the caller, the representative doesn't give up since their goal is to ensure customer satisfaction.

I remember one time when I had this little customer support training. We were trained to use the Act CRM software. Our lessons were given through a CRM online training. Having said that, I think it's good if the agent has some level of expertise on the niche of his/her inbound calls if your going to call for over-the-phone customer support.