This is only a preview of the May 2009 issue of Silicon Chip. You can view 31 of the 104 pages in the full issue, including the advertisments. For full access, purchase the issue for $10.00 or subscribe for access to the latest issues. Articles in this series:
Items relevant to "Dead-Accurate 6-Digit GPS-Locked Clock, Pt.1":
Items relevant to "230VAC 10A Full-Wave Motor Speed Controller":
Items relevant to "Precision 10V DC Reference For Checking DMMs":
Items relevant to "Input Attenuator For The Digital Audio Millivoltmeter":
Purchase a printed copy of this issue for $10.00. |
I
speak of the Tech Support people, those unsung heroes
of the technical turmoil that surrounds all of us in this
challenging world of the 21st century.
I make no claim to the following Terror Tech Tales being
original – many of them have been “doing the rounds” for
years. But they can all handle re-telling!
Terror Tech Tales
Often the early days are the worst.
Customer: “Do I need a computer to use your software?”
TS: “Aagh!”
Followed by:
TS: “I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop.”
Customer: “OK.”
TS: “Did you get a pop-up menu?”
Customer: “No.”
TS: “Ok. Right click again. Do you see a pop-up
menu?”
Customer “No.”
TS: “Ok, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up
until this point?”
Customer: “Sure, you told me to write ‘click’ and I wrote
‘click’.”
Should have got a medal!
Software problems can sometimes lead to a greater awareness with the general public. This is an actual conversation
that occurred between a customer and a Tech Support
operator. (He later got fired for his responses!).
TS: “May I help you?”
Customer: “Yes, I’m having trouble with WordPerfect.”
TS: “What sort of trouble?”
12 Silicon Chip
Customer: “Well I was just typing, and all of a sudden
the words went away”
TS: “Went away?”
Customer: “They disappeared.”
TS: “ So what does your screen look like now?”
Customer: “It’s blank; it won’t accept anything when
I type.”
TS: “Are you still in WordPerfect or did you get out? Can
you see the C: prompt of the screen?”
Customer: “What’s a sea-prompt?”
TS: “Never mind. Can you move your cursor around
the screen?”
Customer: “There isn’t any cursor: I told you, it won’t
accept anything I type.”
TS: “Does your monitor have a power indicator?”
Customer: “What’s a monitor?”
TS: “It’s the thing with the screen on it that looks
like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when
it’s on?”
Customer: “I don’t know?”
TS: “Well, look on the back of the monitor and find where
the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?”
Customer: “Yes, I think so.”
TS: “Great. Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if
it’s plugged into the wall.”
Customer: “Yes it is.”
TS: “When you were behind the monitor, you may have
noticed that there were two cables plugged into the back
of it, not just one. I need you to look back there again and
find the other cable.”
Customer: “I can’t reach it because I can’t see it because
it’s dark.”
TS: “Dark?”
siliconchip.com.au
This story is dedicated to those
fearless men and women who,
every day, brave dark and stormy
phone calls from the unknown,
un-named, ill-informed, querulous
public; to those who, with no regard
for their personal safety nor deep
intrusions into their mental sanity,
face hurt, shame and embarrassment
in their quest to answer the challenging
questions they are thrown.
Customer: “Yes the office light is off, and the only light
I have is coming in from the window.”
TS: “Well, turn on the office light then.”
Customer: “I can’t, because there’s a power failure,”
TS: “A power... a power failure? OK, we’ve got it licked
now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing
stuff your computer came in?”
Customer: “Well, yes I keep them in the closet.”
TS: “Good. Go get them, and unplug your system and
pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back
to the store you bought it from.”
Customer: “What do I tell them?”
TS: “Tell them you’re too $<at>#^%&! stupid to own a
computer”
D-u-m-b stupid!
Some companies face angry (read ‘dumb’) customers
more than others. Compaq Computers had a bad time a
while ago. Here are some incidents.
At one time Compaq considered changing the command
“Press Any Key” to “Press Return Key” because of the flood
of calls asking where the “Any” key is.
One Compaq technician received a call from a man
complaining that the system wouldn’t read word processing files from his 5¼-inch diskettes. After trouble-shooting
for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was
found that the customer labelled the diskettes then rolled
them into the typewriter to type the labels.
Another customer called Compaq Tech Support to say
her brand-new computer wouldn’t work. She said she
unpacked the unit, plugged it in, and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what
happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked
siliconchip.com.au
by Barrie Smith
“What power switch?”
And Dell Computer had a bad run some time back.
Back in the days when floppy disks were floppy and
drives had a “door” to close, the technician advised a customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close
the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was
heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the
room to close the door to his room.
Another customer called to say he couldn’t get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting,
the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece
of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and
hitting the “Send” key.
Yet another customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up
his bathtub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard
for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them
individually.
One technician received a call from a customer who was
enraged because his computer had told him he was “bad
and an invalid”. The tech explained that the computer’s
“bad command” and “invalid” responses shouldn’t be
taken personally.
An exasperated caller to Tech Support couldn’t get her
new computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was
plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when
she pushed the power button. Her response, “I pushed and
pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens.” The ‘foot
pedal’ turned out to be the computer’s mouse.
Then IBM had a bad trot. . .
One customer had trouble installing software and rang
for support.
May 2009 13
Customer: “I put in the first disk and that was OK. It said
to put in the second disk and I had some problems with
the disk. When it said to put in the third disk I couldn’t
even fit it in ...”
TS: “When you see the screen command say ‘Insert Disk
2’, you have to remove Disk 1 first.
Don’t let a Mac user ever tell you they never need to
contact Tech Support. Here’s one anecdote from the Apple orchard.
TS: “At 3:37 a.m. on a Sunday, I had just looked at the
clock to determine my annoyance level, when I received
a frantic phone call from a new user of a Macintosh Plus.
“She had taken her entire family out of the house and
was calling from her neighbour’s. She had just received
her first system error and interpreted the picture of the
bomb on the screen as a warning that the computer was
going to blow up!”
Apple Tech Support sometimes faces the unfaceable.
TS: “What operating system are you running?”
Student: “Huh?”
TS: “Do you have a Mac or a PC?”
Student: “Um, I don’t know.”
TS: “Ok. What does the screen look like?”
Student: “It’s yellow.”
Me: “Ok. What does it say on the computer CPU?”
Student: “What’s that?”
TS: “The big grey box.”
Student: “It doesn’t say anything.”
TS: “Never mind that ... do you have a little ‘Start’ button
at the bottom of the monitor?”
Student: “Monitor?”
TS: “The thing that looks like a TV screen sitting on the
grey box.”
Student: “Oh! That! No. No start button.”
TS: “Ok. Is there a little apple symbol anywhere on the
screen?”
Student: (very puzzled) “Why would I have fruit on my
computer?”
Today’s computers are easily capable of multi-tasking
but sometimes the public expects too much.
A senior telecommunications administrator at one company recalls a request from a user looking for another coffee
holder for his computer: “I asked him what he meant by
another coffee holder and he said, ‘You know, the one that
14 Silicon Chip
pops out of the PC.”
He thought the CD-ROM drive was a cup holder.
Sometimes the support goes to extremes — in the mind
of the caller.
TS: “OK, let’s press the Control and Escape keys at the
same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the
screen. Now type the letter ‘P’ to bring up the Program
Manager.”
Customer: “I don’t have a ‘P’.”
TS: “On your keyboard.”
Customer: “What do you mean?”
TS: “’P’ on your keyboard.”
Customer: “I’m not going to do that!”
Computer companies aren’t the only ones to face perplexing calls either.
A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem
with her printer. The tech asked her if she was “running
it under Windows.”
The woman then responded, “No, my desk is next to the
door. But you have the answer — the man sitting in the
cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is working
fine.”
Even simple problems can perplex customers.
Customer: “I have a huge problem. A friend has placed
a screen saver on my computer, but every time I move the
mouse, it disappears.”
And:
TS: “Click on the ‘my computer’ icon on the left of the
screen.”
Customer: “Your left or my left?”
Sometimes the customer wants the process to be real
simple.
Customer: “One of my friends gave me an ImageWriter
printer and a keyboard. He said he gave me all the cables,
but I can’t figure out how to connect them. Am I missing
something?”
TS: “Well, a computer would help.”
Customer: “You mean this keyboard isn’t a word processor?”
TS: “No ma’am, its just an input device.”
Customer: “Then I need to buy a computer, right?”
TS: “Yes.”
Customer: “Do you think I’ll need a monitor, too?”
Some people want to make simple tasks, like making
backups, even simpler.
A system administrator for a company remembers when
files were small, hard drives were small and backups were
made with PC Tools which could be done using less than
ten 3.5-inch disks for all the most important directories.
One day the CEO of a company was asked by the administrator if he had done his monthly backup of his computer
data. He said he had, and had even been able to improve
the backup process. He’d discovered he didn’t have to
change disks if he just answered ‘Yes’ to all the “Is it ok
to overwrite this floppy disk?” prompts. He was overwriting backup disk #1 with the data for backup disk #2, then
overwriting that with the data for backup disk #3, and so
on. Boy, it sure saved on floppies.
And then there are people who go looking for trouble.
This sounds ridiculous, but it actually happened to a
Tech Suport person in a chain computer store.
Customer: “Hi, I’d like to buy a virus.”
TS: “You really don’t want a virus on your computer.
siliconchip.com.au
What you need is anti-virus software.”
Customer: “No, my son
told me I need a virus,
and that’s what I’d
like.”
TS: “No worries.
You don’t need to buy
a virus – you can just
connect to the internet
and download one.”
It’s not just computers that give problems.
Peripherals are in there
too.
A customer called
in with modem problems.
TS: “Ok, we’re going
to check your modem
settings. First thing we
need to do is make sure
all programs are closed.”
Customer: “How do
I know if everything is
closed?”
Me: “Make sure all windows
are closed.”
Customer: “But I’m in the basement. I don’t have any windows
here.”
Sometimes there are quick fixes.
One operator had a call from a customer who was complaining that when she typed, the wrong letters came up
on the screen. After some investigation, it was revealed that
she had pried off all the letter key caps off her keyboard
and rearranged them in alphabetical order.
Keyboards can be a forest of trouble.
TS: “Now press the spacebar.”
Customer: “Return bar?”
TS: “No, space bar. Space.”
Customer: “I have an Enter bar, Return bar, and a Shift
key?”
TS: “No, space. Space bar. The long horizontal key.”
Customer: (confused sounds).
TS: “OK. See your c, v, b, n, and m keys?”
Customer: “Yes...”
TS: “Right under them.”
Customer: “Oh.”
Then some people have trouble with the most basic
things in computing.
TS: “Ok, Bob, type a capital ‘B’, then press enter.”
Customer: “A capital B?”
TS: “Right, capital ‘B’ as in Bob.”
Customer: “Capital ‘B’ as in Bob?”
TS: “Exactly. Capital B as in Bob!”
Customer: (long pause) “That’s the one with two loops,
right?”
TS: “Now let’s type in the password where it says password.”
Passwords can be a puzzle.
Customer: “My password is HSD13....”
siliconchip.com.au
TS: “No, don’t tell me your password, just
type it in. And remember, those letters are in
capitals.”
Customer: “And the numbers, would those be
capitals too?”
We all know the dos and don’ts of computing.
One of these is never to eat or drink near a PC.
This plaintive call for help was mailed to a
Tech Support desk:
I spillced coffcee cincto my kcey boardc.c
As a rcesulct, c’s gcet inctermixcced with
cwactever I ctypce. Plcease replace mcy kceyboard. ccthanks.
Help for the Help Line
The question I ask is: how do the tech support people cope?
When asking tech support
specialists on how they got
through the average day
of dumb questions, the
results were interesting. In order to
remain sane, they
often resorted to
surprisingly unorthodox ways of dealing
with the constant barrage of
obnoxious users and technical foulups. Here’s one.
“When taking technical support calls, always be
sure to have a dice with you. This will become your single
most valuable tool in diagnosing customer support issues,
regardless of the technology or problem. Simply listen to
the customer describe the issue, roll the dice, and Bang!
— problem solved. Each number
on the dice corresponds to the
appropriate advice: 1. Reboot computer. 2. Format
hard drive. 3. Reinstall
software. 4. Cycle
power. 5. Update
required. 6. Return
for repair.”
Next time
Rememember, the
next time you call
Tech Support the voice
on the other end of the
line may be a real person
just like you with a wife/husband, family, dogs, a car, a TV, a
digital camera and heaps of techy gear
that he or she occasionally needs help with to
get it running properly.
And these days, occasionally, they might even understand the English language.
NEXT MONTH:
We’ll have a look at the more serious side of Tech Support and how the major companies deal with the biggest
SC
problem of all – the loose nut on the keyboard.
May 2009 15
|