terpfan1980

Join Date 08/2004

+13

Customer service is such a thing of the past...

... even when you pay for it, you ain't gonna get it

Two companies that we're dealing with at my 'day job' are proving that the adage that 'you get what you pay for' couldn't be more wrong.

You see, the customer of my employer, the people that pay my employer for myself and my co-workers to work for them, pay us good money to get the jobs done quickly and efficiently. We do our best to make that happen, but there are times when we are, like our customer, left waiting for someone else to provide support for our efforts. Support that we, or our customer, normally pay quite handsomely for. Support that can cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars for just for the priviledge of calling up for assistance that is supposed to take no more than xx amount of time to have provided, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Top shelf support. The stuff that you pay for so you aren't left waiting for help with someone's life on the line, or with some very costly operation having to be postponed or cancelled.

What we've found lately though is that paying for this support doesn't mean you'll actually get it. Far from it. You'll pay for it, and if you haven't paid for it in advance, you'll pay for it before you can even get a word in edgewise to describe your problem and try to determine if the problem is a known bug that was patched in some upgrade you haven't been told about, or which wasn't available to you unless you paid the big ransom, uh, I mean support contract fee.

One of the companies we are dealing with is a famous document processing company. The used to make the bulk of their money selling machines that made copies. That company with the big X at the beginning of their name.

They make a document collaboration system that is used by my employers customer. One which runs on multiple platforms and does some pretty cool stuff when it works, or when it is installed on relatively modern era hardware. Unfortunately that doesn't apply to my work place as we've been using an older version of the software running on a very old hardware platform.

I've taken on the task of working to upgrade that system and migrate that software off the existing hardware platform and operating system over to a more industry standard operating system and hardware platform. It really wouldn't be that tough a task to perform if the tools that the company that made the system supplied to their customers actually worked like they are supposed to.

Unfortunately, I'm having to work with older versions of the software, and am trying to create a replica of the existing system that can then be upgraded without potentially having our existing system go offline semi-permanently because of failures in the upgrade processes that will be required later. The software developers make tools that are supposed to be used to make replicas of the existing system over to other systems so that you don't have to recreate things from scratch. Note that I said supposed to do these things. Unfortunately the tools just don't work. Known bugs and things like that. Nothing like calling up for support, giving the support people copies of logs that show the errors, and then getting back an answer 3 days later that says "uh, yeah, that's a known issue in that version of the software and tool. You'll have to upgrade to a later version, but not too late, because the later versions have problems too..." Say what?!!?

What these clowns want is for us to install a major upgrade -- not a minor software revision such as nn.xx.yy upgrade where only the .yy part is changing. Nope, a full blown .nn upgrade, and after that an .xx upgrade or two for good measure. All to be applied on a system that may or may not even cooperate with any of these upgrade processes given the age of the equipment and operating system that is running on it.

Not going to happen if I have anything to say about it (and I do).

One way or another, I'm gonna be pushing for a way to do this upgrade in a safe manner. One where I don't have to make changes on the original system and then wonder if I've just killed that system once and for all.

Meanwhile, my boss asks what kind of support we're getting for the thousands of dollars we've paid into the maker of the software and I mumble about the worthlessness of what it is. Ugh.

Also meanwhile, there's another relatively famous software package that we're having issues with. A big package, used for maintaining developed software. If I gave you three letters, started with M and ended with S, and perhaps tossed a strike right down the middle of the plate, you'd know who I was talking about.

Thankfully I've avoided that problem for the most part, as co-workers handle that situation, but suffice it to say that the software is not working as it should and at the same time neither is the support for it. Support that has cost our customer tens of thousands of dollars. Support that should be performed within just a few hours in a day, but instead keeps running into the "well, we don't run that same hardware and software combination here, so we're not sure what is wrong" type discussions.

All of this makes me long for the good old days of what seemed to be over-priced copies of software like WordPerfect. I remember thinking that the prices for WordPerfect were just way too high, but at the same time I also remember that even when non-paying customers called in for support (at least in the earlier days of the corporation) the person that called in was going to get an answer -- nee, not just an answer, but a solution -- no matter how long it took.

Companies used to work hard, and they used to employ people that actually spoke English as their native tongue. They used to have short pipelines from the customer service people that answered the phone to the developers that actually wrote the code that was causing the issue. Not any more. Now we wind up calling into call centers run out of third world countries, or at least staffed with third world natives that barely speak English, and have to work from a script because if they deviate at all from said script they'll have no idea how to deal with you or where to route your call.

Not to kiss butt of the very generous hosts of the site that is hosting this article, but there are very few Stardock Corporations left out there in the software business world, and instead far more companies like the ones I've written about here (not the WordPerfect of old either, but the big X and the M{strike}S ones). Companies that have decided that in order to bolster their own bottom lines they'll cut their customer service and support staffs to the bone, and cut out things like *testing* of their products while rushing development of products so they can get them out to the market no matter how badly bugged they may be.

Nevermind going back and actually *fixing* known problems in tools that you are still making available to your customer. Nevermind documenting these issues in ways that customers can find for themselves. Nah, just leave your customers to call in and wait for days for a solution to a problem that won't be forthcoming.

That is the state of customer service in the computer industry now.

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If these companies would actually provide support, my job would be oooooooh, so much easier. Oh well, I guess I can dream.

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Yarlen

Join Date 01/2005

+369

I think it's outrageous that your company pays big bucks for legitimate tech support and ends up with what you described. I'd raise holy hell with someone in charge over at those two firms over it.

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I think it's outrageous that your company pays big bucks for legitimate tech support and ends up with what you described. I'd raise holy hell with someone in charge over at those two firms over it.

These are just two examples of what is out there in the industry. Honestly, things aren't that much better if you call Dell, or HP, or a host of other companies and ask them for service. They all use the bottom line as their guide and unless they can make more money by providing better service to customers, well, they just don't care.

The sad thing is that many of these companies don't realize that in the end they are hurting their own bottom lines as customers file away information about the kind of service they've gotten and decide that if all other things are relatively equal, they'll simply go with whoever the lowest cost provider of an item is.

There used to be a day when you could count on getting good service from companies, even if you didn't pay for it as a separate line item. It was rolled up into the price of the goods that you were buying, and the costs were hidden there for both the buyer and the seller. Sadly, over time, the drive for more corporate profits and leaner organizations has driven things to where they are now and you get far less than the quality of service you are supposed to receive, no matter what you pay for it.

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unclerob

Join Date 08/2006

+40

It is unfortunate but everything is viewed as a cost center nowadays, especially functions concerning information technology.

Helpdesks are call centers.
Call Centers are cost centers.
To take a call costs money.
Helpdesk personnel have to log calls in some form of crm based application.
Helpdesk/ Tech support is probably cautioned about spending too much time with a customer on the phone.
Helpdesk supervisor tells his staff how much each call costs literally.
Call times are logged & averaged.
Everyone's performance is judged accordingly.
Instead of providing real support, they provide regurgitated text from a list of known responses to "popular" questions/problems.

Quality isn't built into alot of products nowadays either which compounds the problems even further. It's a catch 22 system: a company builds a product with known quality issues but rationalizes that it's still worth selling to it's customer base regardless if it's an expensive/inexpensive product as they will try to deal with issues during the included limited warranty period (if available), a customer may obtain a fix if one is actually available, or a patch, until the warranty period expires and then the customer is left with a faulty product with no support.

Customer contacts company support to obtain support for product with quality issues.
Customer has to purchase a maintenance or support contract/agreement to obtain support with older product with quality issues.
After purchasing maintenance/support agreement, customer calls company to obtain support.
Company still doesn't have required fixes for said product but tries to take care of the customers questions with a series of "hmmm's..." and "we'll research that for you and get back to you asap!". Time passes, company calls customer back (or customer calls company back because there was no followup on original calls).
Company tells customer that there are known issues with the customer version of the product and they are advised to purchase the newer version which has some fixes that the previous product should have rec'd.
Customer has to purchase newer version of product to obtain fixes they should have rec'd on original product purchase. Newer product still doesn't work as advertised and fixes aren't really as good as they were expected to be.

Customer calls are logged by helpdesk tech support people.
Helpdesk is told by company to improve call times and call backs,
call center numbers must be improved so that internal reporting shows that company is meeting & exceeding customer service standards.

In reality the company is failing at achieving any customer service standard. They judge customer service by how many customer calls they can take instead of attempting to properly answer customer questions and fix customer issues. The company can't rationalize spending extra money on building quality into the product in the first place or actively pursuing customer input to improve product quality & feature set.

Helpdesk personnel have to log numerous helpdesk calls to justify their existence with their company because they're not viewed as an asset, they're viewed as a liability - an expense. The spiral downwards continues and infiltrates other areas until every aspect of the local environment is touched by this.

That is why outsourcing has been so popular. Pay a fraction of the cost for the same kind of support you would have provided locally. If a company is going to provide poor tech support anyways, they might has well pay the least amount for that type of service so that they can marginally increase profits on the back end temporarily. Same thing with pretty much anyone working in information technology (obviously there are exceptions: companies that view technology & their employees that facilitate technology as assets - these places do exist, they just aren't the standard anymore)

The mindset slowly passes around the country, larger companies start looking to outsourcing to meeting alot of their labor needs. Local employees are displaced and have to struggle to look for replacement work. This isn't just limited to offering services, it's also affecting the manufacturing of products that are sold locally but imported from foreign countries. Pretty soon you have a country that imports quite a bit of foreign product, doesn't manufacture alot of it's product so it doesn't export alot of anything to other countries. Outsourcing provides you access to a labor force that is a fraction of your local labour costs, importing cheaper foreign product saves you money from building it locally yourself. What your left with is a alot of unemployed people that can't find jobs in manufacturing or servicing and when those people do finally get jobs (probably in unrelated fields, nothing similar to what they were skilled or educated in) it's at a lower pay scale (sometimes you have to work 2 full time jobs to make the same money you made previously) than what they had previously so in turn they can't purchase as much products and so on and so forth and the spiral downwards still continues. People make less money, people spend less money, companies have to make (import) & distribute cheaper products just to keep up with lower wages, etc.

What's left.... I guess you can always get a job at a bank(maybe but those jobs are already filled) or Walmart (part-time most likely, full-time employment not very likely)

Sorry for the long winded speech - this is a bit of rant to be sure but it's becoming such an issue lately I'm surprised that more people don't talk more about it.

Poor customer service levels is just the beginning - just the tip of the iceberg (problem). Don't worry about the portion of the iceberg you can see above the water line, it's the size of the iceberg that you can't see below the water line that frightens me. I read your original post and noticed alot of similarities with issues I've seen locally.

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Phoon

Join Date 10/2001

+382

You MUST be talking about Docushare!
We used to use it, until it was upgraded. It turned to a vile piece of unworkable, unsupported putrid sludge then...

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Customer service stopped mattering the minute their customers decided that they wanted the lowest price REGARDLESS of the customer service. When price trumped customer service, customer service got cut to lower the price to maintain market share. If a majority of people/companies cared about customer service, it would be there. But they don't, they care about price.

I'm absolutely sure there are smaller companies out there who are trying to compete with a higher price because they have great customer service. In fact, that's probably why they're small. They may even produce software that works more often than not.

Strangely enough, though, Stardock has been able to ship games with lower prices while providing excellent customer service, patches, etc. These patches weren't so much to fix the game as improve a product we had already purchased. Never mind the free expansion they released. I think, if people really tried, life would be a lot better. But people aren't trying to improve the world, or improve the quality of life. They are trying to improve their (and their shareholder's) wallets. If they were willing to sacrifice a little of that money from their wallets to come up with a great product that works and provide after market support, they would probably do well. Not as well as if they didn't, but they would get a distinction that would allow them to survive even without the extra money on the bottom line. Stardock's customers are extremely loyal, because they're treated with respect and know Stardock will go the extra mile.

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The discription given by OP is typical of an endemic problem in commerce - no matter the country. The Management team are working "in" the business, not "on" the business. Free example for you to illustrate the principle behind the solutions.

Introduce an incentivised cost cutting programme, but it must be preceeded by putting systems in place to measure inputs and outputs prior to the programme, and measure inputs and outputs after the programme. Get employees to suggest cost cutting ideas, if they work, 50% goes to the Company bottom line, 50% goes to a free Staff weekend / week / fortnight with spouse/partner in (wherever). Works everytime. There are a few holes as described - not the time and space to fill those in here, but use common sense and the initial "nah dont work because ...." are easily dealt with. It never fails. Not the only thing of course, there are hundreds of different tactics that can be used.

Thats working "on" the business (streamlining 'how' it works), not "in" the business - the latter only streamlines outputs that have already been produced from a terrible system, you just run to stand still at best. The latter is reason why dramatic Slash & Burn cost cutting never works in the long run.

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Phoon

Join Date 10/2001

+382

Unclerob,
You hit it exactly on the head. I couln't have said it better.
Here's the kicker...
This is all being driven by idiots that have no foresight what so ever (but claim to be loaded with it). They make more money in one month than I will ever see in my lifetime. They are only concerned about themselves and nothing more. It's heartbreaking and disgusting.

I happen to work for an outsourcing company (at the bottom of the food chain). They preach one thing and do the opposite. All the while they are building up in India at an alarming rate... all in the name of "cutting costs". The poor sap clients and end users have no idea of the decrease of quality service they are going to obtain when they ink that multi-billion dollar outsourcing contract. They've had their asses so filled up with smoke filled images of a perfect tech environment that they will never know what hit them.

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In a nutshell! Everything has a cost, including customer service. Support is probably the easiest thing to cut back and the easiest to justify - if you take the short view which business tends to do. Over the long term, I believe cutting back on service costs more than it saves but that is a great deal harder to prove in measurable terms.

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terp? Customer service in every field stinks in today's climate, once you have bought the product, the customer service ends, right then and there. No more smiles, no more thank you sir, nothing, just the end. Of course if you do manage to get some kind of customer service for most things today, you can be sure:

1. English is a foreign language to them
2. HUH? is their favorite response
3. Could you please hold, means you are doomed to be out-waited till you finally scream and slam the phone down.
4. That's not my department is the sentence of the day, every day.
5.Let me transfer your call means again you are doomed to be on hold till you go bald or die from dehydration.

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You MUST be talking about Docushare!

uh, no comment

We used to use it, until it was upgraded. It turned to a vile piece of unworkable, unsupported putrid sludge then...

I would be curious what version you found the problems with and why you've moved away from it (if you have moved away completely). Not that it would change things for my customer, but it would be interesting to know what someone else thinks of the product's later revisions.

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