A couple of months ago I wrote about totally insane technical support customers. The condition continues. Witness this email service request I received from a customer:
Hello Support,
We are trying to configure our application servers to use our local authentication method. Using this method our users would log in with their network credentials which would map to application users that are configured to be guest accounts. Below I’ve attached instructions for the technical engineer to use with our requirements. That programmer/engineer will work with our analyst in order to set up our application to use the described authentication procedure. They will (shadow the database ID values in order to) configure this to allow employees to access the application. Then your analyst will do the testing of this system.
I need to receive the contact information for this programmer/analyst so that we can have our analyst contact them to develop an action plan. Please respond as soon as possible as I will be out of the office tomorrow (I’ll be returning Tuesday, September 6).
Thanks,
In case it wasn’t stupefying enough, let me clarify the point that this was sent to me. My role (in fact my job title) is Technical Support Analyst and as far as any customer is concerned, I’m the only person they should expect to deal with when they contact our support center. Sure, some issues get escalated to senior engineers, but there is no such thing as a “programmer/engineer” or a “programmer/analyst” who would ever contact a customer to implement a customized login routine.
We do have a consultation team which charges like any other on-site consultant to do this sort of work, but it most definitely isn’t covered under anyone’s support contract. Also note that of the five or so different support contracts we offer, they have one of the two cheapest which means that their expectations ought to be miles below what they seem to be expressing here.
Most baffling is the last line. September 6th? As in four and half months from now? I had a very hard time not replying with, “Hey, we’ll work on this when you get back from your trip to the moon.” And she prefaces the statement with “I’ll be out of the office tomorrow.”
I mean, that’s like saying, “I’m taking a fifteen-minute break. I’ll be back next Thursday.”
We often have problems on the support floor because our product is massive and it interacts with so many other products. For example, the team I work on is charged with supporting the web client portion of the software, but in order for it to work it requires a Webserver capable of processing Java Server Pages (JSP). This server must then be accessed by a web browser. So at minimum the product I support requires the use of a third-party webserver, a third-party servlet engine (JSP processor), the OS the webserver is installed on, and a third-party web browser. Oh, and the server needs to run Java (also third-party). On top of this we support a variety of each: Apache, IIS, WebSphere for webservers; Tomcat, ServletExec, JBoss for servlet engines; Red Hat, Solaris, Windows 2000/2003 for server OS; Mozilla and IE for browsers and the list actually goes on.
Technically we’re not required to troubleshoot other companies’ products, but we often do it when it’s clear that the problem isn’t really a bug with the other software but a configuration issue between their stuff and ours. This translates into a necessity for support personnel to understand a lot of various software packages. But sometimes customers don’t quite see the distinction.
Me: Tech support, how can I help you?
Customer: Hi, I’m having trouble with one of our applications. It looks funny.
Me: Okay, what are you seeing?
Customer: Some of the tabs are overlapping. You can’t even click the ones that are behind there.
Me: Hm, I see. Do you have any customized stylesheets applied to your IE settings?
Customer: Oh, I don’t use IE.
Me: Ah. I understand. Well, you can still use custom styles in Mozilla. Do you have any of those applied?
Customer: I’m not using Mozilla, either.
Me: …Okay. What are you using currently?
Customer: (proudly) Opera!
Me: Uh, yeah. Sir, we don’t support Opera.
Customer: Why not?
Me: Honestly, sir, I’m not sure. Probably because it has such a small market share that it’s not economically feasible for engineering to—
Customer: I don’t care about your economics! I’ve been using Opera for years, and I’m not about to stop now! We’ve standardized on Opera!
Me: I sympathize, sir, but—
Customer: I’ve never had a problem with your product and Opera. Don’t tell me it’s not supported!
Me: But I thought you just called because you were having a problem with Opera. And it isn’t supported.
Customer: Can’t you just download Opera and test it out to see if you get the same glitch?
Me: Well, I suppose I could, but—
Customer: Great! Let me know what you find out.
Me: The problem is that even if I confirm the problem, there’s nothing I can do about it. Engineering won’t fix anything to correct a problem with an unsupported third-party application. That’s what unsupported means.
Customer: Just look at it. You’ll see what I’m talking about.
Me: Couldn’t you have just shot me in the chest instead, sir?
Of course, sometimes it’s not just the customers that lose their bearings. We have a system that interfaces our telephones with our computers so we can track and correctly assign incoming calls. It works by doing a call transfer to the extention set via software preference whenever we pull a live call from a community queue. I worked from home last week so while I was there I had to change the extention preference to my home number so calls I pulled would come to me.
A couple of days later I was back in the office and a call came in. I pulled it from the queue and sat patiently with my little headset ready, waiting for the phone to ring. Nothing.
Several minutes later I got an IM from Nik:
nchamilton: There’s someone on the phone for you.
ironsoap: Uh, take a message?
nchamilton: It’s one of your customers.
ironsoap: ??
nchamilton: His ticket number is AC1566012.
ironsoap: lol
When I finally got it all straightened out, I waited for the call to show up in the queue. Finally it did and the queue info listed the call had originated from a contract number associated with the Central Intelligence Agency.
When I pulled the call and talked to the guy, he acted like nothing at all had happened.
It was like he already knew.
