Leaving aside the details, I want to tell a story about AT&T’s DSL/Internet support. Being in the network industry by profession and possessing more knowledge than the average caller, I’m sure that the AT&T support processes aren’t designed for me. This was confirmed when I had to call them earlier today.
I had already looked at the problem and knew what I needed before I called. And if I had been able to talk with somebody that understood the topic then I could have been done in about 10 minutes. But instead I was talking to somebody that had a script to follow. On a few occasions I had to actually lead him to an answer or lie to him just to get him to move on to the next step. When I finally got the information that I needed, I flew through the rest of the setup and announced that it was working. He didn’t even know how to respond to that and asked me to go through to double-check a few things. In the end, I think he was more confused than me, and I was irritated. It took over an hour to resolve a small issue.
Which leads me to my point about scripted behavior and support desks. I know that we can’t all know everything, etc, and some process scripting is going to be necessary for real-world employees. But at some point it became common (or so it seems to me) for companies to accept scripting as a substitute for understanding. Company training focuses on process, back-office tools, etc, instead of educating staff about the product’s technology. And companies get away with hiring less-than-qualified employees.
Let’s face it, this leads to disposable employees and pissed off customers. So the employee suffers (outsourcing anybody?) and the company suffers (unless they’re a monopoly, I guess). Does anybody in management get this? Or perhaps it doesn’t matter. Because if I had called a help line for something I didn’t already understand then a script might have been just fine. Maybe most of society doesn’t understand most things, so most phone support employees can support most people. *shrug* Even if that’s true, I’m still irritated at AT&T.
