Foreign Outsourcing Gives Me A Headache
I admit that I call companies with arcane questions involving the use of my Mac. And yes, I know that it is confusing to Microsoft pre-sales support that I should even care how my possible purchase of MS SQL will work in my Open Directory environment.
I mean, why should I really expect them care if I want to store my SQL data on my enormous Apple RAID array.
But I can't help but think that if the person on the other end of the call didn't also have a language barrier that maybe my question could be answered a little faster. I am, after all, wanting to buy their product!
I am not usually one of these ant-globalization folks. What was it that David Ricardo said about win in Portugal?
The point is that in this situation the quality of the product diminishes the minute I get transfered out of the continent. The first person I spoke with acknowledged that I had a complicated question and that it would require pre-sales support to answer it. He was answering the phone for sales so it makes sense that Microsoft cares if he can understand me.
However, the person he transfers me too doesn't understand my question, doesn't acknowledge that fact, and reads (twice) a list of screening questions that don't apply to me. I am assigned a 15 digit support number and put on hold as she transfers me to the "Networking Group." At least I was able to convince her that my question isn't about Active Directory.
So who cares?
I think this matters because I am trying to spend money! I have already resigned myself to the fact that an application I need to deploy will not work with MySQL, a fact that I lament as I sit here on hold.
The solution, in my mind, is the elimination of these electronic phone systems. Hire and train people who answer the phone immediately and can help customers. Have additional tiers and whatnot for the real doozies but please, oh I beg you please, don't ever add someone to your support chain whose sole job is to read a list of routing questions.
Companies need to understand that their front-line is their public face. When a customer calls with a question about a broken product or some confusing question they are already a little agitated. Is it in your business interest to torture them for half an hour.
For the record, I am still on hold as I click publish and my question remains unanswered. Maybe I should call Apple. I wonder if they will know.
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Who is this guy?
Apple knew the answer. It will work. It will even work if I want to set up a SAN!
As it happens, Apple is guilty of (at least some of) the same pathetic support as everybody else. I spent hours on the phone with them concerning Tiger while it was the only pice of software on my laptop, and they finally told me that they didn't support it. Well, I reamed the guy, got to the next tier of support, and a month later it still doesn't work.
go Apple.