I don’t get the incessant drive for inhuman support
Well, I do, kind of.
The support options available are able to answer some of the more basic and mundane questions which makes sense, but the world seems to have lost its humanity in the process.
In the last few years working in the technology industry has become increasingly frustrating when the need to reach out to vendors and third parties for support arises.
It just feels like companies don’t care, or even want to speak to people any more.
More and more often we are directed to an automated chat bot that does its best to pull from a list of predefined responses to your questions.
Other times you have to submit an email which goes into a queue, and you wait your turn with no idea when you will receive a response.
There are even some vendors who rely on their own community forums where users work with other users to resolve problems. I am all for collaboration but what a cop out.
Many websites are stripped of support phone numbers or direct contact details and when you call the main number you are directed to one of the already mentioned, less than desirable alternatives.
Often when you do get through to a human you are directed to a knowledgebase article and end up having to fix it yourself, if the solution you have been presented does not work you have to start all over again.
All of this boils down to frustrated customers and endless time spent going round in circles when a quick conversation would provide a better service and often a quicker solution.
Today I had an enjoyable support session with a human being, to be fair I did chase an emailed request and the person I spoke to was excellent. We screen shared the computer with the problem, worked through it together as he found he had other tickets with similar issues. After 20 minutes of discussion, banter and conversation we found that the issue was with another piece of software interfering with the process. It was the best of support, chat, knowledge, collaboration, banter and two people feeling like they had achieved a result.
I actually hung up the phone and said to my colleague that it was one of the most enjoyable support calls I have had in while. Vendors and people like that are remembered.
At Focus Technology we value our relationships with our customers and with our team. Yes, we operate a ticketing system, we could not do this job without one but, we will always have people at the end of the phone to support our customer when they need us.
As a consequence of this ethic, we partner with vendors and suppliers who hold the same values we do. We build relationships between our business and theirs to enable us to provide the absolute best service to our clients.
With good communication, good relationships and good support we all succeed.
To any vendors who may be reading this, please, offer the human touch, break down these barriers and talk to your customers, you will find the rewards worth it.
