Article 1362 of icdoc.general:
Path: doc.ic.ac.uk!nb2
From: nb2@doc.ic.ac.uk (Nainish Bapna)
Newsgroups: icdoc.general
Subject: Joys of phone support
Date: 15 Mar 1994 20:40:09 -0000
Organization: Department of Computing, Imperial College, University of London, UK.
Lines: 129
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2m56f9$eva@oak3.doc.ic.ac.uk>
References: <9403121721.AA11507@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca>
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For those of you doing HCI:

|> From: Fant, Brian on Fri, Mar 11, 1994 9:55 AM
|> Subject: FW: FWD>>A funny article
|> To: #189# Tech Comm OS&MM
|> 
|> 
|> BEFUDDLED PC USERS FLOOD HELP LINES, AND NO QUESTION SEEMS TO BE TOO BASIC
|> 
|> AUSTIN, Texas - The exasperated help-line caller said she couldn't get her
|> new Dell computer to turn on. Jay Ablinger, a Dell Computer Corp.
|> technician, made sure the computer was plugged in and then asked the woman
|> what happened when she pushed the power button.
|> 
|> "I've pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens," the woman
|> replied. "Foot pedal?" the technician asked. "Yes," the woman said, "this
|> little white foot pedal with the on switch." The "foot pedal," it turned
|> out, was the computer's mouse, a hand-operated device that helps to control
|> the computer's operations.
|> 
|> Personal-computer makers are discovering that it's still a low-tech world
|> out there. While they are finally having great success selling PCs to
|> households, they now have to deal with people to whom monitors and disk
|> drives are a foreign as another language.
|> 
|> " It is rather mystifying to get this nice, beautiful machine and not know
|> anything about it," says Ed Shuler, a technician who helps field consumer
|> calls at Dell's headquarters here. "It's going into unfamiliar territory,"
|> adds Gus Kolias, vice president of customer service and training for Compaq
|> Computer Corp. "People are looking for a comfort level."
|> 
|> Only two years ago, most calls to PC help lines came from techies needing
|> help on complex problems. But now, with computer sales to homes exploding
|> as new "multimedia" functions gain mass appeal, PC makers say that as many
|> as 70% of their calls come from rank novices. Partly because of the volume
|> of calls, some computer companies have started charging help-line users.
|> 
|> The questions are often so basic that they could have been answered by
|> opening the manual that comes with every machine. One woman called Dell's
|> toll-free line to ask how to install batteries in her laptop. When told
|> that the directions were on the first page of the manual, says Steve Smith,
|> Dell director of technical support, the woman replied angrily, "I just paid
|> $2,000 for this damn thing, and I'm not going to read a book."
|> 
|> Indeed, it seems that these buyers rarely refer to a manual when a phone is
|> at hand. "If there is a book and a phone and they're side by side, the
|> phone wins time after time," says Craig McQuilkin, manager of service
|> marketing for AST Research, Inc. in Irvine, Calif. "It's a phenomenon of
|> people wanting to talk to people."
|> 
|> And do they ever. Compaq's help center in Houston, Texas, is inundated by
|> some 8,000 consumer calls a day, with inquiries like this one related by
|> technician John Wolf: "A frustrated customer called, who said her brand new
|> Contura would not work. She said she had unpacked the unit, plugged it in,
|> opened it up and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to
|> happen.When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she
|> asked, 'What power switch?'"
|> 
|> Seemingly simple computer features baffle some users. So many people have
|> called to ask where the "any" key is when "Press Any Key" flashes on the
|> screen that Compaq is considering changing the command to "Press Return
|> Key."
|> 
|> Some people can't figure out the mouse. Tamra Eagle, an AST technical
|> support supervisor, says one customer complained that her mouse was hard to
|> control with the "dust cover" on. The cover turned out to be the plastic
|> bag the mouse was packaged in. Dell technician Wayne Zieschang says one of
|> his customers held the mouse and pointed it at the screen, all the while
|> clicking madly. The customer got no response because the mouse works only
|> if it's moved over a flat surface.
|> 
|> Disk drives are another bugaboo. Compaq technician Brent Sullivan says a
|> customer was having trouble reading word-processing files from his old
|> diskettes. After troubleshooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose
|> the problem, Mr. Sullivan asked what else was being done with the
|> diskette.The customer's response: "I put a label on the diskette, roll it
|> into the typewriter..."
|> 
|> At AST, another customer dutifully complied with a technician's request
|> that she send in a copy of a defective floppy disk. A letter from the
|> customer arrived a few days later, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy.
|> And at Dell, a technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy
|> back in the drive and "close the door." Asking the technician to "hold on,"
|> the customer put the phone down and was heard walking over to shut the door
|> to his room. The technician meant the door to his floppy drive.
|> 
|> The software inside the computer can be equally befuddling. A Dell customer
|> called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40
|> minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to
|> fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and
|> hitting the "send" key.
|> 
|> Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so Dell
|> technician Gary Rock referred him to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me a
|> couple of friends," the customer replied. When told Egghead was a software
|> store, the man said, "Oh! I thought you meant for me to find a couple of
|> geeks."
|> 
|> Not realizing how fragile computers can be, some people end up damaging
|> parts beyond repair. A Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard
|> no longer worked. He had cleaned it, he said, filling up his tub with soap
|> and water and soaking his keyboard for a day, and then removing all the
|> keys and washing them individually.
|> 
|> Computers make some people paranoid. A Dell technician, Morgan Vergara,
|> says he once calmed a man who became enraged because "his computer had told
|> him he was bad and an invalid." Mr. Vergara patiently explained that the
|> computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken
|> personally.
|> 
|> These days PC-help technicians increasingly find themselves taking on the
|> role of amateur psychologists. Mr. Shuler, the Dell technician, who once
|> worked as a psychiatric nurse, says he defused a potential domestic fight
|> by soothingly talking a man through a computer problem after the man had
|> screamed threats at his wife and children in the background.
|> 
|> There are also the lonely hearts who seek out human contact, even if it
|> happens to be a computer techie. One man from New Hampshire calls Dell
|> every time he experiences a life crisis. He gets a technician to walk him
|> through some contrived problem with his computer, apparently feeling
|> uplifted by the process.
|> 
|> "A lot of people want reassurance," says Mr. Shuler.
|> 
-- 
Nainish Bapna

`It's always the dullest before the yawn'