First, I want to thank all of you who wrote me about my experience
with Apple Tech Support in my first "Virtuality"
column. (Please note that when you write me, I will never publish
your email address. We know better than that here at LEM. We may quote
you though.) Let me say that I am still trying to discover if there is
a problem with the trackpad button on the Pismo, and I will keep you
informed. But after reading some of the replies, and then reading more
generally on the web about tech support, I had some thoughts about
getting results when you call. It seems some techs out there feel
defensive, and some customers out there are fed up with them. Each
brings this tension to the situation. So we have to be careful on both
sides. A tech support call is actually an intricate dance of
conflicting interests and viewpoints. Let me explain.
Someone who does tech support all day wrote me about my first
article. He said, "So dealing with these kind of people [who don't know
what they are talking about] all day makes one suspect any one callers
(sic) knowledge or claim." In other words, techs get tired - and after
listening to know-nothings all day one begins to suspect most don't
know Jack! I completely understand this. After dealing all day with
what we in the philosophy department affectionately call "grade
mongering" (an attitude that a class, or college, is only about
grades, and bugging your professor more and more will get you better
ones), I tend to suspect all students have this attitude. They don't,
and not all tech support callers are know nothings, and neither are all
techs jerks. Obviously it is much more complex than this.
If you really are new to all things Mac and don't have a clue, then
you have to play your cards right. There is one piece of advice we can
adopt: Don't try to fool them. If you try to come off as if you know
what you're doing when you don't, it will be brought to light during
the conversation if the tech is good. Then you have lost him. The best
policy would appear to be to state your ignorance up front. It's okay,
you'll never meet him anyway! If you explain that you are confused or
frustrated and need help, he may (I say may), hear you saying
you need him, and everyone wants to be needed. You may have a
better experience overall. The point is: Don't fake it. If you don't
know something, don't act like you do.
If you do know your stuff, then try to drop clues that you are not a
regular consumer. But you have to be subtle. I don't tell Apple techs I
write on the Mac web when I call; it could come off as a threat and
immediately raise the stakes too high. Don't say, "I really know my
stuff, so listen to me, you idiot!" Not good.
You want to be on equal terms. So how do you get there? It is the
vocabulary you use, they way you say things, how you describe the
problem itself, which achieves this. Don't say, "I am having trouble
with the thing next to the black object over to the kind of upper
middle right of the other thingy. Ya know?" Imagine being the tech who
hears this! What sense can be made of it? Before I call Apple Tech or
any tech, I look in the manual to see exactly what is called what. I
didn't want to say, "I have a hot button," since there are a couple of
buttons on the machine; I didn't even want to say "the button under the
trackpad." I wanted to know what the name of that button was. I found
it's called the "trackpad button" in the manual, so that is what I
used. I would then speak the tech's language.
The point is that sometimes you need to study before you call. Write
out your problem on paper first. That always helps clarify the issue in
your head, and hopefully it will be clear in their head,
too. If someone sounds like a moron, he'll be treated like one. So
don't sound like one. Bone up on the issue and vocabulary before you
call. While you will never be equals with a tech unless you too are a
tech, at least he'll see you differently than others, maybe.
But most of the time the first thing we do is call tech support.
Then we can make fools out of ourselves. I understand the impulse,
though. Our machine is down, and there are important docs on it. We
have deadlines, and we want quick results. But we need to be careful in
this Internet age of instant answers. It is always easy to pick up the
phone for every little inconvenience. But resist the urge. I have found
solutions to most of my problems by waiting before I call a tech. When
I haven't called immediately, I have gained a wealth of information I
can give the tech when I call. In fact, most of the time when I call I
end up saying over and over again, "I did that already. I zapped the
PRAM. I did a clean install," and so on. It goes a long way to getting
to the real solution, and it may avoid the call in the first place. It
also lets the tech know you have brain. Once we have danced this dance,
we usually get to the meat of issue.
I might even give the procedure a name. In medical ethics we have
the "principle of last resort," which says that the most drastic means
should be left as a last resort. One doesn't immediately do surgery
before he has tried medication (if the condition calls for it). Why cut
when you can give a pill? So perhaps we could adopt a "tech support
principle of last resort":
- Do everything imaginable (to you, depending on your background
knowledge) to fix the problem before you call tech support, if
possible.
I say "everything imaginable" meaning "the basic counter measures
for any problem," such as rebuilding the desktop, zapping the PRAM,
running TechTool Pro and Conflict Catcher, disabling extensions, and
trying to reproduce the problem. The last - reproduce the problem - is
important. Two questions the tech will want answers to are (1) is the
problem random, and (2) what where you doing when it happened?
Immediately go back and open the same programs, and do exactly what you
were doing when the machine crashed or did whatever it did. See if it
does it again. In fact, try to reproduce it. If you cannot, then you
may not have to call after all. If you can reproduce it, that will help
the tech find the problem.
"Everything imaginable" does not include voiding your warranty,
though. Don't call and say, "After over-clocking my new G4, I keep
getting these crashes." Not good. And if you get into something that
you really don't understand, or are dealing with some hardware issue,
you need to be careful. A simple static shock can permanently disable
your Mac. "Taps" is the only music you'll hear after that. If you rush
into a hardware issue, then you might not need tech support. Instead,
you'll need a salesperson from whom to buy a new machine. "Everything
imaginable" does not mean "even the inane." Think, don't act.
I say do everything you can before you call "if possible," because
you may need surgery right away and no medicine will help, e.g., your
machine won't even start up, a processor is fried. Yes, some
emergencies are real. Then call right away. But otherwise, there are
plenty of resources on the Net that you can pursue before calling. On
some forums you may find five or fifty people with the same problem,
all trying to fix it. Their troubles can save you a lot of trouble.
Some people wrote me about the inherent conflicts in tech support. A
business has budgets; the goal of tech support, some said, is to save
the company money. So a tech will do anything to talk you out of the
problem. Well, now that Apple has billions in the bank, that is not an
issue! Maybe they'll be more ready to test and, if need be, replace
something than they were in the dismal days several years ago. And not
all companies are like this. I have found some tech support to be so
fast in replacing products I almost feel guilty. This has been my
experience with Iomega a few times. But there are real issues about the
so called "click of death" with
Zip drives, and this may account for the speed of the reply. After all,
when the tech can actually hear the problem on the phone, that goes a
long way to solving it! The point is not to paint with too broad of a
brush on either side.
I have no doubt that there are bad techs everywhere. I have no doubt
that some have bad days every day of the week. But not all. And this
article is not meant to either defend techs or give tricks for
manipulating them (I suppose it can be read both ways). Hopefully, it's
common sense that will help both parties.
I have read over and over that one needs to be rude and loud to get
good support. I don't think this is universally true. There are times
we need to be demanding, but there good ways to do this and bad ways to
do this. If you do get a bad tech or just have a personality conflict
with one, then hang up and call again until you get one you can work
with. Just end it. Don't cause yourself misery.
If you do get results from rudeness and anger, you may have a smooth
running computer, but at what price? You have to weigh the options to
make sure that when you hang up the phone you are not worse off in
other ways.
The only thing you have control over when you call tech support is
yourself, and this makes all the difference. You'd be amazed what can
get done if this control is not given away.
