MMMiii!

I’m going to start a new category/segment on my blog. Moronic Mondays. Every Monday, I’m going to write about memorable experiences from my calls at work. Being a tech support is really an exciting kind of job. You get to experience techies, wannabe techies, idiots, irates, shy, scary, and what not. You get to talk to people with ages ranging from 10 to 85. For me, there are two things I like feeling accomplishment from–getting an irate caller what he wants and at the same time not going outside my scope of support or company policies and calming down in the end, and being genuinely appreciated. I’m an emotional person and there have been three times when I cried on the job–not because I was scared or anything, but because I was so frustrated that I can’t help them.

There are also some pretty funny experiences on the job, like one of the calls I’m going to feature for my first post. The format of this is going to be as follows: The issue (ISSUE), the resolution (RESOLUTION), and what happened that made it memorable (EXPERIENCE).

Without further ado, Mellow Mondays 001

Issue: Every time the customer turns on his PC, he is being asked if he wants to load his ISP’s internet security program. He called in to ask if he really needs to continue doing that, and he’s been doing it for a year now.

Resolution: Uninstall the program and reinstall it. Probably a corrupt install.

Experience: I wasn’t able to resolve this issue. In fact, I escalated it to Tier 2. The customer had a slow PC so loading stuff, restarting the computer and downloading stuff takes quite a while. I was lucky to have a chatty customer. I’ve had calls like this and the customer hardly said a word. This one kept asking a LOT of questions about me, my country, and being a polite person that I am, I kept calling him “Sir.” He asked me to call him “Mr. Majestic” and every time I called him “Sir,” he kept correcting me.

The call lasted about an hour, and in the last 15 minutes or so, I kind of got used to calling him Mr. Majestic. When I escalated him and introduced him to Tier 2, I even introduced him as Mr. Majestic instead of his real name. I heard the Tier 2 snicker a little. I think that was the most fun escalation I had. I hate escalating, because I always feel that it’s going to be an invalid escalation. Oh well.

Resolution: Reset the password, guide the customer into changing it to a password she wants, bridge the modem and update the router.

Experience: Everything was going well until we had to update the router since it seemed the modem seemed to be bridged already from the lights. Upon accessing the router… we couldn’t access the router. The default password for LinkSys routers is ‘admin’ and that isn’t being accepted. I can only assume that the tech probably changed the password. When I asked the customer to bypass the router, she started screaming into my precious ear that if things won’t get fixed she’s going to Charter. Usually my customers say they’re going to ComCast. I don’t know what Charter is.

But anyway, somehow, we were able to connect the modem directly to the computer. I asked her to call LinkSys and ask how she can reset the router so that it could be accessed. Oh how she screamed into my ear. I explained to her that everything minus the router and her cables are fixed- her email and her internet, just that it had to be wired and connected to only one computer. And then she kept on asking if her email will also work in the other computer, using a different DSL number (yes, one household, three phone numbers, two dsl accounts).

To appease her, I offered to call her on the other number and let her check and make sure. I gave her a minute coz she said she’ll take a minute. When she picked up, she sounded so calm and nice. She said she was half-expecting I wouldn’t call anymore. And that she really appreciated it. She said she knows I did my best. She even asked me to tell her up straight if the tech that she hired did something wrong. I just told her that the tech just put a password to her router and we both don’t know what it is. She was actually happy at the end of the call.

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