MMMiii!

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Category: Tech Support


Anger Management

I haven’t written any anecdotes from work lately, huh. I’ve been a little busy in case you haven’t noticed. Lately, what’s happening is after the call, it’s over. I forget about it. And right now, I can’t think of anything except that call of my seatmate’s earlier.

It was really funny. Her voice was getting really high-pitched. I thought she was getting annoyed at us because we were chatting with each other and she might have been thinking we were too noisy. Until I heard this…

“Please look at the right side.”

“That’s at the left side.”

“It’s at the right side. The right side! Stop looking at the left side.”

“You should be seeing ~this this that that~ that one you’re looking at is at the left side. I need you to look at the right side.”

——-This went on for about 5 minutes—–

“Yes sir, I understand. I apologize for the inconvenience. Let me get a supervisor.”

——– I just laughed ——

Apparently, my friend was guiding the customer to sign in the home page, and the sign in link was at the right side. The customer kept looking at the wrong side. Our team leader scolded her for losing her cool and told her she could have tried a different approach, like asking the customer to look at the left side. That might have changed something.

This friend of mine is usually cool and composed… Calm in most calls. But in that call, she really seemed to want to club someone to death. I could’ve offered her some Callaway irons for that since I know the feeling.

One time, I spent almost two hours on a call because of a customer who had different definitions for “delete,” “erase,” and “remove.” “Deleting” was serious business because it will be “deleted” everywhere, and it would be irretrievable forever. If you just “erase” it, you can still get it back, or it’s just somewhere else. If you “remove” it, it will still be there, just that you can’t see it.

It was really frustrating.

The lesson? You have to align yourself with the customer’s language. If left (<-) for him is right (->), then go with them. If a forward slash (/) is a backslash (\) to them, then so be it. If a colon (:) is a semi-colon (;). The point is you’re talking the same language. It’s hard, but if you want to get things done, you have to do it that way instead of getting angry.

*sigh*

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23 May, 2008 (13:15) | Tech Support | By: Mi



Pathetic

pathetic

I realized how lame my previous post was. I was desperately trying to type it with my eyes trying to close and I was fighting against it, keeping it open, alternating each eye so one could rest.

And then when I woke up, I was practically chatting with Yu the whole time until I fell asleep again, so I wasn’t able to write.

I was going to write about that one funny call. The customer was really nice and he was setting up a business about signs–fully customized signs. Signs for what, you say? I didn’t really quite understand. It must be an American thing. I just smiled, nodded, agreed and laughed with the customer. He said you could have it set on your birthstone, it glows in the dark and if ever you have one, you’ll probably be the only one in your whole block to have one.

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7 May, 2008 (10:57) | Tech Support | By: Mi



Mellow Mondays will become Tech Support Stories

I would normally say this would be for no real reason, but there is, actually. I keep forgetting when is Monday. I’m sometimes on Eastern and sometimes on Philippine. So… I’ll just name it Tech Support Stories and write whenever I feel like it, and that would be during my days off. My schedule changes monthly, so… yeh.

I’m really too sleepy at the moment, but just to remind myself, I’m going to write a person and his signs. Okay? Okay.

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6 May, 2008 (14:35) | Admin, Tech Support | By: Mi



No Mellow Monday this week

Because … Well, I wasn’t at work yesterday. And I’ve been so busy lately, I don’t remember any calls today. So… yeh…

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29 April, 2008 (09:45) | Tech Support | By: Mi



Mellow Mondays: Ms Divorcee and Mr Opportunistic

mellow-mondays-ms-divorcee-and-mr-opportunistic

Two new characters in my daily Tech Support life. And I’m on time this time. I actually almost forgot. This is the problem when you’re on night shift. You leave the house at night and come back the next day. Sometimes you forget what day it is. You practically have to live in someone else’s timezone.

It’s not yet Monday in EST, but it’s Monday in PHT. Sooo… yeh.

________________________________________
Ms Divorcee

Customer calls in. Tells you the story of her life. She has two kids, and she’s getting a divorce next week. She doesn’t want soon-to-be ex-husband to have access to her e-mails, to her internet accounts. She wants to delete the future ex’s email account as well.

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21 April, 2008 (09:13) | Life, Tech Support | By: Mi



Mellow Mondays and Mr How’s Manila

mellow-mondays-and-mr-hows-manila

I just realized that yesterday was a Monday, but since I work on EST and it’s still Monday in EST, … Well… Yes. So. Yeah. You’re right. I AM making excuses. But it’s true! It’s still Monday in EST!!!

___________________
I had a call earlier (expect me to start with this phrase all the time) and this guy was calling for a friend. He said that he wanted to cancel their order for a new modem. I told this guy that it’s not possible to cancel an order, but he asked me to try to find a way. And so while I was chatting with Tier 2, asking what I could tell my customer, this customer asked “How’s Manila?”

Now, we have a rule. We’re not allowed to say we’re in Manila. We can say that we’re in the Philippines but never in Manila. So I wasn’t really sure how I was going to answer that. I floundered and said, “It’s night time there.” And this customer said, “Yes, of course.” I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t want or need to explain that I can’t say where I am for security purposes. Let him feel that he assumed.

After that, I told him again that we can’t cancel it and it’s really not in our system nor in our tools to cancel an order that has already been placed. I do understand the logic of not canceling orders since this could truly mess up a system. I told him to just decline the package when UPS comes but he didn’t want to hear me out. So anyway, Mr How’s Manila asked me to let him speak with a supervisor.

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15 April, 2008 (07:30) | Tech Support | By: Mi



Mellow Mondays and Mr Majestic

mellow-mondays-and-mr-majestic

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

Mr Majestic

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7 April, 2008 (08:37) | Life, Tech Support, Work | By: Mi



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