February 23, 2004

The Mantra, Punters, Givers, Formatters and Mentors

If you have owned a computer or used one at work chances are you have had a chance to talk to 'tech support' and your experience may have been good or bad.

This Salon article is well worth the second or two to click through to the premium content and depending on your past experience with tech support you will either laugh or scream as you relive past experiences.

You will not, though, look forward to your next call. Your support might have been outsourced to a company that gets paid by the call and where technician training might go like this:

Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. When class ended, which varied wildly depending on Chad's interest and mental status, we were all encouraged to say The Mantra out loud. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting.

The Mantra is simply, "We don't support that."......Without The Mantra we'd waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer's warranty. Beyond that we didn't have to do anything.

Of course, over some period of time companies who choose to save a penny now by providing this type of service to their customers should find themselves out of business.


Via Dan Gilmour.

Posted by Steve on February 23, 2004
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