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Shout,
shout, let it all out. Then pick up the phone to have a
calm conversation about your problem. Photo: Mark Lyndersay
When
technology works, it can be a miracle, or at the very least,
great fun.
But, like anything that man makes by bolting one thing to
another, things will occasionally come apart, hopefully
while still under warranty.
Whether or not your failing tech is covered, you have the
right to express your dissatisfaction with the state of
affairs that you find yourself in. Depending on how you
handle this stage of your annoyance, you can trigger surprising
responses.
I occasionally get e-mails from readers who are upset about
one perceived injustice or another, so what follows is an
extended version of the advice that I usually offer.
Compose yourself first
Take a walk, have a stiff drink, take a nap. Do whatever
it takes to put a little distance between your feelings
and your issue before you compose an e-mail or place a support
call.
Shouting, screaming and cursing doesn’t help your situation
at all and inevitably starts things off on the wrong foot.
You want the person on the other side of the line, as bored
and weary of listening to people bitching all day long as
they are, to feel sorry for you and feel motivated to take
action.
Once I’ve made contact with a support person, I take
a note of their name and refer to them by that name. As
Leonidas noted while his colleagues killed wounded Persians,
“there’s no reason why we can’t be civil.”
What went wrong
You shouldn’t simply call the help desk or support
line to say “it isn’t working.”
You may have a problem with a thing, but you’re going
to be talking to a human being without any psychic powers
at all. In fact, you’re going to be talking to a low
wage worker with little authority and a long script to troubleshoot
your problem, so getting past this stage is crucial.
While your problem is actually happening, take the time
to write down the issue as you understand it. That means
noting the steps you normally take with the device/software
that isn’t responding and what happened instead.
Absolutely critical at this stage is writing down any error
messages that you see on the screen of the device. They
may mean nothing to you, but they can be a gold mine of
information for a skilled support person.
Escalate the problem
Occasionally, you will hit a wall with the person you’re
dealing with. They may not be able to understand what you’re
telling them or may just be having a bad day, but the interaction
isn’t working out at all.
My usual first step in such a situation is to say thanks
and call back, hoping to hit better numbers in the support
lottery, but sometimes there isn’t anyone else or everyone
stalls at the same point in the process.
It’s time to escalate the issue. Ask to speak to the
person’s supervisor. Be warned that once you begin
to escalate a problem, there’s a good chance that you’ll
have to take it all the way to the top to get satisfaction.
This takes time and effort, so you may not want to invest
that much energy to get an alarm clock exchanged.
What do you expect
Start your conversation with support with a specific goal
in mind. Will having a support person visit your home to
troubleshoot the situation be desirable? Do you want the
failing device replaced or do you want your money back?
Most companies will make an effort to save their relationship
with a customer, but returning your money tends to be at
the bottom of the customer care list, it’s more reasonable
to hope for repair or replace.
Here are two true personal stories that may guide your own
experiences.
I recently had a memory chip fail in my computer and successfully
organised a replacement. Unfortunately, by the time I paid
customs charges on the replacement and shipped the failed
chip back, I only saved US$20 over just buying a new chip.
Realising that software that I purchased from a vendor had
been end-of-lifed, I politely inquired about a “crossgrade”
(basically a discount) to another product they sold that
I was interested in. To my surprise, they simply sent me
a serial number to the new product, apologising for halting
development on the dead software.
Resources
The
T&T Bureau of Standards (http://www.ttbs.org.tt) is
focused on aligning businesses with the consumer interest.
TATT (http://www.tatt.org.tt) has published its Consumer
Complaints Handling Procedure document as a PDF for download.
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