Have you ever phoned a technical help desk?

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Both my wife and myself have had recent experiences with call centers. She had to call a national chain and was put on hold for over forty five minutes just to talk to someone, and then proceeded to talk to, (count them) seven different help desk representatives in one call. When she got off of the phone she told me that that particular call lasted four hours before she hung up.

I, on the other hand had talked to a client that informed me that she had phoned a help desk center in the Philippines, and in her words the help desk rep was ‘dumber than a stump’. I had to phone back the exact same call center, and was astonished when I actually had to confer that in actual fact, he was as dumb as a stump. I took responsibility for the issue, phoned the call center back, re-educated another tech and all was glorious in the wonderful world of human interactions and technical dilemma.

I can certainly empathize with anyone who has to phone an inexperienced call center rep. I worked at one of the largest technically based call centers in North America, and because I was already a computer and electronics technician for several years it was easy for me to spot weaknesses within the system. That’s why I have put together a small ‘mini-system’ that you can use in order to make that call to the help desk a little easier. Computers can cause stress. It’s that simple. Have fun with this podcast, and feel free to print out our steps for troubleshooting.