Customer Service Frustration
As the IT Manager for a multi-location manufacturing company, I have the challenge of providing a secure and safe environment. I deal with many vendors for various applications that we use. One of my pet peeves is support departments. I cannot believe how little emphasis is placed on customer support and satisfaction these days.
I have several vendors that are outsourcing their support departments. This is very frustrating to me. They are a US company, we pay with US dollars and when it comes to support we have to talk to someone who speaks fragmented English and does not understand terms and phrases that we use. It takes me at least twice as long to get my point across and to get the information that I need to solve my issue. Another issue I have is that they are in a different time zone than I am. I specifically ask for support 8:30 am to 4pm Central Time US and they invariably call me at 6, 7 even 10 o’clock at night. I pay for premium support and am supposed to have a call within 4 hours. Most of the time it takes 4 or 5 days to get an actual contact with a person. When I finally get through and actually talk to someone I am even more frustrated when I am told that the problem was caused by an update to the application that is now a FEATURE. Really??? A feature that broke something.
These applications and the issues that come up are critical to the operation of our locations. Why can we not get US support when we are in the US and pay in US dollars? Anyone else have the same issues?
Stepping off my soapbox now.
Deb Hale
Comments
Anonymous
Aug 22nd 2018
6 years ago
As for vendors who outsource support, the only solution I can see is to change vendors. If you have any Federal government customers, you might use some of their new requirements as a lever to change vendors. We found that even contact info for some of our customers was data considered "in scope" and thus couldn't be stored in a cloud solution unless we could guarantee that only US citizens had access to the physical systems in that cloud (and you should have multi-factor authentication required to get to it, etc). I guess the Feds are tired of the addresses of black sites and/or the names/emails/phones of people who work there getting leaked by their own vendors! :-)
Anonymous
Aug 22nd 2018
6 years ago
Anonymous
Aug 22nd 2018
6 years ago
Anonymous
Aug 22nd 2018
6 years ago
Anonymous
Aug 22nd 2018
6 years ago
Amen & hallelujah. When a lack of training on your vendor's end results in loss of productivity on your end, you have to wonder if its even worth making the call. I've been working on some OS compatibility issues with a h/w support rep for nearly a week & his best guidance thus far has been links to the articles I read 3 months ago; my telephony vendor doesn't comprehend the difference between a call originator and a call recipient & M$ Support... well, let's not get started, shall we?
Anonymous
Aug 22nd 2018
6 years ago
Anonymous
Aug 22nd 2018
6 years ago
When you are in the position of authority for providing a service be sure that you are providing quality service. And for God's sake teach your first line people how to recognize somebody who knows enough to tie his shoes before he trips on the shoelaces. Then have the support person refer these people up a level when possible. (Sadly upper levels of support seldom seem to be 24/7 levels of service. Economics rules.)
{^_^}
Anonymous
Aug 23rd 2018
6 years ago
"I want [my country's] support when I am in [my country] and pay in [my currency]" is no longer a thing.
Anonymous
Aug 23rd 2018
6 years ago
Anonymous
Aug 23rd 2018
6 years ago