The Computer Buzz

February 26th, 2009

Nome and Paul Van Middlesworth - owners - The Computer Factory
 

The Death of Tech Support

Everyone has a horror story about the lack of customer service and technical support from desktop and laptop marketers like Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway etc. As PC prices have fallen, so has the level of customer support.

PC related products like ISPs (Internet Service Providers), software producers, and PC related peripherals have also abandoned the kind of customer service that was once common in our industry. In the days when PCs were an expensive luxury, the entire industry was extremely solicitous. They loved their customers and bent over backwards to convince us that they would always be there for us.

Now that PCs are a necessity in our daily lives and a relatively inexpensive commodity, service has gone in the toilet. The companies whose logos appear on the products that we buy have built a wall around their customer service functions. Technically competent personnel are expensive so companies go to great lengths to keep you from talking to one. Some require you to e-mail your questions; others rely on the telephone queue to discourage you.

If you do get to speak to a live person it will probably be in some third world boiler room where English is butchered by subsistence level operators who read programmed answers from a computer screen. Ask a hard question or get a bit testy and you will be transferred to a "supervisor" who speaks no English at all.

Why has everyone outsourced their customer service to overseas contractors? The obvious answer is because it's cheaper to pay foreign labor rates, but there may be a more compelling reason. Most of the great American corporations whose logos appear on the PCs and peripheral products that we buy here in America have outsourced the design and manufacture of their products to offshore designers and manufacturers. Perhaps there's no one left here in America who know the products well enough to answer questions about them.

This technical support meltdown has been a boon to small local companies like us at The Computer Factory who build and service PCs and help solve PC related problems.

We get calls from frustrated ISP users who can't connect with the Internet. After spending three agonizing hours on the phone with their ISPs customer service, they've been told the ISP service is working fine and their computer must be "broke." They are told to call the manufacturer. When that doesn't help they bring their PCs to us. We hook their PC to our ISP and more often than not it works. The problem is their ISP. We send them back home armed with the knowledge that their PC is not "broke" but their ISP is. There is no charge for this service. We love doing it.

This kind of customer service "buck passing" is rampant in our industry. When customer service can't figure out what's wrong they simply point to some aspect of your computer or service for which they have no responsibility. Ya gotta love em.