PC Call Centers Garner Lowest Satisfaction Score

Lucas123 writes "The University of Michigan took its first American Customer Satisfaction survey and found that of six industries measured for the Customers' Call Center Satisfaction Index, the PC industry received the lowest score, according to a Computerworld story. 'According to the survey, nearly 73% of the people who have bad experiences with their PC companies' call centers said they will consider purchasing their next PCs from another company, while 85% of customers who had their problems resolved by calling a PC call center said they would continue doing business with the company. Other calls centers included in the survey included banking, cell phone service, cable and satellite television, and insurance.'"

Re:When I call and hear a thick foreign accent

[ehrichweiss]

Unfortunately I don't think this is necessarily under the racist umbrella this time. There are several factors in delivering tech support and one of them is for the customer to be able to understand the tech. If that weren't enough, try calling tech support and finding one of the smarmy mofos who think they are engineers instead of peon techs reading from a script. I've seriously had some guy, who I'll only say was from the middle east by the sound of his accent, try to tell me repeatedly that Windows was running out of resources and that's the reason I was having problems with my internet connection; I was using an SGI and was trying to report a router that was failing and told him this no less than 25 times. I blame it on their culture that they think that being in any position of power "over" you means they know everything you do not about that subject; I don't know where it comes from but it's prevalent. That doesn't mean I hate the person, but I understand fully why someone might want to talk to someone who'll actually LISTEN(and understand what you're saying) for a change. Besides, I don't need something petty like a person's accent or skin color to hate them when there are so many other good reasons to hate everyone.

Re:When I call and hear a thick foreign accent

[drinkypoo]

Its not racist its damn hard to understand people through an accent *especially* if you dont know what you're doing looking for help.

Damn skippy. I am horrible at math (dyslexia related to numbers or something, they just run away from me, I have a hard time adding two three-digit numbers together even when you don't have to carry) and when I took pre-algebra in college, I had some kind of asian guy (sorry, I'm a typical dumb american in this regard [alllooksame.com]) as an instructor and his accent was more or less impenetrable. I had no idea what the hell I was doing and certainly couldn't learn anything from him. I ended up dropping out and to this day I still have never passed a single class in algebra (although I do utilize it in a limited fashion occasionally. I mean even to use ohm's law you need that, unless you want to draw a triangle every time you want to do that.)

When you're talking about something you know well, it's easier to hear through someone's accent because you're more used to the words and concepts being expressed. When you are trying to learn something you don't know jack about, it becomes substantially harder. Most people don't know shit about computers and most tech support employees are no exception, so it's no wonder that many of us have a spectacularly hard time understanding the Indian tech on the other end of the shit phone connection.

Re:Profit!

[corifornia]

I think you could cut through calls a lot faster if you hired a set of good PC techs. Instead a lot of companies hire people with little to no skill and you sit on the phone while you hear them typing your problem into Google or something.

The worst is when you call into Dell and you have a hard drive that is clunking like a 1987 civic and you have to walk through all the possible fixes before they go, "It sounds like you have a bad hard drive." Really? Is that what the smoke and burning electronics smell is?
Me: Hi, my hard drive crashed, the disk is making a clunking noise, I need to get my hard drive replaced
Them: Are you sure your PC is plugged in
Me: Its on, its making a banging noise
Them: Did you try rebooting?
Me: What, yes er, no, its smoking, rebooting won't help.
Them: Did you try re-installing windows?
Me: I run Linux
Them: Ok, get your windows disk and put it in the CD Drive
Me: What? I need to get the disk replaced
Them: We need to try all possible scenarios to fix the disk before we can send a replacement


I have actually heard that line multiple times from Dell. Which translates too, "Im sorry, we have to waste your time just in case you are wrong"