You have to love IT Help Desks.I had a problem with my spam filter so I sent an email to my ISP's help desk for guidance on their filter sensitivity. I got back a short mail with a suggestion (which didn't help, although that is not my point).
The automation of customer support is such that if I need to reply to their email I have to follow instructions which include:
------------------- TYPE YOUR RESPONSE BELOW THIS LINE --------------------
------------------- TYPE YOUR RESPONSE ABOVE THIS LINE --------------------
It's indicative that the world of automated customer support is based around:
- Getting customers to fit the supplier's rigid operating procedures
- Automating everything, even if it does nothing for the customer
- Never using personal names
- Considering everything from an internal perspective (employ fewer people, employ cheaper people, get them to do more quicker) rather than a customer perspective (how to do we make the customer happy?)
I don't necessarily expect a personal phone call for something so trivial but it would be nice to think that someone is looking at it from my perspective rather than thinking of me as a problem that needs to be resolved so that the stats can be maintained.
Tim
The picture of the V&A Help Desk was taken by SlipStreamJC.
