What Happened To Tech-Support

"Tech Support" as we used to know is no longer. What I mean by that is that to call up a company with a problem, ultimately, the person at the other end is only going to be able to determine one of 2 things:

1. You need to send it somewhere for repair (if applicable, but less likely than #2).
2. You need to replace it with something newer.

Now, ok. Let me qualify that a little better since I realize to some extent, that's what they're supposed to do. Or is it? I used to work in Tech Support departments and my goal was to help people fix their stuff. At Shure Brothers Inc., that included sending them the part they needed if they could handle repairing the item themselves. Of course that included the typical schtick about, "Because this isn't being done by the factory, we can't warranty the part we're sending you..." blah blah blah. I know that. They knew that. We sent the part. They fixed the product. Everyone was happy.

Now we can all acknowledge that today, repairs in the world have become board swapping more than anything. The whole idea is that fixing the board is more expensive than just replacing the board. Labor is the primary expense there. So make it fast, make it cheap and everyone is happy.

Ok. Let's translate this one more time. Labor with the technical know-how to fix a thing is expensive. People who know less about fixing things are cheaper because there are more of them. Making the repair operation one of simply swapping out big modules with nothing but labelled connectors is better because even the non-technical can do it.

One more layer of translation: Repairs SO EASY, ANYONE who can tie their shoes can do it. How does that make everyone feel? I know. I hear you.

So my next question is: If the repairs are so damn easy, what's with all the "authorized repair" stuff? I need to be authorized? A MONKEY could be authorized. Simply because I haven't been blessed by ABC.com to remove 4 screws and unplug a couple of cables to reinstall a board, I can't do it? But that monkey who did can cause he's been "blessed"? Have the companies become that arrogant? Apparently so. What's worse is that the "technician" on the other end of the phone is typically reading from a screen that they've entered your inquiry into. So most of the time, the "tech" isn't a tech at all. They maybe had some training on the printer like how it comes apart, but that's about it. I usually ask techs I'm talking to at the beginning of our conversation, "Have you ever seen one of these in real life? Have you ever worked on/repaired one of these?" The answers are unpleasantly surprising.

What's worse, is the path for escalation is disappearing fast. Once the tech realizes he/she has someone who knows more about the topic than they do, they can't upstream it to a manager who knows any more than he/she does. I'm amazed at the level of unhelpfulness the customer is given at the first line of support. Then I'm shocked at the help the managers can give me if I can even get ahold of one. If they can't help, the companies have no further path for escalation. And the managers either don't care or they have been instructed to specifically block the customer from further movement up the support chain. I'm convinced it's the latter becuase they typically can never answer the question of who to go to next after them. It's like there are no Directors or Vice Presidents that manage the operations.

In the end, I'm left with a product that may or may not have served it's useful life. In past years, it's becoming more and more the latter. The product has broken and tech support has been so bad, so inadequate, so unhelpful, that I am convinced the company only worries about GETTING customers and no longer cares about keeping them. (This has been the topic of many Forbes articles and even some small books about running a business and its customer support)

It's very disappointing buying a product which you hope will fill your expectations and does not. This is typically magnified with the amount of money laid out to acquire such a product. I think companies have forgotten that customers pay the bills. Continuing customers are loyal to the end and are the best advertisement a company could ask for. Jaded customers are fiercely disloyal to the end and through word of mouth are a marketing divisions worst nightmare. Customer service is the primary method that a company shows it's loyalty back to the customer. When I the user am turned away by customer service, the company is essentially saying, "we don't care about you". I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't continue giving a business my hard earned dollar when they no longer care about me.

As a side-note: I have several notes on some consumer things I've fixed over the years (very incomplete) that shows how a perfectly working item can be so easily found in the dump because apparently no one on the planet knows how to unsolder a bad capacitor anymore. (See the Samsung 150MP article).

Talk about e-waste, to some extent we can directly point the blame at manufacturers.

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