

Why would you want to call me? - baha_man
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1161-why-would-you-want-to-call-me

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ibsulon
Why?

1\. Sometimes, issues require more interactivity, especially for an individual
inexperienced with the product regardless of the technical aptitude in
general.

This is more crucial in issues regarding offline apps, but let's consider an
online app. You'll likely need the account name and browser edition. If it's
repeatable, you should have the general idea. However, should I spend time
reducing it to its essence? What exactly is support going to need for help? I
may not even be able to tell if it's a simple or complex problem!

37 signals is lucky to have a well-informed customer base, though.

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dhotson
Probably the best phone support system I've seen was where if the wait time
was going to be more than ~5-10 mins, they would call you back when they were
available.

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noonespecial
Some people simply need to be told to check the power cable and reboot. Many
people in your company are capable of giving these instructions and not much
more.

Some people simply need to be told "use regedit and change DMAmode to 3".
There are a few people in your company capable of giving this instruction at
the right time.

The secret is protecting that latter group from the former. (In both cases).
I've found that in most of my dealings with phone support, its the
_escalation_ method that is broken. As much as I hate to say it, Microsoft's
contract support is actually extremely good at getting this right. I usually
get from "reboot" to "regedit" in less than 30 minutes, and they usually fix
it.

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Hexstream
Telephone = Synchronous, Email = Asynchronous.

Asynchrony really helps with the performance of a system ;)

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edw519
OP has obviously never dealt with Amazon Merchant Services, which has an
automated email support system with x number of stock answers. It handles
everything that could possibly go wrong...except for my problem.

Think about how illogical this is. They're saying, "We've thought of
everything." Well, if you really did think of everything, then why do we even
need support?

Sometimes you just gotta talk to a human about something not in your script.
One customer of mine got so frustrated that he emailed Jeff Bezos, threatening
to remove all his business. Funny thing, the phones worked pretty well the
next day when 6 different managers called him back.

