The last official job I ever had was in the late 90’s and was ultimately the pre-cursor to c-Seven. The position was doing tech support for a dial up internet service provider. If you don’t know what dial up was, consider yourself lucky. I worked there several years and eventually became a supervisor and developed some web based tools (in flash) to help other techs do their job easier. The company was acquired several times over and eventually went under when the bubble burst. Then the original owner swooped in and picked it back up for pennies on the dollar.
But this article isn’t about the company it is about being a support rep in the late 90’s. Looking back 26 or so years later, here are some of the lessons I learned along with some funny antidotes.
Just cause you are certified, doesn’t always mean you are any good.
My first day on the job, my training consisted of… here is your computer, here is your phone, when it rings answer it and try and help the person. Despite minimal training I was able to run with it and figured stuff out on the fly. Over the years we ended up hiring people that were super qualified for the job (aka Microsoft Certified) and more often than not, they were not great at diagnosing problems not in the book. The key to tech-support (and many other things) is to not give up. Unless tech support isn’t for you. A great tech once told me that he wasn’t necessarily smarter than others, he was just willing to try a little harder than most. Back in those days everyone had a different kind of crappy 56k modem so there were lots of manufactures to contend with which made support a bit tricky (which is why I built the online tools). Some problems required some digging.
*Fun side note. 56k modems (which were the fast ones at the time) had speeds of 0.056 Megabytes per second (mbps). Nowadays home internet is 100-1000 mbps so it is roughly 1,000-10,000 times faster than the dial up days. We used to surf the internet with a book or magazine while we waited.
People don’t read the instructions. Another case of RTFM
We used to log all our calls in a ticketing system and RTFM was a common acronym for ticket entry. It stood for read the manual with an additional letter to punctuate the statement before HR departments were more prevalent and we had to tone the tickets down 🙂 The lesson here was even if you gave the person instructions and/or the words are on the screen, it doesn’t mean they will read it and/or understand. Which is why we have tech support. If people didn’t call, you wouldn’t have a job.
Just cause you can fix a computer problem does not make you smarter than everyone else
I call this a god-complex which I have seen in programmers and other walks of life too. I met many a tech that felt superiority just cause they knew the right TCPIP settings and thought every question was stupid. “Didn’t you RTFM?” As Einstein said ““Everybody is a genius but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go its whole life believing that it is stupid”. A good support rep is not worried about their ego and doesn’t feel challenged by others. This isn’t a joust, it’s a support call. Stop trying to knock people off their high horse and just make the company look good.
Tech support is more than just fixing the problem.
To expand on the ego bit. Two techs can fix a problem but the style in which they do it affects how the client feels about the interaction which is ultimately what matters to the customer. We had one rep, who was very good and could fix almost any problem, but he insisted on doing all his calls on speakerphone and was a bit of an asshole. His response after the supervisor calmed the customer down would always be “Well it’s working right”. Technically yes. But the customer is in the corner crying… Well not really, but you know what I am saying.
Random Quotes
The internet was still relatively new at this point so computers were not what they are today and neither were the users. There were some pretty incredible calls but after 26 years, here are some of my favorites…
- “I am smarter than you” A customer actually started the conversation with that statement. Take a deep breath, ignore their ego and try and help them the best you can.
- “Those floppy disks are really hard to bend and is now stuck” – Wait… what do you mean? Turns out the customer folded over the 5 1/4″ disk to fit in the 3.5″ drive. You can’t make this stuff up.
- “You want me to put the round shiny thing in the coffee holder?” – Ma’am that is not a technically a coffee holder, it is a cd drive. when asked if she ran the install cd (aka the round shiny thing).
- “It says press any key to continue, but I don’t have an any key” – Told them if you don’t have one, just press the spacebar as that is less of a shot to their ego. Granted I also had someone who didn’t know what the space bar was. To which I said ” the thing between the two Alt buttons” and they were like “oh, the space bar”.
- “I don’t see that on my screen!!” – just as a hunch, I asked if they were really close to their monitor to which they were. Backup about a foot I said and then they saw it. Ended up advising them to browse the internet while wearing a hat to not get too close.
- “An aquarium fell on my laptop and now it does not work.” Was their water in said aquarium? Yes. Well, this is more than an internet problem at this point.
- “Send me a list of the software you don’t support!” We would be making telephone books of software we don’t support every month so instead, here is the list of 10 products we do support.
Final Analysis
Well that was a fun trip down memory lane. I truly look back fondly at my years at that company and am still friends with many people I worked with there. My takeaways for this article are…
- The book and theory can only teach you so much so get in there and don’t be afraid to break stuff (unless you are not willing to fix it).
- If doing support, check your ego – Just cause you are a hero in one realm does not automatically transfer to other areas. They say it takes a village, so you are just playing your role in society. You likely can’t do what the person on the other end of the phone does either so keep that in mind.
- Ignore others egos – Whatever helps gets you to sleep at night sir/ma’am… but don’t tell them that. You win 100% of arguments you don’t have.
- Genuinely try to help people – Some matters were beyond help like they didn’t have a modem or actually had a contract with a different company, but the way you help them makes a lasting impression on the customers. Even if you can’t fix the problem, but tried and were nice about it, it can go a long way.
And that wraps it up. No AI helping with the writing on this one… could you tell? That being said, AI is coming for the support jobs. It is faster, cheaper and has no ego. But that’s another story… Thanks for reading.
