This could happen to anybody. Your computer screen goes blank. Your phone won’t charge. Your freezer is stuck on defrost. Your cable TV will only play if the sound is set on mute.
You get the picture. You have become the helpless victim of a technology that points a mocking finger at you and kicks sand in your face.
What are you going to do about it? Like most of the rest of us, you waste valuable time and effort trying to fix the problem yourself. Of course, nothing works and all your efforts only succeed in compounding the original malfunction. Finally, after you’ve been frustrated to the infinite degree, you decide to throw in the towel and seek help.
This is where the “tech support” comes into the picture. You dial the toll-free help line and wait for a knowledgeable professional to pick up. And wait and wait and wait. The very best you can do at this point is get a recorded voice message informing you that all agents are tied up helping other clients and will gladly come to your assistance as soon as is humanly possible. You are reassured that the company appreciates your patience and will play some horrible Muzak in your ear while you remain on hold.
An eternity later, you hear a voice asking how they can help you. You sigh in relief and begin to describe your particular technical issue. The voice cuts you off almost immediately and informs you that you have reached sales and marketing and not technical support. Before you can say a single word, you hear a “click,” which tells you that your call has been transferred to some other department.
More ringing, more voice message, more hold, more terrible Muzak. Just as you are about to give up this useless exercise and disconnect, a voice comes on the line. A human voice!
Well, sort of. The voice seems to be coming from a long distance away. It could be coming from somewhere inside a massive warehouse or even an airplane hangar. The voice echoes at times and occasionally fades in and out. You can’t help but notice that there seem to be hundreds of other voices chattering away everywhere in the background.
“Hello, my name is Jonny. How can I help you, please?” The voice comes with a far-off accent or dialect. Uganda? Sri Lanka? Calgary, maybe? You realize immediately that you are dealing with a tech support service that has been out-sourced. This is going to be tricky.
You begin to describe your problem, but your techie cuts you off because there appears to be some inexplicable need to verify your identity. Let’s say you’ve forgotten your email password and want to retrieve it or replace it with another one. The techie tells you that a six-character code has been sent to your email to make sure you are who you say you are. You try to suppress the anger that is bubbling up inside, and explain that you cannot get into your email to retrieve the code because you don’t have the password and that is why you called in the first place.
Let’s try another scenario. This time you are just updating all your important financial files and managing all your computer codes and passwords when suddenly your screen goes blue, there is a loud beeping noise, and all your devices freeze up. A voice from inside your computer informs you that you have just been hacked and all your information will go public unless you pay the hackers a ransom.
Instead, you call your computer’s customer service tech support department. After 17 dialings, 23 transfers to another department, and 57 minutes on hold listening to rap music played on sitar and tablas, you get through to someone in Mumbai who might be able to save the day.
Unfortunately, once you have described your computer crisis, your technician explains that this is a very serious problem and will need a supervisor’s expertise to avoid disaster. When you ask for the supervisor to be notified, you are informed that this is not so simple because the super works out of Calgary and phone connections are extremely dicey from Mumbai. You are ready to explode but manage to maintain your sanity and persevere.
You somehow get through to the supervisor in Calgary. The supe leads you through a flow chart of computer fixes. Is your computer plugged in? If yes, unplug it. If no, plug it in. Does the fan turn on at regularly spaced intervals? If yes, turn the screen off. If no, turn the screen off and then on three times. Do you know how many fingers I am holding behind my back? No, that’s not part of the flow chart, but it might as well be for all the help it does.
You are still stymied and the supervisor tells you that you will now be transferred to the chief supervisor who is stationed in, you guessed it, Mumbai. Just as you are about to describe your computer predicament yet again one more time, your screen flashes suddenly and comes to life. Maybe your computer fixed itself. Perhaps the e-gods have smiled down on you. Or maybe all those virtual trips to and from Mumbai have created an electro-magnetic field that restored your computer to an earlier incarnation. Maybe you’ve watched too many Star Trek episodes.
Before you sign off, you are asked if you would like to complete a customer satisfaction survey questionnaire that will take only 45 minutes of your time. You beg off diplomatically with the promise that you will gladly fill one out the next time you are in their virtual neighbourhood.
Nobody asked me, but don’t knock tech support, especially if it has been outsourced to the far corners of the planet. It puts you in touch with different cultures, introduces you to people whose paths you would otherwise not cross, and influences your musical tastes for the time you are made to linger on hold.
And occasionally it may even solve your technical problem.