Frustrated with that tech support rep with whom you have been on the phone? This article from Salon tells the story of one tech support’s training and indoctrination as a phone support rep.
Our two-week “intensive training” course was helmed by a 19-year-old named Chad. Chad had great difficulty making it to class within three hours of the stated meeting time. Even when he rolled in by 11, holding a cup of coffee and wearing sunglasses, he looked as if merely being upright was unfairly challenging his abilities. Despite being comically late he usually started class by collapsing into a chair and telling us to take some “e-mail time.”
When Chad saw fit to interrupt the endless series of card games and movies it was with detailed lessons on how to use our phones and log our calls. We learned that these things were key. If we remembered nothing else, as long as we could answer the phones and provide records that we’d done so, the company would be paid every time we thanked someone for calling technical support. When present and able to speak, Chad drilled us endlessly on these two skills. The most incompetent among us could have written a manual on how to answer calls and log them properly. As for how to actually troubleshoot and fix computers, we were largely on our own. Beyond a cursory overview of the computers we were in charge of healing, the closest thing to a troubleshooting tool we were taught was The Mantra. When class ended, which varied wildly depending on Chad’s interest and mental status, we were all encouraged to say The Mantra out loud. We repeated it over and over, the words seating themselves deep in the folds of our brains until the breakup of class began to feel more and more like the end of a cult meeting.
The Mantra is simply, “We don’t support that.” On the face of it, it’s completely logical. We’re here to help with problems related to your computer hardware, but we don’t pretend to know anything about your digital camera, or how to get the most out of Adobe Photoshop. Without The Mantra we’d waste precious time trying to answer questions beyond the scope of our expertise. Never mind that the scope of our expertise was largely limited to reciting The Mantra and logging calls. The important thing was that we understood our mission was to answer questions that fell within the limited margins outlined in the computer’s warranty. Beyond that we didn’t have to do anything.
