I love
call-outs.
I hate them too, which gives you some idea
of the emotional roller coaster this job really is. But 24/7/365 support is
what we’re about and if a call comes in at an inconvenient time such as during
a staff review or a personal development meeting, then it’s ‘hey lads, hey’! Down
with pens and notebooks and on with the uniform and into the field.
Cue Thunderbirds
theme.
The operation has got call-outs down to a
fine art because; let’s face it (no false modesty just between you and me)
we’re the first and we’re still the best. When that bell rings, no matter what
footling after-sales task the outfit thinks we ought to be doing at any given
time, it’s our long-standing policy that the customer and the customer’s needs
come first. We can worry about the paperwork later. The customer comes first,
no matter how trivial or silly their wants are.
Don’t get me wrong, the customer’s needs can
be silly indeed. From the harassed housewife who’s locked out of her house with
thawing ice cream flooding her shopping and a baby crying his heart out in the
car as the cold gets in and a neighbour’s dog barking and snapping at her heels to the stressed middle
manager who’s just seen an envelope with his name on it on the HR manager’s
desk and whose software just refuses to send the report his boss asked to be
ready for this morning’s meeting when he was heading out to the gym at 5.30 the
previous night, Technical Support will be there for them.
Take those two. They’ve paid their dues over
the years; having seen the advertising everywhere they go. But they’ve never
believed they’d ever actually need us. Insurance is just that; something you consider,
sign up for and then promptly forget all about as they get in with their lives;
caring for family, career, making money, looking after each other, paying the
rent and so on. But when it hits the fan and they absolutely, positively need
help with the slings and arrows then boy, oh boy do they remember us then.
And that’s what our Management just doesn’t get.
I don’t blame them really; they’re Big
Picture guys and so it’s fair to say they just aren’t aware about what it’s
like in the field; what the punters are really like and what it takes to do the job.
Oh, they try: every now and then they’ll come up with some simple notion; some
ten-point plan the customers should follow to sort everything out, and then they promptly go back to long-term planning, strategic reviews, the annual audit and
so on. But if the customers could follow a ten point plan, don’t you think they
would? If that housewife had the grit and the brains to handle the troubles of
life all by her lonesome then she wouldn’t have to follow Steps One, Two and
Three. It didn’t work for Eddie Cochrane, did it? Or take that middle manager.
He’s been doing as well as his limited intelligence will allow; neither
tyrannizing his staff in some micromanagement hell nor ignoring them in the
hope that freelancing them will let them flourish all by themselves. But his
bosses notice that he’s a little lacklustre in the results department and so they
wonder aloud if he’d be happier elsewhere. And that’s the exact moment when
his POS laptop goes Hal 2000 (and whose upgrade or replacement request has been
with the Budget Team for the last eight months) but when his company’s
Directors all have state-of-the-art everything with full service packages and
comprehensive, professional training from the get-go, Little Mister Meek is
faced with a patronizing Microsoft pop-up informing him he’s been A Very Bad
Boy, that’s when he calls Tech Support out.
He just wants a little sympathy as do we all
(myself included) and someone to fix this insane, blood-pressure skyrocketing
hassle and make it stop. Just you try describing that to my Management in words of
one syllable or less. They’ve tried to see the small picture but I honestly
believe they don’t stand a chance. The last time one of them went out into the
field to show how the customers can be trained to fix their own shit it didn't end well. It’s only human nature to face grief with anger and denial rather
than practical self-help and teamwork and Valuing Other People’s Opinions and
all that blah, and so on, etcetera. Talk to the hand.
That’s really why I quit the management
training programme in the first place. I just couldn’t see how the bosses would ever discover the
slightest possibility of hunting down the location of a hint about where to
find a clue.
But I believe; I truly, hand on heart
believe that we at Technical Support can make a difference in the world in our
own humble, bumbling, pragmatic way. And sometimes we get the opportunity to
upsell the customer at the same time.
So there’s the baby screaming the paint off
the people carrier and the tattooed moron next door’s pit-bull going for her ankles
while a half gallon of chocolate chip is flavouring an entire week’s groceries
and Mrs. Mum just wants it to stop - nothing fancy. The muddle manager just
needs the break that he’s morally certain Fate and his bosses won’t provide. That’s when they call me out, quick as you like.
And there I am in the spotlight; centre
stage and ready to do my thing and save the day. Not only will I soon get that feeling
of deep satisfaction of a job well done but I might - if I can only get inside their
heads and really see their point of view - talk the deal up from, say, finding
the front door key or the drop-down menu that’ll email the report all the way up to them
actually wishing that the dog’s bastard owner would come out of his house at
that very moment and be savaged by the little brute, or that the middle
manager’s fucking boss would suffer a heart attack so Mr. Meek will be needed ASAP
to take over and prove his worth and thus keep his own job. With a word
here and a hint there they can be persuaded to sign up for the Deluxe Unlimited
Lifetime Total Cover Plan: payment deferred to the end of the contract. They’re
usually so stressed and relieved when I show up they don’t even smell
the sulphur.
