Saturday, January 24, 2009

The Office II

So what's up with people who can't answer more than one question in an email?
For example, let's take a scenario from Tech Support, which I am so familiar with...

my email to person:
---------------------
So I understand you're getting some errors on your screen. In order for me to help, can you answer the following questions?

1. Is the problem happening on the Server or on the desktop?
2. How often does it happen?
3. What is the error that appears?

response email to me:
-----------------------
It is happening on the server.


Seriously??? Did answering that first question present SUCH an intellectual challenge that you felt you were too mentally EXHAUSTED to go on to the next one? Or maybe you thought that I was just being a brat and asking you questions that I really don;t need the answer to so you decided to answer only the one you thought was important?

All you succeeded in doing was make it take longer for me to give you any kind of useful assistance, but hey you're the customer so I guess you know best. Ugh.

ok, I'm done ranting.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now this post's more like it! Brought a smile to my face. I've seen this happen so many times, and the only solution is to shout at the screen "WHY?!?!?". Worse is when the customer is not a native English speaker, or rather, their English sucks. You can not understand the meaning of his questions, and he doesn't get whatever you're saying.

I've been working for a very long time with customers now...maybe I should write a book :)

Gilad said...

Haha after working the phones for 5 years I am sure we can trade some war stories. Like the time we had such an obnoxious customer who made a female engineer cry on the phone, that I told him to put the product back in the box and send it back, we don;t want his business. Sometimes it just feels good :)

Anonymous said...

You really did that?!?! That is my wildest, wettest dream. Forget [Insert your favourite model here]!. This is my wildest fantasy:

" I am truly sorry Sir/Madam. You do not seem to be intelligent enough to continue working with our product. We will happily refund your money. Have a nice day"

Maybe that'll be my way of saying "I quit" one day:)

Unknown said...

Well, the question is who is the client.
If it is an Israeli client, the answer is simple - Israelies tend to interrupt in a dialog. Namely, while reading the first part of your question, the client thought he knows the answer, and could not resist answering it right away. Pressing the 'send' botton was only the automatic next step..

If the client is not Israeli, forget it..