On Sep 6, 2006, at 5:11 PM, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:
On Wed, 6 Sep 2006, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
Because Comcast's tools are broken and when other mail admins or even their own customers call them on it, they're not even competent enough to understand the complaint and refuse to escalate?
I hate to say this, and get involved in the melee, but... Perhaps the problem is that for an average customer service employee there are 1000 calls about something meaningless and not-wrong and only 1 call about something truly wrong? So escalating every problem that seems even half baked isn't an option?
Agreed. While working at a small ISP many years ago I used to make it a point to take a few first level support calls a week -- it gives you a new appreciation for the tech support people and helps you understand what really bothers your customers. I also used to get some of the other NEs to take a few calls a week -- understanding the pain it caused (and making customers into real people) cut down on the more intrusive "testing"[1]. It can also provide you with much entertainment -- for example, I used to get calls asking things like "Can I get the Internet in my house?". A few times I asked "Depends, how big is your house?", but no one ever got it... Or the little old lady who would call up every few days and say " Dearie, the internet is broken again, can you please reboot it?"... Warren [1] Where testing means "Eh, lets just reload it and see if the problem goes away"...