Welcome to the DSL First-Level Technical Service training seminar. These notes will help you become a more valued employee of DSL Internet Media Enterprises, or DSLIME. You will be our front-line contact with our customers. After a dizzying array of touch-tone choices that only deal tangentially with why a customer has called, he or she might find a way to actually contact a human, you. Some customers actually have found direct telephone numbers that connect with first-level technicians. We are continually trying to block this entrance since it is a less-efficient queuing system than the maze of touch-tone choices.
When a customer does get through, there are some basic rules for you to follow:
1. In general, most of our customers don’t know what they are talking about. Try not to listen too closely to what they say their problems are. Define their problems in terms you think interesting.
2. In most cases, the problems are not ours, but the fault of the caller or the caller’s computer software/hardware.
3. Make sure to ask the customer for his or her mother’s maiden name. We don’t keep track of this information, but it sounds like we’re security conscious.
4. Ask the customer if you can refer to him or her by the person’s first name. This gives the impression that you care more than you really do.
5. Since we do not really expect you to have much technical knowledge given the rate of pay we have here, deflecting the customer to another technical service provider (e.g., one for an e-mail program) is preferable to your trying to fix the problem and tying up our phone lines.
6. Make good use of putting the customer on hold. Every so often, even if you know how to solve the problem or what the customer has to do next, say “Excuse me while I put you on hold.” This is a good time for a bathroom break, a snack, or a chat with a co-worker. Putting the customer on hold at least five times during a call implies to the caller that you are doing something useful to help the situation.
7. In order to simplify things, we don’t really support much of any software from any vendor except Microsoft. Since they pay us a commission to support their stuff, we have provided you with a one-page summary of FAQs about Outlook. In addition, they look to us to help them in, what we like to call, the tennis match of bouncing the caller from one 800 number with one vendor to another one with another vendor.
8. If a customer asks to speak to your supervisor, first put the caller on hold. Then look around the room and give it to someone else at your level that is sitting nearby who can impersonate a higher-level manager. Only after the second call for a supervisor should you actually bother one.
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