If you are a tech company that outsources your phone support, I can't imagine why the hell you think it's good for your business. I've been working as a telephone tech support agent for 9 months now. The calls are from customers of a national high speed internet service provider. There are different levels of support for various services and products offered by the ISP. There are different support phone numbers for these different services and products and that essentially translate into if you call 555-1111 it comes into the call center on port 1. 555-2222 comes in through port 2, etc. It's all organized and logical and I would assume this is how most call centers are set up.

The problem comes when you outsource this kind of operation. The company I work for (the 3rd party) gets paid by the ISP based on call volume. The more calls they get the better the profits. Shorter call times = better profits... and happier callers in some cases. So lets say you have 20 - 30 agents on a given shift and they are trained in every product and service offered by the ISP. Let's say that someone calls in because they are having issues of some kind with Outlook Express. The call comes in on port 1 for general tier1 internet support. The agent spends 3 minutes+ verifying the caller's account information and then spend 6 minutes trying to help the poor soul who can't get his email to download in OE. At about the 9 minute mark they discover that the caller has antivirus software on the computer and it's the same brand as the free AV the ISP gives out and promptly states &quot;well it must be your AV blocking OE so let me transfer you to the AV department... or port 7 in our system. The person answering on port 7 will have to spend 3min+ verifying the account information again, spend 5 minutes turning on and off the firewall in the AV software which makes no difference OE still won't download any of his email. Then the agent discovers that the call is using a wireless router... and transfers the caller to the wireless support number... port 9. The agent on port 9 answers, spends 3 min+ verifying the caller's information, spends 9 minutes listening to an irate customer go on about how nobody at this place knows anything and that they've been transfered over and over with nobody being able to fix his problem. There's a chance that the agent answering the port 9 call will just transfer the caller back to the AV number or the tier 1 number because a bad wireless signal is definitely not the problem. Why would this 4th transfer happen? BECAUSE THAT'S THE COMPANY'S POLICY!!! If you get a call about a problem that SHOULD be able to be taken care of at tier 1 then you are supposed to send them back to tier 1 even though they've already been there and tier 1 failed.

Remember, the 3rd party gets paid by call volume mainly, quality of service is a factor but I bet it's second or third in priority. Each time that call goes to a different port it registers as a different call. The company makes more money if they have incompetent agents who can't fix anything but will AT LEAST follow the company policy to the letter when it comes to not troubleshooting a port 2 problem if it came through port 9 even though the same person answers the calls for all ports and knows how to offer support on all ports.

What you end up with in this scenario is a 3rd party support company who probably makes a nice profit all the while pissing off a good percentage of the ISP's customers' phone calls from being transferred to hell and back. It's a shitty business model that I really can't stand being a part of... but in this economy it's a steady paycheck.

BTW... if you happen to call and get me, I don't care what port your call came through if you were transferred to me by someone else. I know your OE problem isn't a wireless problem because you'd also have problems with web pages loading if that were the case. I'm pretty sure the problem isn't going to be caused by the AV software we offer because in 9 months I've not seen a single case of that happening. I will have your OE problem solved in under 20 minutes assuming you can follow my instructions and put your anger aside while I'm trying to help you. I've never used OE in a personal or business environment but I am a very competent troubleshooter. OE is a program that gives you error numbers. Even if you didn't know that the training you go through where I work for tier 1 support explains this to you and tells you where to look the numbers up. But I digress... I will fix your OE problem even though your call came through the AV or wi-fi port and hopefully make you a happy customer... and then I will get yelled at by my superiors for not following company policy.

While I'm on company policy... my company would rather I ask you how your day has been and potentially carry on a 5 to 10 minute conversation about something completely unrelated to why you are calling than actually fix your problem quickly. Did I mention that we have to keep our call times under a certain amount of time? We do... so even if I was better at making bullshit small talk the way the company wants me to do I would probably still be opposed to doing it because it would make my average call time longer. I'm sometimes surprised I haven't been fired... but if you knew the turnover rate of this company I think you'd understand that it's hard to get fired without trying really hard.

There are some good things I can say about the company. The training material they provide is top notch IMO but it goes wasted if not used properly by the person you pay to train the noobs. Honestly some people go through router support training never being shown how to configure a router. They're told where to find the information maybe and that's it. What good is 7 8 hour training days when the trainer says &quot;Here's where to find the information, you want to go home early or take calls?&quot;

I was trying to focus on positive things... it's hard to keep that focus. Another great quality about the company I work for is their break policy. It might not be perfect but it's as good or better than the policies at any other company I've ever worked for and complies with the labor laws that I'm aware of.

Those 2 things are about the only positives about working where I work though and the 1st one doesn't apply to me because I already knew 80% or more of the stuff I've been trained on. Outlook Express application specifics is the only thing I knew little to nothing about - I already understood pop and smtp servers, ports and security settings in general though.

The longer I work for this company the less I want to work there. I knew during my new hire training that I wouldn't want to work there though because the person who trained me was working out their 2 week's notice and when she explained her reasons for leaving I knew I wouldn't want to work for this company either. My new hire training class started with 12 people. 3 of us were left at the end of the 2 week training (3 missed too many hours due to illness allegedly) and 3 months after I was hired I was the only person left from that training class. They can treat very competent and well meaning employees like shit and they certainly treat their customers like shit. If you have no conscience then you should consider a career in telephone tech support. You'll go far.

I could make another post about the stupidity levels of the people who call tech support... but I won't because that would be wrong.

Oh yeah... and that OE problem... the fastest fix is usually to delete all of the accounts set up in OE (you're only using one of them anyway) and recreate the email account using the correct settings.  A 5 minute process assuming the caller is computer retarded but can at least follow my instructions.