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batye
batye
1/17/2016 1:46:33 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: BLOCK
@vnewman @Joe could not agree more interesting story, low tech in hight tech age :)

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ms.akkineni
ms.akkineni
1/19/2016 5:11:17 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: when customer trying to save using know all relatives... it could cost more at the end
My wife handles IT at our house....


@Mike: Wow, All I could say is 'Great' and much appreciate you for that.

It doesn't work that way for most of us, well atleast many of us. No matter how IT savy a wife could be, but still remains to be a back bencher. Ofcourse I can't deny there are cases where wife is considered with confidence. I guess it is mostly 'What ever works' kind of a deal. By the way I have no complains... :) 

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ms.akkineni
ms.akkineni
1/19/2016 5:22:26 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: when customer trying to save using know all relatives... it could cost more at the end
@Ariella: It is surprising to know that the email servers for Hillary Clinton's emails were housed in the bathroom. I am aware of such cases for some start up firms that are initially run out of homes or basement offices. Who knows, this could have started the same way and with this whole email episode it became sensational.

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Mike Robuck
Mike Robuck
1/20/2016 10:19:36 AM
User Rank
Author
customer service
We live in a rural area, which means we're on our fourth triple play service provider due to buyouts. We've had our fair share of bad customer service, but it was a nice change of pace to have a tech from a large cable company fix several issues that we weren't even aware of when he was here. He was cross-trained, so when he found a problem he fixed it instead of saying that another tech would need to come by. 

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anushav
anushav
1/20/2016 2:48:36 PM
User Rank
Steel
That continuous reboot issue
This happened in my previous life as a pre-sales engineer when I was working for a classic technology vendor. My department was called "customer experience" and we were focussed on doing just that! The customer was a well-known carrier in Canada who used our routers and firewalls in their datacenters for many years. They would promptly test our beta code as they were always looking for new features to deploy.

During the second round of a particular beta test,  the network engineer at the carrier stumbled upon a continuous reboot issue. This is the ultimate error that you don't want your customers to see!

At first it was panic (geek pun intended!), but thank God for small mercies - it was a trial lab with beta code and the SLAs were not as strict as tech support issues are in production. I quickly reproduced the issue with the customer configuration in my lab. The configuration CLI statements ran into pages and pages - about 50+ if you print them and 100+ if its single-side only, on A4 size paper! The next thing to do was to narrow down the root cause of the issue amidst the pages of config. What changed since round 1 of testing when the issue didn't happen? At what exact point is the reboot triggered? This involves debugging and poring over boot logs. Once the config that caused the issue is narrowed down, turning it off, resolved the issue.

This may seem like a day in the life of a tech support engineer, but what was important is that you don't release "enterprise grade" beta software that reboots continuously when you just upgrade. Crashes , core dumps do happen but not when you just upgrade to the build! Though it was beta code, the customer was livid that the software passed through months of development/feature/performance/regression tests and landed in his hands in this state. 

So the reputation of the product was at stake. I saved the day by first admitting that it was a mistake. Then, i provided the quick workaround of turning off the buggy config statement, followed by a subsequent patch from engineering. Well, these are routine, but what made it a "winner", is when I brought in our test lead and explained our commitment to the software development process and how his issue was caused by a corner case, deprecated config which was unnecessary in his 100 page config. We also explained how we would avoid such mistakes going forward. Nevertheless, it was a bug and the config was removed in the patch.

Taking the time to admit fault, provide the fix and explain how  we would avoid it,  restored faith in this long-term customer and saved the day. 

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Mike Robuck
Mike Robuck
1/20/2016 6:10:46 PM
User Rank
Author
Re: That continuous reboot issue
"Taking the time to admit fault, provide the fix and explain how  we would avoid it,  restored faith in this long-term customer and saved the day." Pretty much sums up good customer service. Tattoos with the above quote will be required...

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vnewman
vnewman
1/20/2016 7:44:49 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: BLOCK
@Joe - Oh don't get me wrong, it actually worked really well because the thing was you couldn't bring that index card back and get another one until that person was helped.  So it was a truly "customer-experience" oriented way of doing things.  But the users, on the other hand, expected high tech solutions from the IT dept so they kind of scoffed at the procedure.

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batye
batye
1/22/2016 12:31:11 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: That continuous reboot issue
@Mike Robuck  this day Co. must value they customers... but many Co. offer lips services instead of providing proper services... sad reality when Co. trying to save on customer support...

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batye
batye
1/22/2016 12:33:08 PM
User Rank
Platinum
Re: BLOCK
@vnewman  I could not agree more as this days customers want it now high tech solution.... as technology is here...

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Joe Stanganelli
Joe Stanganelli
1/22/2016 9:16:19 PM
User Rank
Author
Re: customer service
@Mike: Of course (and not to add cynicism to your experience; I'm sure the tech was being honest), what a terrific and easy way to "improve" the customer experience: make up an imaginary problem and tell customers they had this problem they didn't even know about but not to worry because you fixed it.

Not an honest (or entirely lawful, I suspect) way of doing business, but that's an easy way to put a good feeling in a customer's heart...until you're caught lying.

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