WEBlog -- Wouter's Eclectic Blog

Tue, 16 May 2006

On huge ISPs and multi-level support requests.

Adam

They just told you how to get past their front lines: Call their business support on the toll-free phone number she gave you. Here's my take at what happened:

• You entered a question on a web form which is intended for user support questions.
• A first-line technical support person called Irene (who, most likely, is not trained as a computer person; since 90% of all calls can be fixed by going with the customer through their connection and email settings, you can train anyone to be a first-line technical support person in one day, with most of the time spent in How do I handle the phone and How do I handle the ticket tracking system) had a look at your request, saw that you had problems with sending email from remote systems, and copied a standard text about mail bounces in her reply to you. Remember that there are many people out there who think they know a lot about computers because they know how to start regedit and know a few buzzwords; the presence os such words in a support request is not necessarily a sign that there's some clue at the other end of the line.
• You replied that no, this does not apply, and that yes, it's really a problem at your end, because lots of words Irene does not understand. She then decided you're totally out of her league, and redirected you to their second-line support; second-line supportlines do consist of people knowledgeable about computers, because at that point it's no longer a trivial problem. Since you happen to be an ISP, which is a company in her book, she referred you to the Business support line; such a Business support line usually consists of people even more knowledgeable about computers in general and the Internet specifically, because companies usually have rather specific needs that go a bit further than I have an ADSL modem and a Windows box.

Really. Call them. You'll find that you will be talking to someone knowledgeable about what SMTP is, and who is able to put a request with SMTP administrators to fix this issue if that is required.

Take it from someone who used to work at one of Belgium's largest ISP's (at least, it was that when I used to work there—they've lost some market share since).

/en/retorts

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