"...may I help you?"

Part of our job here is tech support. If you've done tech support at a software company then you'd understand. It typically goes like this...

A user calls our sales line. Our sales staff tries their best to solve the problem but most likely we'll get called in to fix the problem.

Sales: "G/J, I have this person on the line that doesn't has a problem. Can you take over?"
[one minute delay while we bang our heads on the desk to numb it before the surge of agonizing pain hits]
G/J: "Hello ___ speaking, may I help you?"
User: "Hi, I have this problem... my thing isn't working."
G/J: "Ok, can you tell me what you see on your screen?"
U: "There's this bar on the screen that says loading.. I'm not getting that login screen that I'm supposed to.."
G/J: "Does it say there was an error or anything like.."
U: cutting us off "You know what? I'm just going to shut it all down and try it again, cuz this just isn't working."
G/J: "Wait, is it still loading?"
U: "Well it was but I just killed it"
G/J: "You'll have to let it finish loading, it could take some time based on you connection speed and.."
U: "Sorry, can you hold? thanks"
G/J: [Twiddling our thumbs]
U: "Sorry about that, you were saying..?"
G/J: "No problem, you should just wait until.."
U: "Sorry, but you just have to hold again.."
...
[After this happens are few times the user has either forgotten what he was doing or is too fed up to go on, occassionally the user will want to continue]

G/J: "Alright, let's start from the beginning. Can you close everything down so we can start from scratch?"
U: "Sure thing, I got everything closed now"
G/J: "Good! Let's try to go to the login again, and let's wait a little longer until the software has loaded"
U: "Ok, this time the login is there. I don't know what happened beofre but this time it working"
G/J: "Great, if you have any more problems call us back"

Sounds simple and quick? This all takes about 10 to 30 minutes. Looking back on the calls we've done nothing more to help the user. To be fair there are times when there are legitmate calls, yet they are just as painful. We spend another 5 min "recovering" after each call. Typically while on hold the software actually is loading, and finishes loading so when we tell them to go to try again, it has finally had a chance to finish. Its even worse sometimes when they get their own tech guy in all the call and they no idea what's going on..

Welcome to the HSL blog. This is just so Jon and I can post stuff while at work, hence "Here's Something". Had to add in the "La" to make it interesting. Enjoy.