I don’t like doing technical support. It is just not something that I find enjoyable at all. I don’t mind fixing the occasional computer - I had a mate’s PowerBook G4 for a few days the other day, and even got a bit miffed by how frustrating that was. Long story short - it seemed like the hard drive was buggered, but after replacing that (which was very hard), I by chance removed and reinserted the RAM, which doesn’t require a complete disassembly, and it booted fine. I then spent 40 minutes fixing my sister’s laptop’s internet. Which again I didn’t mind, as I was the one who had left it set up to use a static IP address when i was working on getting an ad-hoc WiFi network going. It took 40 mins to fix something that if I had the machine in front of me (or even VNC), I probably could have fixed in 4.
One thing I will be doing at my job is some technical support for a specialist software package. I’ve listened to my boss (still sounds weird calling him that, since he’s a mate of way back) and I really don’t think it will be fun. I can already parrot a heap of the phrases he uses several times a day, and I’ll be heading out with him to do some site visits late this week or next.
Well, I’m not the person to tell that sometimes you have to do stuff you don’t really like, just to keep the money rolling in. How many years was I a teacher for again?
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Whilst trying to tag this post, I realised that I don’t have as much to rant and rave about since I am not a teacher. I’m not the angry young man I was. Still, this is as close to a rant as I am getting, so it’s going in that pile…
Tech support is a moody beast, in my experience. Generally speaking, if I have to do it, I prefer on-site support because I have hands-on. As you mention, phone-based tech support is one of the most frustrating experiences of geekdom. That said, on-site support can be even worse than phone support when you have to ask the customer to do certain things and they’re not inclined (for whatever reason) to do so.
I spent 18 hours at a client site one day (a Friday) trying to convince their DBAs that they had a database problem. They wouldn’t hear it. Finally, one of their own sys admins just got fed up and re-routed their production application to their staging database and ta da! As a consultant, I couldn’t do that. That day…I’d have rather been doing phone support (or damn near anything else).
5 hours, 42 minutes after the fact.
And I too have had similar experiences - just make sure you bill the customer for your time (incl making doco after the job plus travel time) at 15 minute increments and they soon stop calling you for frivolous queries. Esp if you charge at $160 p/h as we do!
18 hours, 2 minutes after the fact.
Please visit http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/. Thank you.
1 day, 13 hours after the fact.
Howsabout you fuck off, bill.
Visit http://jesus-is-my-bitch.com, it’s much funnier.
1 day, 22 hours after the fact.
This is much funnier: http://www.spymac.com/details/?2325319
3 days, 10 hours after the fact.