Why Do People Hate Calling Tech Support?

We’re already stressed any time technology goes down. That’s especially true when we need that piece of tech to finish an urgent task. There’s never a good time for your computer, your phone, or your copy machine to go down. It’s always inconvenient when a critical piece of software crashes. More often than not, those situations lead to a call to the tech support line.

The Dreaded Support Call

It’s a call nobody wants to make because we’ve all had at least one of those experiences. But why do we hate it so?

Long Waits

It’s probably the top reason we all hate to make the call. “Please continue holding, your call is important to us.” Of course there are legitimate capacity issues, but when every call to tech support holds for an extended period of time, it’s difficult to believe they truly think the call is important. Tech support shouldn’t consume the better part of a business day and put all your other work further behind schedule than the tech outage already put it. Good tech support values your time and helps fix the problem as quickly as possible.

Inflexible Scripts

By necessity, tech support is designed to help people with little technical knowledge, and that’s important. Tech outages can and do happen to those without the technical chops to talk shop. Engineers aren’t immune to tech outages and crashes. Good tech support values the caller’s input and appreciates when the caller has more than average technical knowledge. While a script is still sometimes necessary, it makes sense to leverage a technical caller’s ability to assist in solving the problem.

Blind Instructions

While the tech support rep may have seen this issue hundreds of times, it’s often the first encounter with the issue for a customer. When the tech support line instructs a caller to take actions without explaining why they are being done, it keeps the problem shrouded in mystery. If there’s anything people can’t stand, it’s having to call tech support more than once for the same issue. Sometimes, the fix for a problem consists of a few simple steps a caller can learn from tech support. That way, the next time the customer encounters the same problem, it can be quickly addressed without a call to tech support.

Phone Tag

When a customer calls technical support, they expect the person answering the call to have both the capability and authority to solve the problem. When the tech support rep must place the caller on hold to ask a supervisor how to do something, or worse yet, for permission to do something, it tests the caller’s patience. Nobody likes getting the run-around. Nobody likes calling the published number only to learn it’s the wrong support team and they must call a completely different number to get help. The tech support rep should be empowered to solve the customer’s problems with minimal need to escalate.

Forced Upgrades

The very last thing a customer calling technical support wants to hear when calling for help is, “We no longer support that product.” Having a product go down to a technical issue already costs the customer in the form of missed deadlines, slipped schedules, and frustration. Telling a customer the only way to fix the problem is to buy an upgrade is a good way to alienate someone who probably loves the product when it works properly.

A Better Way

If you want your customers to enjoy a better technical support experience, Touch Support is here to help. Call today, and we’ll help take the pain out of tech support for your customers.

Why do YOU hate calling tech support? Let us know in the comments below!