South West eCommerce

This week I’ve had the joy of being involved in a number of support calls, the type you make to a help desk when your computing world turns to manure.

On the outgoing side I spoke with an Armenian guy called Nerses.  Then later with Robbo.  I found Robbo kind of surprising because having an Anglo background and working the help desk is unusual.  Having noted that he is Anglo, and therefore doesn’t really have an accent to confuse me doesn’t get away from the fact that he dropped in and out of fairly technical jargon from time to time, he did seem to mumble a bit, and the discussion was occasionally difficult.  Nerses (pronounced Nessah), had the kind of accent you’d expect an Armenian to have if he’d lived in Australia and spoken to people on a helpline for a decade…. still interesting but quite understandable.

Both of these guys were fairly patient with me while we went through some tasks that were not really hard, just fairly demanding because we needed to be accurate with them and we needed to go click by click through rescuing files and the like.  They were polite and they were patient, and when their minds wandered a bit and they started to mumble or go back to the jargon, it was my job to be patient and understand the mind numbing boredom that must arise from doing this stuff with untrained people several times a day for years.  Just the same I had to be firm with them and tell them that what they were telling me was helpful, or sometimes, it wasn’t understandable, can they go back and do the step again.

Given my undersatandable state of stress, it took my whole attention to remain good natured about it.  Sure the computer was in melt down, sure I need it to work to make my living, and sure, it looked like the day was not going to end well, but Nerses didn’t break it, and neither did Robbo.  While my good humour would likely not have extended to the author of certain destructive programs, I am not going to get a chance to express my displeasure to them anyway.  Anyhow, long story short, the real computer is off being fixed, the borrowed one is cleared of viruses, and I’m well into setting the loaner up to be able to do my job.

While this was all going on, Mr Graham Bell’s invention was ticking along, doing the things it does, and bringing us business, including, not surprisingly, a support call for me to answer.  The call related to a website issue and the eventual outcome was that the client had clicked on the wrong button and there was nothing wrong.  That doesn’t mean that it’s not a real concern and the conversation we had was serious enough to her.  We were probaby born in the same city, we sound the same, but there was clearly a language difficulty between us.  The conversation resolved the issue and we all went our separate ways, but from being on both ends of the call I found something about this process.

Talking with someone about things you don’t understand is like speaking to someone in a language you don’t really have.  Talking to someone about things they don’t understand is like talking to someone who is a visitor to the country.  Without hand signals the job is going to be tricky.  In both situations the situation resolved, not through great skill but through patience, careful speaking, and good spirit.

We’re all going to work on the net to a greater or lesser degree.  We’re all going to be working in places where someone doesn’t understand us.  They’re not stupid, they just don’t understand.  Both of these calls have led to something that I really like, a strong business relationship.  I trust the service providors I was speaking to, and I feel like my caller trusts me, and the ongoing flow of business and profit seems to be in place for both of us.  It's worth remembering that the issues are going to be resolved sooner or later, and the person who writes the invoice is going to be the one who communicated properly with the client.