{"id":2241,"date":"2010-11-14T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-14T09:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=2241"},"modified":"2010-11-14T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-14T09:05:00","slug":"this_week_i_called_a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2010\/11\/this_week_i_called_a\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Matters: A Tech Support Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of days ago, I called a company for technical support. A well-spoken young woman answered. She did not put me on hold, dump me into voice-mail hell, pass me along to a robot or connect me with someone in Bangladesh. In about three minutes, she analyzed the problem and provided a solution. At the end, she did not try to sign me up for an extended warranty, sell me more stuff or ask me to complete a survey. I know&#151;you&#8217;ve called tech support. You find this hard to believe. It&#8217;s true.<br \/>\nTo protect the company&#8217;s switchboard from being clogged with calls from troubled consumers hungry for the sound of a human voice, I will not identify it. If I blew the whistle on their enlightened customer relations practices, the Association Of Businesses Promoting Telephonic Delay, Obfuscation and Frustration might take them to court in an unfair competition case.<br \/>\nAll right, it wasn&#8217;t a billion-dollar international company manufacturing complex digital equipment. It was a small outfit that makes relatively simple devices. When its customers have problems, it gives them human beings who take an interest, find solutions quickly and don&#8217;t send callers through procedural hoops or voice-mail loops. The billion-dollar guys could learn something from these folks.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/call%20center.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"call center.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/assets_c\/2010\/11\/call center-thumb-224x195-17998.jpg\" width=\"224\" height=\"195\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;\" \/><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: right;\"><small><small><\/a>&#8220;\u00a92006 Ozzie Fonseca<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.callcentercomics.com\"target=\"_blank\">www.callcentercomics.com<\/a> <\/small><\/small><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of days ago, I called a company for technical support. A well-spoken young woman answered. She did not put me on hold, dump me into voice-mail hell, pass me along to a robot or connect me with someone in Bangladesh. In about three minutes, she analyzed the problem and provided a solution. At [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}