"You have a lot of middle names...."

Facing a shrinking market share of PC and server sales, Dell has recently revealed plans to revamp their customer support by adding two higher-level support packages: ProSupport for IT professionals and ProSupport for End Users. This ProSupport offering will give Dell customers an improved support experience by providing them with 24x7 access to expert technicians, the ability to expedite replacement parts and labor, and support for select third party software and hardware vendors, to name a few.

I’ve had to call Dell numerous times in the past, for clients, myself, family, and friends. Whenever I call for a client, I get Dell’s Business or Enterprise level support and I almost always get a knowledgeable technician that sees my issue through resolution. When calling for myself, family, or friends, I get the Dell Home technicians and it is complete night and day. Their solutions are always the same, no matter what the problem is. Fan’s broken? Video card shot?

Step 1: Format your hard drive, reinstall Windows, and call us back.
Step 2: You’re still having the same problem and now all your documents, music, and pictures are gone because you formatted your hard drive? Okay, we’ll send the replacement part.



Dell Home isn’t alone though. A good number of hardware and software vendors have this same lackadaisical “read-from-a-script” support. Take Microsoft for example. If you’re calling afterhours for an emergency, get ready to fork over $515. For what? This.



Dell and Microsoft are just two of a large number of companies that outsource their call centers to India. Even NBC’s help desk is located overseas. When a writer on Late Night with Conan O’Brien had a problem with his computer, he called Tech Support and documented the escapade. Before you comment, I know it’s fake, but it’s still funny.



As long as there are computers, users will always have problems. It’s what keeps technicians and engineers employed. Sure it gets frustrating sometimes when end users don’t give you the complete story and preface their stories with “I didn’t do anything” or “it just happened” but that’s what separates good support from bad support. A good support tech will decrypt the user’s stories and find out what really happened, on their way to fixing the issue and making the user’s day.

And remember, computer operators and substance abusers are the only people that are referred to as users. Coincidence?