www.cyberslayer.co.uk

 

BEFUDDLED PC USERS FLOOD HELP LINES, AND NO QUESTION SEEMS TO BE TOO
BASIC

AUSTIN, Texas - The exasperated help-line caller said she couldn't
get her new Dell computer to turn on.  Jay Ablinger, a Dell
Computer Corp. technician, made sure the computer was plugged in
and then asked the woman what happened when she pushed the power
button.

"I've pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens,"
the woman replied.  "Foot pedal?" the technician asked.  "Yes,"
the woman said, "this little white foot pedal with the on switch."
The "foot pedal," it turned out, was the computer's mouse, a
hand-operated device that helps to control the computer's
operations.

Personal-computer makers are discovering that it's still a
low-tech world out there.  While they are finally having great
success selling PCs to households, they now have to deal with
people to whom monitors and disk drives are a foreign as another
language.

"It is rather mystifying to get this nice, beautiful machine and
not know anything about it," says Ed Shuler, a technician who
helps field consumer calls at Dell's headquarters here.  "It's
going into unfamiliar territory," adds Gus Kolias, vice president
of customer service and training for Compaq Computer Corp.
"People are looking for a comfort level."

Only two years ago, most calls to PC help lines came from techies
needing help on complex problems.  But now, with computer sales to
homes exploding as new "multimedia" functions gain mass appeal, PC
makers say that as many as 70% of their calls come from rank
novices.  Partly because of the volume of calls, some computer
companies have started charging help-line users.

The questions are often so basic that they could have been
answered by opening the manual that comes with every machine.  One
woman called Dell's toll-free line to ask how to install batteries
in her laptop.  When told that the directions were on the first
page of the manual, says Steve Smith, Dell director of technical
support, the woman replied angrily, "I just paid $2,000 for this
damn thing, and I'm not going to read a book."

Indeed, it seems that these buyers rarely refer to a manual when a
phone is at hand.  "If there is a book and a phone and they're
side by side, the phone wins time after time," says Craig
McQuilkin, manager of service marketing for AST Research, Inc. in
Irvine, Calif.  "It's a phenomenon of people wanting to talk to
people."

And do they ever.  Compaq's help center in Houston, Texas, is
inundated by some 8,000 consumer calls a day, with inquiries like
this one related by technician John Wolf: "A frustrated customer
called, who said her brand new Contura would not work.  She said
she had unpacked the unit, plugged it in, opened it up and sat
there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen.  When asked
what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked, 'What
power switch?'"

Seemingly simple computer features baffle some users.  So many
people have called to ask where the "any" key is when "Press Any
Key" flashes on the screen that Compaq is considering changing the
command to "Press Return Key."

Some people can't figure out the mouse.  Tamra Eagle, an AST
technical support supervisor, says one customer complained that
her mouse was hard to control with the "dust cover" on.  The cover
turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.  Dell
technician Wayne Zieschang says one of his customers held the
mouse and pointed it at the screen, all the while clicking madly.
The customer got no response because the mouse works only if it's
moved over a flat surface.

Disk drives are another bugaboo.  Compaq technician Brent Sullivan
says a customer was having trouble reading word-processing files
from his old diskettes.  After troubleshooting for magnets and
heat failed to diagnose the problem, Mr. Sullivan asked what else
was being done with the diskette.  The customer's response: "I put
a label on the diskette, roll it into the typewriter..."

At AST, another customer dutifully complied with a technician's
request that she send in a copy of a defective floppy disk.  A
letter from the customer arrived a few days later, along with a
Xerox copy of the floppy. And at Dell, a technician advised his
customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and "close
the door." Asking the technician to "hold on," the customer put
the phone down and was heard walking over to shut the door to his
room.  The technician meant the door to his floppy drive.

The software inside the computer can be equally befuddling.  A
Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax
anything. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician
discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding
it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.

Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so
Dell technician Gary Rock referred him to the local Egghead.
"Yeah, I got me a couple of friends," the customer replied.  When
told Egghead was a software store, the man said, "Oh! I thought
you meant for me to find a couple of geeks."

No realizing how fragile computers can be, some people end up
damaging parts beyond repair.  A Dell customer called to complain
that his keyboard no longer worked.  He had cleaned it, he said,
filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking his keyboard
for a day, and then removing all the keys and washing them
individually.

Computers make some people paranoid.  A Dell technician, Morgan
Vergara, says he once calmed a man who became enraged because "his
computer had told him he was bad and an invalid."  Mr. Vergara
patiently explained that the computer's "bad command" and
"invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.

These days PC-help technicians increasingly find themselves taking
on the role of amateur psychologists.  Mr. Shuler, the Dell
technician, who once worked as a psychiatric nurse, says he
defused a potential domestic fight by soothingly talking a man
through a computer problem after the man had screamed threats at
his wife and children in the background.

There are also the lonely hearts who seek out human contact, even
if it happens to be a computer techie.  One man from New Hampshire
calls Dell every time he experiences a life crisis.  He gets a
technician to walk him through some contrived problem with his
computer, apparently feeling uplifted by the process.

"A lot of people want reassurance," says Mr. Shuler.


I added to Jim Material:

We can add another.

"A home-making mom of a computer wiz decided that she shouldn't be
left out. So, after timidly entering the house hold's "computer
room," she decided to learn how the damn thing worked!"

Hours later, she left in total disgust. She could not get beyond
responding to the command: Enter Today's Date:

The problem it turned out was that it was prior to October, and
thus, single digit months required the leading ZERO.

Of course, the home-making mom was my wife, Maxine, and she has
never entered that computer room again!