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New rules at work = turning us into salespeople.
So, I come into work last week and I am informed that me and several other people will be trained on new phone support procedures.
I knew these new procedures would be bad because of the fact they banned us from using certain software tools to fix clients' issues. I didn't see the list yet at the time so I didn't know what they banned, but when I got into training I was horrified by what I was hearing.
You are given a list of "approved" tools to use. However, many of the tools listed are garbage. The head honchos at corp. have said that they are only approved to use tools because they claimed that use of any other tool could get them sued. This is what they said: "Although the tools are freeware, they are free for home users, not companies. Also, even though we are downloading them to client's PCs and not to our PCs, since we are charging clients and using their software to fix issues we are in essence making a profit off of it and in their license agreements it states no for-profit use."
BULLCRAP. The retail chain that owns us could get approval for any tool they wanted. I noticed IMMEDIATELY that they only excluded from the list software that actually works and gets the job done, like:
Smitfraudfix - ONLY tool that reliably gets rid of the fake "you are infected!" tray icons.
Killbox - only tool I've used that reliably kills errant files that windows can't delete.
A-squared - one of the best deep scanners available.
SuperAntiSpyware - Another excellent deep scanner.
Firefox - Actually they didn't ban it, but you can only use it for testing purposes only. You can't leave it on client's PCs anymore.
They said the list of approved tools would be so tightly enforced that if they catch you using a tool that's not on the list you could get fired.
Now, I was wondering why they would do this. Turns out that if you can't get the issue resolved within 2 hours or the client calling in 4 times (because we tell the client to call back when we start a scan), the support needs to be converted to an onsite visit, or refered to the store. Both costing at least twice as much as the phone support. As I told my co-workers who all agree with me, the corp people are now trying to use us to try and squeeze more money out of the customers. Or as one of my co-workers said, "they are using us as a conduit to make more sales in the field or in the store."
Only good thing is that in a couple of weeks we are going to stop support for 98, Me and dial-up.
I knew these new procedures would be bad because of the fact they banned us from using certain software tools to fix clients' issues. I didn't see the list yet at the time so I didn't know what they banned, but when I got into training I was horrified by what I was hearing.
You are given a list of "approved" tools to use. However, many of the tools listed are garbage. The head honchos at corp. have said that they are only approved to use tools because they claimed that use of any other tool could get them sued. This is what they said: "Although the tools are freeware, they are free for home users, not companies. Also, even though we are downloading them to client's PCs and not to our PCs, since we are charging clients and using their software to fix issues we are in essence making a profit off of it and in their license agreements it states no for-profit use."
BULLCRAP. The retail chain that owns us could get approval for any tool they wanted. I noticed IMMEDIATELY that they only excluded from the list software that actually works and gets the job done, like:
Smitfraudfix - ONLY tool that reliably gets rid of the fake "you are infected!" tray icons.
Killbox - only tool I've used that reliably kills errant files that windows can't delete.
A-squared - one of the best deep scanners available.
SuperAntiSpyware - Another excellent deep scanner.
Firefox - Actually they didn't ban it, but you can only use it for testing purposes only. You can't leave it on client's PCs anymore.
They said the list of approved tools would be so tightly enforced that if they catch you using a tool that's not on the list you could get fired.
Now, I was wondering why they would do this. Turns out that if you can't get the issue resolved within 2 hours or the client calling in 4 times (because we tell the client to call back when we start a scan), the support needs to be converted to an onsite visit, or refered to the store. Both costing at least twice as much as the phone support. As I told my co-workers who all agree with me, the corp people are now trying to use us to try and squeeze more money out of the customers. Or as one of my co-workers said, "they are using us as a conduit to make more sales in the field or in the store."
Only good thing is that in a couple of weeks we are going to stop support for 98, Me and dial-up.
I AM the evil bastard!
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